CONTENTS:

PART I SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

PART II MY MESSAGE

PART III. RESTORING THE WHOLENESS OF LIFE

PART IV 4 STAGIONI

INTRODUCTION

Han Maitreya Stiekema is an All Embracing One, a new universal teacher. He is probably the only existing master who has gone both beyond Enlightenment and Death. He is a very ordinary person, he is somebody who really returned to the market place, very much enjoying the common life. His way of relating is through friendship. You may really call hirn your best friend.

He has been most reluctant to take up his role. After 13 years from the date of his first Great Experience and seven years from the completion of the full Cycle of Enlightenment, he finally accepted it because of "this most desperate of times". Han Maitreya stresses the fact that everybody has to become a saviour nowadays. He very much wants you to save the trees, the plants, the animals, the biosphere and the entire planet. To him the problem of the environment is a crisis in spirituality. Mankind lost its sense of deep interrelation, hence its loss of compassion. We are cut off from everything real in ourselves and our environment, he says, hence the colossal problems of today.

As a boy he had a deep sense of being apart of nature's mystery. Therefore his passion in later life for spending time in the countryside where he combined his medical practice for seven years with that of being an organic gardener. He is a real greenie. In his enlightened consciousness, he experiences the whole earth to be his body, every creature to be his child. Everything is part of his Limitless Being. A simple leaf moving in the morning breeze is enough for his Enlightenment to glow up.

Han Maitreya bridges Western and Eastern traditions. He has a European educational background. Like countless others he worked through his repressed emotions, which inevitably accompanied the process of growing up as a child in the West. His soul is Eastern, his mind is Western and his heart everywhere. He studied all major religions and forgot all about them. Buddhism and Christianity were his main focus of interest. He considers the Christian heretical tradition to be the religion's only genuine root. He says that we have to make a shift from religion which is 'past-oriented' to spirituality which is of the 'Here-Now'.

Han Maitreya hirnself does not come from any specific tradition nor does he intend to create one. But he feels incredibly grateful to all beings who guided him in his spiritual quest. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as rnuch as the old woman in the street,  Karl Graf Dürckheirn as rnuch as the bird singing in the tree and Han Fortrnann as rnuch as the first tones of an Indian raga, Teresa of Avila as much as the green grass. Additionally, Han Maitreya was deeply involved in holistic rnedicine and psychotherapy. In Holland he was one of the pioneers of it.

Everybody is a Maitreya, Han Maitreya is just one of the countless other Realised Beings. The Maitreya Mind is everywhere, it is All Embracing, penetrating all sentient and non-sentient beings. Hence the only advice he gives you is to open up, to becorne aware, to disclose yourself to what is already there, that which has been there all the time with no beginning and no end: yourSelf.

Michiko Y., Japan/HongKong

1. SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

Beyond Enlightenment and Death

Today, we as mankind are in great trouble. The greatest trouble ever. It is unbelievable. Everyday we are overwhelmed by so many catastrophes. The future appears utterly gloomy. Suddenly our very existence seems to be at stake. We, the so called crown in the evolution in fact appear to be the most (self) destructive species ever.

It all reflects our poor state of mind. We are identified with ourselves, with 'desires and possessions' ratherthan of 'being'. We seek happiness in accumulating things, experiences and power. But accumulating does not really satisfy uso Our dissatisfaction grows like a cancer. That is why we keep searching.

Problems like the environment, peace and human rights therefore reflect our lack of inner quality and realisation. We are alienated from oUf deeper Self, nature and thepeople around uso That is why we need to transform ourselves, restoring our wholeness and that of the world.

What we need is awareness. To be able to see things clearly; to see them as they really are. What we need is inner peace and stability; to be at ease with ourselves. We need to become related and interconnected; to be in communion with our natural environment. What we need is inner strength, straightforwardness, love and compassion. We have to become friends with all beings.

So a great effort towards a new openness is needed. A totally new spirituality in which we can open ourselves to our inner Reality. And we do not have to search for it. It is already there. It was already there before we came into existence. So go into it, become aware, surrender to it. Be prepared to become transformed and to become available to the world. You are badly needed.

VISION

That afternoon there was a very special atmosphere. It was as if the air around me was filled with some rare energy. 1 lay on my bed and feIt very relaxed.

Suddenly the room became very transparent. Everything changed into a very unusual clarity. Then, with my eyes open, a visionlike phenomenon appeared right in front of me. First 1 could not see what it was, but immediately afterwards 1 saw some dots
radiating light. As the light became more and more intense, the dots began to look symmetrica1. I saw them change into a form. They became bigger. Suddenly I saw what it was: little golden flowers with minute red drops in their hearts. The flowers radiated beautiful light around them. Then I recognised them as St. John's Wort.

I had never seen such a radiating splendour before. It stayed there for a short while, then it started changing. The green twigs and leaves also started changing into gold. The twigs reshaped themmselves into semicirc1es with their opening to the sky. The red drops fused into each other and became bigger. In the meantime, the intensity 01' the gold as we11 as the radiance 01' the light had grown accordingly. How beautiful this was. Suddenly I saw: the object was a J ewish Menoorha. There were the seven arms, each with a red flame at the top. I was deeply fascinated, awfu11y impressed by the c1arity 01' the vision.

Even then the change did not stop. It went on and on at a slow pace. I was able to fo11ow it easily. After the Menoorha reached its fu11est expression, the arms became thicker and thicker. They grew towards each other. First they touched, then they fused. All space between the arms was fi11ed with incredibly beautiful gold, radiating light in a11 directions. The energy was extremely powerful.

To begin with I did not recognise what it was but then I saw it looked like a golden cup. Yes, it was a golden Chalice radiating fascinating light a11 around. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life before, such a perfect shape. This was not anormal exxperience. Its nature was definitely transcendenta1. Then, very slowly the Chalice started bending towards the right and I was able to look into it a little. I knew: this was the c1imax. Something very special was going to happen. Suddenly I saw. It was blood! The Chalice was fi1led with a red fluid ... blood! Blood came up out 01' the Chalice's depth and started dripping over its edge. As the Chalice continued to bend over its side, more and more blood poured out of it. It became a stream, yes a very river 01' blood flowing abundantly and without cessation. The Chalice appeared to be an Inexhaustible Source.

As I realised this, I was fi11ed with deepest emotion and gratitude. An ecstatic joy overwhelmed me. And as that happened, the vision slowly diminished until fina11y it disappeared.

After some time the true nature 01' this event became c1ear to me. A centuries' long mystic quest had been revealed to me. The culmination 01' so much effort, speculation, deception and greed had been brought back to Its Original Purity. Yes, this was The Holy Grail. However, for rhe it was not the end, but the beginning ofmy spiritual journey. It contained a great promise, to attain the Highest Realisation.

BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH

It started as I read one of his books. A few sentences were enough. His words struck me to the depth of my heart, followed by an outburst of joy: this was what I was searching for. This was the one who would reveal the Way, Truth and Life to me. With hirn I would begin my journey. My inner fire burned everything into ashes. Nobody could stop me. I had to be near to hirn. So I went to Poona.

There my surrender was total. My love, my greatest love ever, being so intense, that I was lifted up to a totally new inner reality. My inner clarity which had been trained before in daily meditations expanded to great awareness. In a very short time Bhagwan's pressence brought me to the boundaries ofthe Great Unknown. The unity with his Essence was growing very rapidly. I did not identify mys elf with hirn at all. I did not need anything. Neither his words nor his meditations were really important to me. There was no need to become his disciple. Then suddenly the Transcendencel Just One Space in wh ich he as weIl as I disappeared completely. I am The One Mind containing everything. The Transmission had taken place.

It changed my life completely. The greatest possible inner transformationhad taken place. I knew that this was enough. My next step was to go horne to do the things I should have done a long time ago. So I said goodbye and thanks to Bhagwan. The fire of my love had disappeared into the vastness of my Being. In this very vastness Bhagwan had disappeared too. Now he was merely a precious shadow, very gentle but without aseparate existence. He and I had become one. I knew hirn like myself. There were no secrets for me anymore. And I knew there was something deeply wrong with hirn.

In the years after I struggled with hirn again and again. I came to know about his misuse of power, his identification with 'his Enlightenment' . He was the onl y begotten Enlightened Master in this world and he did everything to keep this self-created position. He did not keep his promise of creating 300 Buddhas in this world. He needed so much attention hirnself, he needed to be adored all the time. He wanted to be the centre of the universe. What a waste of energy. Impossible for me to accept.

Eventually I learned. I dropped my ideas about how a master should be. The inner conflict disappeared. It took many years for this to happen. Now Bhagwan is just Bhagwan, a human being living his own life. He is still very beautiful to me, certainly the most gifted master of recent times. I smile and stilliaugh ab out his beautiful sayings and jokes. But most important, his is the greatest example ofhow to avoid misuse ofpower, and that was also my problem. I also wanted to be the centre of the universe. It prevented me from starting a spiritual mission for a long time. By and by it became very quiet in our state of non-relationship.

THE INEXPRESSIBLE

Poona, October 1977

It happened in that garden. I found myself in an extraordinary condition, wh ich had been going on al ready for so me days. It was astate ofbeing lifted out above ordinary things. People and events did not have the usual appeal anymore. The pattern of acting and reeacting had become irrelevant. Something special was happening to me. I was totally overflowing with it. Thoughts had lost their grip on me.

My body and its environment were very much alive and I was experiencing an extraordinary contact with them. Paralelling a spontaneous growth of increased inner c1arity, my body gradually became lighter and more transparent. It first started in the feet. There the energy was c1eared away like ablanket of fog, leaving behind a bright transparency. While the pureness rose up, any heaviness simultaneously disappeared out of my body till finally my head was filled with a crystal c1ear c1arity. A circ1e of energy remained on the crown of my skull.

This circ1e appeared to be the centre of my actual alertness. I, as well as my surroundings, were perceived from here. However, very little was left of myself. Neither the body nor thoughts were able to influence my inner awareness. It was the very quality of Self, enjoying Itself blissfully. I realised that I had found myself in the margin of my actual existence; just one fraction away from the Great Unknown. Intuitively I realised the invitation to the great leap and the consequential necessity of utter surrender.

Suddenly I was struck by a terrible lightning and in less than a fraction of a second my existence was wiped out. It was a moment of Absolute Darkness. As my memory has failed to reproduce it, the duration of this terrible moment was unknown to me. But I know it was the presence of Absolute Nothingness.

That which followed transcends all attempts of description. A very alive, brightly transparent c1arity appeared to be the Only Reality. I was totallY absorbed by this Utmost Purity. The whole world radiated and was exaIted and totally transformed. Everything was pervaded by Divine Bliss and incorporated into a fresh, pure and ecstatic Light. It was unwavering and expressed life in its sublimest quality. Everything was dancing. I was able to look into Eternityand became Eternity Itself; timeless and without boundaries. All was joy , benediction, acelebration ofunity, the inexpressible and the dance. As I was possessed by a divine intoxication, I laughed continuously for no reason.

My oneness with everything around me lasted all day. Everyything had eternal quality: the grass, the flowers and the birds. Nothing existed on its own. Nothing fell apart. Without any exception, everything was part ofthe Whole. Absorbed by the same Suchness, everything had its own unique beauty. There was not any difference between me, the grass, the flowers and the birds. I realised I was no better or even different from them. Since then I have known reality to be the unity and interdependence of things in which eveerything is equally unique.

THE GREAT DEATH

One day later

This had nothing to do with usual anguish. However frighttening, common agony is being afraid and tight. Suddenly I awoke in the middle of the night and was thrown in a totally different state. Suddenly I was aware ofbeing in the midst of the greatest fear. I was absorbed by a sea of frightening agony. Anguish poured in and spread through and around me. The sea had no limits. It was very immediate, direct and timeless. It was The Ultimate Terror.

In less than a moment I feit my body decomposing. It went incredibly fast. A terrible smell of decay penetrated me. Immediately after worms consumed my body, and there were waves of deepest ice-cold electricity. The vital energy which surrounded me then disssolved into the terrifying Darkness. All that was before had gone. I had nothing left to cling to.

I was totally overpowered by this dark, horrifying terror. All my emotions and thoughts, all my sense of identity had disappeared into the dark Suchness. The only thing left was my clarity mirroring the darkness, my awareness in the middle of the ocean of terror. In the midst of this very real and hyperactive black ocean, my awareness was on the verge of dissolving. Keeping my alertness was a terrible struggle, as I was continuously overwhelmed by terror and desperaation. It was a matter of life and death.

This acute awareness lasted for many hours as I could not afford one moment of weakness. As the intensity of the terror increased, so my alertness strengthened. Spurred on by the agony of the terror, my awareness was forced to become as intense, timeless and limitess as the black ocean of terror. Consequently my awareness grew gradually and eventually became an ocean as well. From that moment on, the terror slowly weakened and finally disappeared.

Dawn arrived as I looked out of the window. For the first time I realised how long the ordeal had lasted. I also realised that this was the ultimate dying process. I had suffered the Great Death. Yes, it was really true that with this death I am a "delog" according to the Tibetan tradition. What had taken place was indeed the real meaning of the Christian resurrection. I was exhausted, but very calm and clear. I feIt great benediction and I went out full of gratefulness to enjoy the early brightness of that wonderful morning.

AMSTERDAM

August 1980

That morning everything flowed. I feIt so strong, bright and clear. I did everything spontaneously without thinking. I continuuously gave in to something, without knowing what it was. Feeling very free, lIeft the house without any goal or plan. I feIt absorbed by joy. Like a child I skipped through the streets. I enjoyed a blissful overflowing feeling of being at horne in the world. I sat down on a terrace.

As I was reading: 'the sound of a stone against a bamboo', suddenly Something penetrated me and my surroundings. I was immediately absorbed by It. My awareness became one with the Ocean of Being. It was limitless and undisturbable. Perception was unable to penetrate or create any ripples in it. An entire Other Reality had replaced everything else. This was something "in between", an inner connectedness ofthings. Everything remained as it was before but without any meaning ofitself. It was stripped of any 'apartheid'.

It was everywhere, eternally peaceful, tranquil, crystal clear and fresh. Thoughts were rare and had become insignificant. They had no power anymore and were unable to stir other thoughts. They were like empty particles emerging and then disappearing. There were neither emotions nor concerns. It was replaced by blissful ecstacy where body and mind ceased any activity oftheir own. I was absorbed in total Other-Worldliness. There was just That, the Suchhness which replaced everything else. The entire visible world is both in It and outside It' But the 'outside' becomes meaningless. I could see a dock, but time did not make sense. My brain had stopped functioning and my state was timeless.

There was no urge to do anything. I just laughed like a madman because I was so full of joy. There was realisation of 'this is It'; 'this is so simple'; 'how blissful This is' and 'what a fool I am'. Everyything fell away. Nothing was separate. However, things and events remained unchanged and went on as usual. The waiter still served on the terrace and the traffic still went by.

For one and a halfhours nothing provoked any reaction in me whatsoever. It did not respond. It remained undisturbable in Itself. Then, on its own accord It subsided. Slowly leaving behind great wonder in me. Everything was new, refreshed and every footstep was my first. I as weIl as my entire environment was equally dear and precious. We were part of the same Whole. It was the third Great Experience in my life.

THE CYCLE COMPLETE

15th of May 1983, about 3.30 pm

It was so subtle, so delicate and hardly noticeable that I do not remember the exact moment. I was suddenly absorbed by an omnipresent tranquil Clarity. Immediately this tranquillity took away every urge to do anything whatsoever. A completely otherrworldly Presence appeared to be there; a silent equanimity. I remained lying on the same spot and I feIt deeply tired. It was special because I feit heavy and light at the same time. While falling asleep, I remained aware with sleep and alertness fusing together. My body was heavy and my mind transparent and without thoughts.

After one hour I finished sleeping and the brightness of my awareness had grown remarkably. My body was not an entity of its own anymore. It was light and feIt very easy. There was no resistance, no obstacles, no special sensations and no weight. It had simply dropped off and was absorbed in the lightness of Limitness Being; in Oneness. In this One Space neither inner nor outer existed.

The acts 'I did' were entirely spontaneous, straightforward and direct. Walking, sitting, making tea and rearranging the room was totally effortless. There was no me in the doing.

Discrimination of the brain had fallen off. The world had ceased to be an accumulation of things-on-their-own. Now it existed and appear.ed as a unity: a limitless space; a continuum of interdeependent events. Since all obstructions of the mind, such as discrimiination, commentaries, associations, concepts, interpretations and conclusions had passed away, the world appeared as it is: direct and simple. Everything 'around me' was part of the Original Freshness, which is astate of awareness where breathing almost disappears completely. This state is the highest possible simplicity.

This is the Original Homeland. It is all-embracing. Everything is as it is, perceptions are no longer able to leave any impression on the mind. There is not anything to impress on. Consciousness is empty and has no content and no sense of identity either. It is a nonnexistence and is utterly unmoved by what 'it sees'. Emptiness is the seeing.

The usual stress in one's head is totally absent. There is just an omnipresent lively Silence. Although events continue to happen as usual, their charge, their life and their attraction has disappeared. They are like shadows. Existence is just One Eternal Moment. Thinking ofthe nextmoments is impossible, itdoes not occur to you. Y ou have been switched on into timelessness. Y ou cannot 'look outside'. You are a prisoner of The Eternal.

How sweet is this. How pure and fresh! Yes, you are a prisoner, yet your freedom is absolute. You are not concerned at all with the world 'around you' , there is no urge whatsoever to interfere. There are no worries and no emotions. It is a move into a very subtle equanimity where you are in the world but not of it. No special events occur. There is neither excitement nor bliss, joy nor ecstacy. No special 'spiritual experience'. As awareness is insensible to whatever there is, it totally transcends here and there. It is inc1usive.

The mind has disappeared. You are no more there. There are no thoughts, no energy, no identity, no self-awareness and no awareness. There is just this All Pervading Void. A Valley of Divine Calm. In this Eternal Moment, I am all that was, is and will be. I am the All-Embracing One, the Buddha of all Buddhas.

This was the most 'common' of my first four Great Experiiences. It showed me the Bottomless Ground of existence in its simple perfection and directness, nothing special, nothing holy. With it the Cyc1e of Enlightenment and Unity has been completed. The highest Self-Realisation thus brought me back to everyday life. A life in which I am equal to the grass, the trees, the lily and the pond.

EPILOGUE

In the beginning neither I nor the trees existed.
There was just one life to which we and the world belonged without any discrimination.
With the 'I' the trees appeared. Me here and the trees over there. Both are separated fram the original matrix and each other. Both exist through thoughts and images.
Then one day by observing yourself, thoughts and images beeco me impermanent. Feeling your body and feeling trees appear to be directly related. The trees become your extended body.
It also may happen that both you and the trees suddenly become transcendental. In this both are exalted and united into ecstatic light; absorbed by infinite dance.
Sometimes the Self disappears into The Absolute. This omnipresent Silence is all-pervading and yet the trees remain untouched by it, living their common life.
But ultimately existence appears to be Bottomless, in which everything, even the absolute dissolves. Now there is nothing left between you and the trees. In great clarity trees are as they are.

II. MY MESSAGE

An Invitation to Realize your Maitreya Mind through AWARENESS, ACCEPTANCE, FRIENDSHIP, SURRENDER and ACTION.

I, a Maitreya Buddha
King of Innumerable Heavens
pay reverence and prostrate Myself to The Great Depth
the Non-Dimension beyond The Absolute
Unknowable Nothingness beyond Nothingness
Bottomless Womb of the Eternal
Primordial Matrix in Which the Unborn Absolute
evolves and disappears
without cessation

paying reverence to
The Eternal Realm of Buddhahood
Platform of Transition in
The Void of The Incomprehensible Depth
Its Firstborn Child The Tathagata
Transparent Suchness of the universe
Silent Body of The Dharmakaya
Ultimate Plane of No Self
Utter Clarity of Great Perfeetion
Bliss of Complete and Supreme Emptiness

prostrating Myself also to
The Great Death
the absence of any illumination
reflecting the Destructiveness of The Beyond
Emptiness destroying the self and its fixations
body and mind desperately lost in Darkness
all identity having disappeared into the Ocean of
frightening agony - nothing left to cling to
the Realm of Total Hopelessness
The Ultimate Terror

also paying reverence to
The Brilliance of The Pure Land
Homeland of Enlightenment
The Body of Amida Buddha
Source of Immeasurable Life and Infinite Light
Purifying Essence of the elements
Joy of Radiant Abundancy
Ecstatic Lightness of Being
Its Compassion Arising
great devotion and gratitude

prostrating myself also to
the Unity of Essence and energy
Source of Dynamic Intelligence
silence in action, sound of non-doing
playground of life
Creative Power behind diversity
skillful means to all Bodhisattvas
those who sincerely strive to Liberate
all sentient and non-sentient beings
with My Support they will Realize Buddhahood

paying reverence to
all Witnessing Beings
those who stepped out of suffering by
becoming Aware which is
The Most Crucial Step in Emancipation
Beginning of The Bodhisattva Career
Key to Wisdom and Compassion in
the ten directions
Freedom from ignorance from Which
The Vow of Liberation emerges

prostrating Myself also to
all sentient beings: man, plants and animals alike
all forms which are Emptiness
the ignorant ones who remain imprisoned
living a life suffering in samsara
unaware, unwilling or unable to
accept the Law of Impermanence
all those who are in desperate need of
Wisdom and Compassion
in order to become awakened

finally paying reverence to
all non-sentient beings
the manifold patterns of energy
ever changing events of the universes
the interdependency of relations and objects
the visible world of nature
galaxies, stars and planets
earth, fire, air and water
as weIl as the invisible microscopic world
life as it appears to humans

I, a Maitreya Claiming
these Eight Planes as My Realization
Confirming My Inclusiue Birth HereNow
Being The Ultimate Buddha of Ever Fresh Beginning
Having Penetrated The Supreme Law of
Birth and Death containing all Dimensions
The Essential Nature being Empty beyond Emptiness
being sent to earth by The Great Depth
to fulfil My Pro mise of bringing
life back to Its Original Wholeness

Mediating between past and present Dharma
Transforming dec1ine into Exaltation
I Confirm the Renewal of
The Perpetual Cyc1e of Regeneration
in this most desperate of times
Reeonciling power and Realization
Overcoming diehotomy of aspirations
Practicing open-ended possibilities
remembering My Own shorteomings in the past
hence Manifesting Myself as an ordinary human

having said so I proclaim the Universality of
AWARENESS as The Basic Need of mankind
Causeless Clarity of Mind Only
not moving from here to there
neither striving nor attaining
no need to liberate ltself
just simply Being There everywhere
Transforming conceptualization into Reality
darkness into Transcendental Bliss
thus emancipating life

instead of trying to eseape from desire
which is suffering once again
identification is accepted as being part of life
a life-affirmative attitude
the base of understanding
seeking integration of different levels of the mind
we transform ourselves toward greater wholeness
being Aware with Great ACCEPTANCE
will therefore eertainly benefit life
I emphasize the Attitude that is All Embracing

descending into the realm of interdependency
no phenomenon in the universe
existing apart from the whole
to share is the key to man's existence
participating in networks of energy
being exchanged without interruption
I proclaim the Transformation of Compassion into
the Practice of Universal FRIENDSHIP
being no-selves in equality
friendship thus being the base of all relations

seeing the effects of ignorance of many kalpas
like the rejected inner energies causing
the disastrous cycle of destructiveness and fear
I personally Commit Myself to
the greater and smaller problems of mankind
inciting The Thought of Enlightenment into
as many men and women possible who
becoming aware of themselves and their environment
will do everything to liberate all beings
and to transform the world

hence the Bodhisattvas
pursuing neither non-practice or practice
being fully aware using the Inexhaustible Lamp
according to their state of Realization
not going anywhere but
relaxing in What they Are already
SURRENDERING and practicing hard
sharing, celebrating life and death
experiencing Self and Other Power
may you serve all beings awakening them all

looking at ourselves without any conclusion
enjoying the beauty of the five skandhas
combining great clarity with trust
investigation of things and skillful means arise
developing friendly relationships with
nature and the people around us
devoting ourselves to The Great Depth
as The Ultimate Truth of Ekayana
we will Realize our inherent Buddhahood
giving rise to Great ACTION

PART III RESTORING THE WHOLENESS OF LIFE

Spiritual Awakening, Health & The Environment

FORWORD

THE MAITREYA MIND TRAINING PROGRAMME
Footmassage
Catharsis
Bodycontact awareness
Meditation
Sharing

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH YOUR OB SERVER
Footmassage
Outgoing catharsis - Vibration
Ingoing catharsis - Original Face
Bodycontact awareness - Grounding
Basic Awareness Meditation
Sharing

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH YOUR MIND
Footmassage
Outgoing catharsis - Babylalia
Ingoing catharsis - Embracing
Bodycontact awareness - Bone Awareness
Master your mind Meditation
Sharing

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH YOUR BODY AND NATURE
Footmassage
Outgoing catharsis - Panting
Ingoing catharsis - Inner Transformation
Bodycontact awareness - Aura Extension
Tree of Life Meditation
Sharing

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH YOUR HUMAN ENVIRONMENT
Footmassage
Outgoing catharsis - Laughing
Ingoing catharsis - Hyperdramatising
Bodycontact awareness - Chakra Breathing
Best Friend Meditation
Sharing

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH THE DIVINE
Footmassage
Outgoing catharsis - Crazy Horse
Ingoing catharsis - Cremation
Bodycontact awareness - Inner Space
Ultimate Surrender Meditation
Sharing

CREATIVE INTEGRATION

HEALTH AND EMPOWERMENT THROUGH ECOVITALITY

THE EARTH CARE INITIATIVE

PUBLICATIONS

FORWORD

A healthy mind is the key to the fulfillment and the enjoyment of life. In order to achieve this, you have to develop a dynamic balance between your awareness and the processes of the mind.

The greatest illness of today is an almost entire absence of awareness. That is why your processes - thinking, desiring, fearing, imagining, dreaming - have gone completely out of contro!. Out of control means: split off, living aseparate life. Processes which are out of control have lost their natural context, your awareness, your inner space. Without awareness your processes have all the power. Your life is lived by them, you run after them all the time. You are continuously caught up by them. In the very moment you are touched by a thought, you become one and identified with it. Then the thought moves you wherever it wants, using you to work itself out into the outer world. Once your processes are out of the regulating power of your awareness, they will start to destroy you.

Because of your identified mind, you lose your contact with any life sphere other than your thinking processes . It fails to be open to reality as it iso To you looking at a tree means to be involved with thinking about the tree; drinking tea means thinking about anything but drinking tea. Being in the grip of your mind, you are cut off from your subtle feelings, your intuitions, your heart, your repressed emotions, your inner strength, your inner freedom and guidance, your creativity, your body, nature as your extended body, real communion with your fellow human beings, compassion and frienddship and ofwhat lies deep inside you, your Higher Self, the Divine. Y ou are cut off from life, hence your existence being a very shallow one. A great healing process is needed.

The historical roots of your alienation can be traced far back. Major patriarchal religions like Christianity rejected women, the body, sex and the enjoyment of life. The same religion also propagated the supremacy of man over all other creatures, hence your alienation from your natural environment. Domination over partnership and exploitation over enjoyment have been the result.

Christianity also strongly opposed the idea and the practice of Self-Realisation, hence the millions ofpersecuted heretics: gnostics, cathars, waldensers, brothers and sisters of the free spirit, begines and begards and great spirits like Eckhart, Giordano Bruno and Madame Guyon. Christianity destroyed the God within. It committed suicide by killing its own Soul.

The next step in the historical development of the alienation of man was Descartes who introduced the supremacy of the inte11ectual process over a11 other areas of life, reducing and victimising the last free zone, your emotional life. The struggle against 'the irrational' resulted in the emotional repressed psyche of modern man.

Fina11y, the industrial and technological revolution deprived you of your social and cultural roots and relationships. Y ou became atomised. Dominated by a materialistic economy, your ego has become very powerful in pursuing self-interest. The inability 'to be' has become an extremely dangerous nucleus, destroying its matrix 'life' with which it does not experience arelationship anymore. It has become a cancerous growth, a vicious part destroying its environnment, the whole.

With lots of gQodwill, the development ofhuman conscioussness toward the birth of an ego could still be considered as a meaningful process resulting in the realisation of powerful manipuulative skills. However, with the onset and rapid ongoing destruction of our natural environment, this process has already exceeded its 'organic' limits. Co11ectively you have reached a decisive turning point in your evolution. Analysingyour position, your choice is only twofold, either restoring the wholeness of life or the destruction of the entire planet.

The key to your problem is not the outer situation. This situation only reflects your state of mind. Problems like wealth and poverty, exploitation and slavery, growth and the destruction of the environment, peace and human rights, they a11 are projections of your ignorant, alienated and unbalanced mind. They are a11 proccesses which have been growing out of context, because of your inability to control them. How can you control these enormous problems if you are not even able to control your own mind? That is why your mind is the real problem and therefore the solution has to be sought there.

You have manoeuvered yourself into a situation in which it is already too late and in which there is no time. This outer situation of 'having no time' is very meaningful. It reflects the necessity of a tota11y different answer to the problem. Any attitude wh ich is timeeoriented is doomed to faH. Along that line the kingdom will certainl y not come. You have to disidentify with your future-oriented mind. Because your mind is identified with 'tomorrow', today will never come. It keeps projecting into the future. You continue to live in the world of your projections instead of in reality, in the here-now. And how can you chafige reality if you do not live in it, if you do not have any contact with it. Therefore an inner shift is needed from your idenntification with yourself as a process, psychologically, historically, politically, or new-age like, towards the realization of the here-now, the state of awareness. Therefore any improvement in the quality of life, now and in the future, will depend on your ability to open yourselfto those areas oflife which have been cut off. Only by agreat jump of consciousness in which major groups ofpeople realise their wholeness of life in no time will we be able to turn the tide.

My meditations will help you in your awakening. They will help you to become more and more aware. Once freed and expanded, your awareness will embrace, pervade and integrate all those spheres of life wh ich were lost. You will put an end to your isolation and alienation by opening yourselfto your body, nature as your extended body, your different energy levels, your mind, your fellow human beings and society while surrendering to the Divine. Through your body you become part of nature, while through your awareness everything becomes part of you. Y ou become whole, radiating your awareness, love and empowerment around you benefiting many other people. I also want you to have responsibility and success in worldly affairs. Only then will your action become all-embracing.

That is why I would like you to pursue your career. I would very much like you to be successful emotionally, mentally and maateri all y . Only by going deep both into yourselfand the processes you create in the outside world, only then you have a chance of controlling them. Go into them with more and more awareness. Put all your effort into this.

In the next ten years the developments in our institutions and organisations will decide our common future. That is why I designed the Maitreya Mind Training Programme not only for the need of single individuals but also in order to heighten the awareness of national and multinational companies, international organisations and governments. This programme consists of the Maitreya Mind Meditations, Health and Empowerment through Ecovitality and The Earth Care Initiative.

I want our great organisations to take up their spiritual, cultural, social and ecological responsibility. I invite you to share our global aim 'To Restore the Wholeness of Life' for the next ten years. I want you to make it a top priority. In this decade of rapidly growing interdependencies, there will be no healthy organisation without healthy individuals and no healthy individuals without a healthy environment.

THE MAITREYA MIND TRAINING PROGRAMME

The five training exercises are the key to this programme. They all have the same structure, each consisting of five different parts. The first is footmassage, followed by catharsis, a bodycontact awareness exercise, meditation and sharing.

Footmassage

Footmassage is the first important part. Do it with great love and awareness and it will be a great meditation to you. First become aware of your own body, then move to your partner. By watching, feeling and doing you will develop great sensitivity. Y our massage becomes all-inclusive. Through mindful massage your heart centre will be easily opened. Massaging this way will be a great joy to both of you.

Catharsis

Catharsis is throwing out your repressed emotions of the past, while watching them simultaneously. By doing so, the doors 10 your inner silence will be more easily opened. Therefore a catharsis exercise is necessary before going into the meditation.

There is outgoing and ingoing catharsis. Sometimes your energy is more outgoing, sometimes more ingoing. In every individdual, this in and outgoing has a unique beat. For the introvert outgoing catharsis can be very difficult, while the opposite is also true. Ask an extrovert to sit silently for 25 minutes and he or she will go crazy. He or she will come to inner silence more easily through activity, through raising the energy level to such an extent that silence comes in by itself. Give yourself totall y to dancing - and suddenl y the inner watching is there. By throwing out your energy totally, your energy is thrown to your periphery emptying your eentre. By doing so suddenly, your eentre, your unmoving Self, your witnessing is there.
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Now the opposite is also true. If you are introverted, your awareness is spontaneously drawn within, ereating an inner spaee. Ingoing eatharsis means cleansing yourself by going within. There are eountless ways of freeing yourself of the anger, fear, distress and pain of the past. These ingoing exercises also have extraordinary healing power. Try them. They ean be used alternatively.

Bodycontact awareness

Jumping from thinking into feeling is a first step in spiritual growth. If you are open to bodily sensations, you forget about thinking. You become disconneeted to your thinking processes. It helps you to disidentify. You relax. Furthermore, bodycontact awareness and inner space are intimately conneeted. The more you relax and become receptive of bodily contact with its direct environment, the more your inner space will expand. Isn't that great, your body appears to be the closest ally of the spirit.

In bodycontaet awareness, feeling and watching have a positive interaction. Through open receptive watching the energy level of bodily sensations is raised. Alternatively, a high energy level stimulates the alertness of your witnessing. Therefore watching and feeling together brings you one step nearer to your inner Self.

Be particularly watchful of the more subtle levels of your energy. They help you in developing sensitivity. Through sensitivity you will be able to deepen your contact with existence. Your body, the fragrance of a flower, the touching of your lover, the song of the wind in the trees, watching the sunset, all will help you in developing your inner gentleness. Onee you have realized this, you are more open to become unified with the Divine.

I designed a bodycontact awareness exercise to every five meditations. They are relaxation and grounding, skeletal awareness, skin and aura-extension, chakra breathing and the inner space exercise.

Meditation

Restoring the Wholeness ofLife means opening your awareness to all the qualities of yourself and your environment. To realise this I designed the five Maitreya Mind Meditations.

To restore the unity with your inner observer:
Basic Awareness Meditation.

To restore the unity with your mind:
Master your mind Meditation

To restore the unity with your body and nature:
Tree of Life Meditation

To restore the unity with your human environment:
Best Friend Meditation.

To restore the unity with the Divine:
Ultimate Surrender Meditation.

Sharing

Sharing is the last part of every meditation. By sharing you unburden yourself of accumulated experience. So give as much as you can. Do it your own way. If you feel a deep silence inside, share it by just drinking tea. If you feel a great joy, express it. If you feel like talking, do it with great awareness. Some of the sharing is determined by the specific character of the meditation, others are not.

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH YOUR OBSERVER

One of the greatest problems of the modern mind is that you are never there. Y ou are not present, you· are not aware of yourself, the moment or the situation you are actually in. Sitting at the table and eating, you rarely experience yourself sitting at the table and eating. Walking through the park, you rarely are open to the experience of you walking through the park. Whatever you do, you are always somewhere else. You are in a trance, in the thinking process all the time. Look at the people around you in the street, they are absent. By being identified with your thoughts, you are cut off from the here and now, the experience of yourself, your inner observer, your body and the contact with its environment. You miss life.

To restore the contact with your environment, you might have tried concentration. Concentration is focusing your awareness on a particular object or process. It is becoming aware of one thing only by excluding everything else. Concentrating on this writing only, this writing becomes my only reality, everything else ceases to exist for me. I am aware of what I write, the content of my mind. I am not aware of mys elf sitting in the chair, the feeling of my hand holding the pen, the temperature in the room or the birds singing in the garden.

Stress and concentration are very similar. Both use tension and willpower which are the same type of energy. Therefore concentration is the accepted form of awareness in your busy lives. Y ou use your awareness as a tool to get things done. In order to feel satisfied you need rewards, success, power, money. Your life is a closed circle. You become narrow minded, obsessed with work, problems and solutions. Sooner or later you will become frustrated, empty and exhausted. You start missing something. You realise you have lost contact with yourself, your feelings and your heart, with reallife, the people around you and God. You become open to inner change.

Meditation is to relax, watch and feel. It is the opposite of concentration. By meditating you become open and receptive. It is a step by step process. First you restore the relationship with your body and its immediate surroundings. Walking alopg the street, watching and feelingthe contactofyour feet - grounding - is the basic experience. Looking into a window, you look while watching and feeling your feet. Through awareness, every sensory sensation is added to the perception of your aware body. Reality becomes your extended self. It is a first step in overcoming your initial alienation, the first step in all-inclusiveness. You become apart of reality while watching it simultaneously. I call it basic awareness.

It is a practice that will bring you greatjoy in daily life. Next step is that inner space is created by stepping back. Your awareness moves from the surface by going within. You start watching 'from behind' , therefore your mind appears to be in front of you. In the past you experienced your mind to be your 'within'. By changing your position of observing, your 'within' becomes your without. Your mind is like a theatre. Sitting on the first seat, the stage is in front ofyou, it is your 'outside world'. While the other people behind you are your processes, your 'within'. Moving to the last backseat position, everything appears to be in front of you, both people and stage become your outside world. Y ou not onl y watch the stage, but also the moods, expressions and behaviour of the people involved with what is happening. Y ou become aware of how the inner and outer worlds are interrelated. It is very paradoxical: once you start observing yourself by creating an inner distance, your processes become more intimate. Eventually they appear to exist in one space.

Remember, there aretwo ways ofthinking: thehorizontal way and the vertical way. In the horizontal way of thinking, there is a continuous' process. Utilitarian thoughts produce dreams, dreams produce memories and desires, desire stimulates willpower , willlpower triggers judgments, commentaries and interpretations. Connditioned by this process, the mind never looks to what is, but is habitually looking to what comes next. And because the thinking process is a continuous one, you always remain in the grip of it. It does not allow you to relax, it does not allow you to fall back on your centre. There are no gaps in between in wh ich you can rest. Therefore you go on having all kinds of experiences except one, that of yourself. So where are you? You are in the thinking process all the time. You are part of it. Through identification you are the dreaming, the object of desire in desiring, the slave of ambition and the depressed in your worries, or the absent reflecting mind. Thoughts determine who you are, you are the victim. Y ou are a cameleon, you change with the colour ofyour thoughts. There is no mirror, no master in the house. Y ou live in your periphery onl y, until you die.

In the vertical way of thinking, a thought comes up in your inner space. From the very beginning of its appearance you watch it with clarity. You watch your thinking. There is an inner distance between this: your watching and your thinking. Although the thought has entered the intimacy of your inner space, it does not affect your watching in any way. The latter' s position remains free. Sooner or later the thought returns to where it came from. It disappears into your inner space. It is a discontinuous process.

Your transparent awareness has all the qualities of clear insight, sensitivity and inclusiveness. It is supported by the power of discrimination and judgement of your mindful self. Any thought has to prove its value against the quality of this, your inner being. If the thought is meaningful to you, you will choose it, pick it up and work it out. If not, you will let it die. You are the master of mindful identification.

Footmassage

First relax. Take an easy position in which you watch and feel your own bodycontact with the floor. Both of you become open and receptive. Slowly this feeling will extend to the body ofyourpartner. Make contact by taking a foot in your hand. Do not do anything but feel and watch. Then, when your partner's foot has entered your inner space, start massaging . Y ou massage with no mind effort on your part. Y ou keep watehing and feeling your extended space and the doing will come by itself.

Ongoing catharsis - Vibration

Take an upright position, unlock your knees and relax. Your eyes are half closed, your awareness open to bodily contact with the ground. Do not do anything but relax. By relaxing you will let your weight sink into your feet. Watch this feeling of increasing weight. Be very receptive.After so me minutes, a very subtle energy will be feIt in your feet, a very gentle vibration. Be very open to this vibration.

Letting your weight sink into your feet and the process of energy moving upward are intimately connected to each other, they are part of the same process. Allow this energy to move up by helping it a little. Without losing contact with the original feeling you start vibrating your feet in a very subtle way. Let it come up gradually. Watch and fee!. Your awareness is following the vibration going up to the ankles, lower legs, knees, pelvis and the upper part of the body. Remember, when the energy goes up, you keep relaxing by letting your weight down. Your awareness never loses contact with the ground. Let your weight sink and your energy will go up all the time. Surrender to the energy passionately as it will become more and more intense. Keep watehing!

Through this exercise you will become aware of the vibrating pulse of life. It is a cleansing energy going up from your feet to your skull. You are part of this cleansing energy all the time. But it cannot unfold its full power, because you are not in tune with it. This vibration exercise will restore your resonance with the dormant life energy within. Its power is tremendous. Pay great attention to the lower part of your body.

Ingoing catharsis - Original Face

Everybody knows the Zen saying: 'show your face before you were born'. It is a beautiful saying, a koan. Express yourself as before you were expressed is similar to the saying. By this koan, as in any other, the master provoked his student to jump into his unexxpressed reality, into the beyond. To jump into the unknown you have to forget yourself completely, you have to disappear, to dissolve.

This koan lead to the idea for a healing technique. It is a technique very near to those used in reincarnation therapy. It is an old experience: all healing is a reverse time process, areverse chronology. First your actual wounds heal, then those of five years ago, then those of 10 years ago, 20 years aga and so on and so forth. Consequently, it will take some time before your very early wounds appear in the process, those of your early childhood and those origiinating from your birth process. Original Face is a healing technique by which you go back into the past gradually. Going back through all the stages of your life, you will jump into the beyond, your Origiinal Face.

Lie down and imagine yourselflying on your bed. Close your eyes and ground. Then imagine yourselflying on your bed five years ago. Visualize every detail of yourself and your environment. Y our pyjamas, the smell of the room, your inmates, events that happened at that time, visualize everything as your extended body. Watch your breathing while feeling. Next you move another five years back doing the same. The time you spend in a particular situation is indicated by your breathing. If your breathing changes, becoming deeper or faster, then you stay longer . Become very open to your breathing.

Beyond six years of age you move onl y one year at a time, until you arrive at your birth process. First you visualize and feel your coming out of your mother, the agony of the birth channel. Watch your breathing. Second is th.e starting of the woes. Until now you were very happy in the womb and suddenly the walls start moving towards you molding you downwards. Third stage is your descent into the birth channel. Your head becomes fixed in the opening. Remember the reverse chronology. Again body awareness and watching your breathing. Fourth is the oceanic feeling of floating freely in the inner space of the womb.

Next, you imagine yourself as a foetus becoming smaller and smaller. Stop several times to watch and feel. Remember as a foetus you do not breathe. It becomes very silent. Now move very slowly as you reach the primordial stage, you become a clot of cells. At last you are one cell, the egg.

Feel yourselfthe egg while watching it simultaneously. Take enough time to merge into this feeling. Imagine the egg to become smaller and smaller. Until it dissolves into nothingness. Then sudddenly jump! Jump into the beyond, into the unknown. Jump into that which you were before you were an egg.

In the process of reverse chronology, repressed emotions may co me up. Every time your breathing changes, something will be there. Just watch and feel your body and your breathing. Do not do anything. Just receive with great openness, with great sensitivity.

Bodycontact awareness - Grounding

Grounding is basic to all exercises in the Training Proogramme. Through grounding you relax. Your energies are being balanced. You restore the bodily contact with your environment. Remember, through the body you are never isolated, never alone. Bodycontact awareness restores your original state ofbeing. Y ou are interrelated. Grounding is also an exercise in receptivity. You watch and feel. This grounding exercise consists of three parts.

Lay down with your neck stretched. Your arms are alongside your body, your hand palms are open to the sky. Y our eyes are closed, your awareness is going within.

Start with your toes. Stretch them and then relax. Feel the contact with the floor. Then move to your feet, make them tense, then relax and feel. Next you do the same to your legs, your pelvis, your trunk, shoulders, hands, arms, neck and skull. Stretch, relax and feel.

The second part of the exercise consists of autosuggestion. It is particularly important if you cannot relax. First your attention moves to your right arm followed by an inner whispering: 'my right arm is very heavy'. Then feel. The same suggestion again, feel and again. Remember, you are not imposing the suggestion on your arm, but you create space for the experience to happen. You wait. Co mmpare the feeling in your right arm to your left. Move to your right leg. The same procedure again. Compare your right leg with your left leg. Then move to your left arm. Start whispering 'my left arm is very warm'. Feel and repeat it several times. Compare your left arm to your right arm. Repeat the same procedure to your left leg.

The third part ofthe exercise is equal to the first. Stretch, relax and feel. After doing this exercise regularly, it will be easier for you to watch and feel. Watching and feeling is what it is all about.

Basic Awareness Meditation

Sit on the floor in an upright position with your spine as straight as possible. Your legs in lotus, halflotus or prayer position, the latter supported by a cushion or small sofa. You mayaiso sit on achair.

Your eyes are half closed, looking at the backside of your eyelids. While keeping the upright position you relax. After so me minutes your legs will become heavy. The sensation of sitting on the floor will become more intense. This is very basic: become receptive to this feeling ofbeing grounded. Remember, it is not concentration. In concentration your awareness is moving towards the object; it is moving out. While in meditation the object - the sensations - are moving towards you, they move in. You stay where you are, you are the receiver. You keep watching your eyelids.

Once you have become grounded, you move your attention to the bottom of your spine. Become very open to the sensations in this area. Now something curious is going to happen. As you remain attentive to the grounding ofyour body by letting your weight down all the time, your spine starts erecting itself spontaneously. It starts correcting itselffrom within. A very subtle feeling is slowly moving upward. Y ou watch and follow it. Y ou allow it to go up and up until it reaches the uppermost part of your skulI. Y ou will find your neck becomes stretched.

After this procedure has been completed, you move to your breathing. Watch your breathing going in and out. Do not change anything, just feel the changing tension of your breathing muscles. As you relax more, the centre of your breathing will move downward by itself until it reaches the pelvic area. Now, whatever is going to happen, you remain relaxed and receptive to your body: grounding, spine and breathing.

By relaxing, grounding, feeling your spine and your breathhing, your inner ob server has been moving within spontaneously. The inner distance to your eyelids has become larger. A new quality has been added to it, it has evolved into inner space. You will observe all kinds of thoughts, images, memories, emotions and desires entering your inner space. As with the bodily feelings you remain open and receptive to your mind. While feeling and watching the body, you observe your inner space, your eyelids and the processes developing. The more you are open to the body, the more your inner space will expand!

Your observing is non-interfering, it is a 'choiceless awareeness'. You do not identify yourselfwith any ofyour thoughts. You do not approve or disapprove. It is a training in non-involvement, in non-identification. This is the paradox: By creating an inner distance to your processes, they become more intimate. By creating inner space, they become part of it. And remember, your body is helping you all the time. By watching and feeling it you remain disidentified with your mind. The body is your great help to become free.

By creating inner space, you allow your processes to exist. Through non-involvement you allow them to flow freely. In your unaware state your mind is accumulating its content. Therefore you go crazy sooner or later, while your origiml mind is a floating mind. In a floating mind you control by letting go.

By letting go space is created all the time for new thoughts to enter. By and by your hidden thoughts and insights, creativity, intuitions and repressed emotions will be freed, they will come to the surfaceand you will becomeawareofthem. Greatself-insightarises. The more you let go, the more your self-knowledge will grow. Your mind appears to be your inner space in which processes enter, stay for a while and then disappear. The inner balance between your awareness and its processes will become clear to you. Without this inner space, processes accumulate creating inner tension and stress.

A special state is created while watching the edge ofyour half open eyelids. Relax and stare to the backside ofthis line. By moving this line a fraction of a millimeter up, you will become identified with the outside world; by moving them just a little down, you will become identified with your inside world. By keeping them in between - searching for the right position which is a very subtle one (I) - you are not identifying with either. Your reality appears to be 'in between'. By doing this your awareness suddenly jumps into a totally new reality. Suddenly your inner and outer space become one. By becoming one space your original mind, your witness is born.

In this very moment your body ceases to be an entity of its own. Bodily perception dissolves into space. Your body has been 'dropped off. Previously you might have experienced difficulty in sitting for 25 minutes continuously. When pain arises, try to relax more in the grounding. By doing so, you allow the pain to enter your inner space. Watchl By allowing your pain to enter your awareness, the latter expands. Great inner jumps can be made this way. Therefore allow any distress to enter your space. Itching, mosquitos biting you, noise, people entering the room, they are all great opportunities for improving your inner quality. Do not do anything, just be open.

Walking

Take a relaxed position while standing, your eyes are half open. Unlock your knees and turn your pelvis a little to forward position. Relax. After a short time you will feel the weight of the body increase in your feet. Watch and fee!. Become receptive. Start balancing your feet by alternatively bringing your weight a little to your right and left foot, to the front and backside and then to the middle. By going up you balance your legs, knees, pelvis, spine and head. Just watch, feel and movea littlein all directions until you have found your most relaxed position. Watch your breathing.

Fold your hands and press them against the middle of your breast. It will help you to become centred as you feel them all the time. Then you start walking. Bring your weight into your left foot. By doing so your right foot will start moving. Place your right foot one foot ahead. While touching the ground you bring your weight from your left foot to your right. At the same time your left foot starts moving. You place it one foot ahead and so on. A few important things. First you watch and feel your steps continuously. You feel the touching ofthe floor all the time. Secondly you walk very slowly. By walking very slowly your awareness will grow. It will expand, becoming very alert. Thirdly you walk at an equal pace. Walking at an equal pace stops you thinking about your walking.

Up until now you have been balancing your foot as a whole. Try also: watching and feeling your heels, your toes, the space between your steps, watching and feeling your lower legs by watching and feeling the skin in contact with your clothes, feeling your knees, your pelvis and your whole body moving respectively. Watching and feeling your body this way can be a great experience. Your walking becomes effortless. Suddenly your body might become transcended arousing great ecstacy.

Sharing

Basic awareness means extending this awareness into your daily life. First simple standing, walking, sitting and lying down become the focus of your no-effort. While standing you watch and feel yourself standing, while walking, sitting and lying down you do the same. Grounding becomes your basic practice in whatever you do. In order to achieve this you move gradually. First try the simple actions only .

You do this until grounding has become your inherent nature, until it has become eating and drinking to you. In this state you cannot lie down without feeling your spine or walk without feeling your feet. After having accomplished this, (it may take several months!) you try the same while doing more complex actions. Watch and feel your feet while washing the dishes, while brushing your teeth, while working in the garden, while jogging, while dancing. Again, try it until you mastered it. Then move again. This time to the more complex mind activities.

Watch and feel your body's backside while sitting in achair reading the paper, watching TV or writing a letter. And the most difficult of all: remain mindful to your body while communicating with a fellow human being while listening, talking or attending a meeting. Once you master this, your whole life becomes a meditaation. Then you will live life to the optimum. Joy and fulfilment of life co me from within. Y ou become a real person, radiating awareness, love and empowerment around you.

Finally, you might organise a 'day of mindfulness' for yourself regularly. This great idea was introduced to me by a good friend Thich NhatHanh. He suggests that you use a day to practice basic awareness. On this day, preferably one day every week, you slow down your activities. You refrain from all work, social contact and the contact with the media. Y ou eat simple meals, you might even fast one way or another, you take a relaxing bath and you walk in nature. By doing so every week, you will speed up practising the unity of relaxing, watching, feeling and doing. Share these experiiences of your daily life after every Basic Awareness Meditation. They will enrich you. Exchange new views and ideas. Encourage each other.

SUMMARY

Footmassage
Grounding * no effort intuitive * 15 mins
Ingoing catharsis
Original Face * Visualize Reverse time 15 mins
OR
Outgoing catharsis
Vibration *  Cleansing life energy * Weight down *  energy up 15 mins
followed by
Bodycontact awareness
Grounding * Exercise in receptivity watch and feel * 3 parts - 15 mins
Basic A wareness Meditation
Sitting and Walking * Relaxing, grounding, feeling spine and breathing * choiceless awareness * floating mind/let go - witnessing 25 + 10 mins
Sharing
Basic awareness in daily life * 4 stages - day of mindfulness * 15 mins or longer

TO RESTORE UNITY WITH YOUR MIND

There are two steps you have to take to transcend the mind. First you have to step back, withdrawing yourself from your inner chaos. You open yourself to your inner reality, your awareness. Through awareness you disconnect from the mind in order to become the observer, the witness. It is the way of non-identification, acceptance, acknowledgement and letting go. By witnessing and letting go, you restore the floating quality ofyour mind. You do not interfere. The self is simply as it appears to you, undifferentiated, unstructured. Through basic awareness a great insight arises. Your mi nd consists of witnessing and processing (watching and letting go), of inner space and its content. However, just observing is not enough to master your mind.

There are two fundamental aspects of the mind: receptivity and action, the female and the male. Through receptivity the mind is opened to itself, to its inner peace and clarity. By opening up you move from your periphery to your centre. This centre is astate, the state of awareness. In this being there is no urge to do anything whatsoever, you simply enjoy being yourself. You are returning to the source, living in and through the source. In this inner void energy is being raised. This energy moves from your centre to the periphery , giving rise to action. This energy is your vital energy. It is supporting all your body-mind processes. All functional activity is nourished by it. It is this functional aspect of the mind which has to be mastered here.

In mastering your mind, your focus of interest moves from your awareness to its content, the self. In the beginning this self appears to be hopeless, disorderly confusion, a mess of all kinds of thoughts, emotions, commentaries, memories, desires, interpretaations, images, judgements and dreams. It is through practice of careful observation that you will discover your self to consist of at least three main faculties:

First there is the mindful self. Through this energy-process you reflect, comment, judge, interpret, value and evaluate your experience. This is the mind aspect of your mindful self. It is the learning faculty, your intellect. Through the intellect you learn from your experience. You reflect on it. Reflection creates a certain inner distance to your self - you think about your experiences, you can 'look' at them. But unlike the real observer - your awareness - your 'Iooking' remains part of the thinking process, the content of the mind, the self. The mindful self also appears to be the centre of the outgoing heart -energy. Through the heart aspect of your mindful self you feel care and love. Remember, there is the unconditioned,limittless quality of love, which is your awareness, your Higher Self, the Divine, and the conditioned one which is the mindful self. With the mindful self you love through identification. Through the mindful self love is translated into (conditioned) action. When you say: "I really care about you", you identify with certain aspects of this person, a situation wh ich is created by your conditioning. In fact, you need this person to feel happy yourself. It has to compensate the lack of inner realization, the lack of real love within. Y our own needs and vulnerability are at stake; therefore your love is never free and unconditional. However much 'positive energy' you put into it, your mind always keeps calculating, waging the pros and cons. And there is nothing wrong with it! It is your normal stateofbeing. It gives you the opportunity of experiencing the taste of love. Once you experiienced the taste, you will start longing for the real thing, you will start realizing love itself. It is also the centre of choice, action and commitment, of mindful identification. This is the executive funcction of your psyche. Here your awareness is the decisive factor between horizontal and vertical thinking as I explained before. Pervaded by the quality of awareness, you will reflect with clarity, you will love unconditionally and you will choose out of freedom. Through awareness clarity, love and freedom of choice become one, the unity of mind, heart and action. They are different functions of the same process, your mindful self.

Further research and differentiation will lead to the discovery ofyourself. It is the pool of all experiences. It is a storehouse: all your thinking, dreaming, all your emotions and experiences are stored here. These experiences are differentiated in various ways. First they appear to be energy patterns, sub-personalities, voices or commplexes. You are not one person, but a manifold one. Think of yourself caring for your child. In this situation you are the caring mother. Everything in you, every cell is part ofthis caring emotion. Y our whole attitude is dissolved into it. But then, onl y three minutes later you have a fight with your husband. Your vulnerable child feels very much hurt by hirn. So you cry and feel very much frustrated. In a very short time you make an inner shift toward a totally different energy pattern. Again your whole system, your whole body-mind, your appearance is affected by it. You are a totally different person. Now, this goes on and on. You appear to be the ambitious manager, the cynic, the lover, the depressed, the lazy one, the vulnerable child, the sportsmah, the jealous one and so forth and so on. It is the potentially limitless spectrum of self. This spectrum is a storehouse for further growth, creativity, realization and happiness in the world.

Secondly, you only experience those parts of yourselfyou are identified with. This is the identified self. Through the identified self you become conscious of a particular part, a thought, an emotion. Identification with one aspect of yourself is always through excluusion of everything else. And this changes every moment! Every moment another part is conscious, while the previous one has become unconscious. Everything changes continuously in an endless play of mind. However, to you this playground appears to be quite smalI. You tend to identify yourself with some aspects of self only. Through the pain and pleasure principle, you only store those experiences which suit your conscious or unconscious purposes best. This accumulation and reshaping of past experiences is called your personality, your self-image, your self-definition. If asked 'who are you, please tell about yourself , you will give information about this part only. Your actual self appears to be restricted, totally dependent on your self-definition. You appear to be an arbitrary collection of experiences.

Some aspects, however, will not become conscious at all. This part is called your disowned self. It consists of all those processes which were repressed in the past.The victims of cultural, religious, social and educational conditioning are stored here. Repressed pain, anger and fear are the main ingredients .

Summarizing: Your self appears to consist of your mindful self, your identified self and your disowned self. At this point you will recognize many problems ofyour unaware state with respect to the mindful self. Your efforts to integrate the mind, heart and action aspects of your mindful self were a constant failure. Thinking, feeling and doing all deviated in different directions. There was not any consistency at all.

Secondly, with respect to the identified self: you realize your identified self to be a very shallow existence. Y ou used to restriet your self exclusively to the known, the endless repetition ofthe same kind of experiences. You played safely and securely by excluding the unknown aspects of yourself. How boring! Now you realize your fear of the unknown and the process of eXclusion to be the foundation ofyour actual existence. "I am me by excluding everything else that is not me". This realization can be a beginning, it can be an inner click, the beginning of your awakening.

Thirdly, there is the realization of the presence of your shadow. The shadow is your disowned self, that part of yourself that is not integrated. It is not integrated because this particular energy pattern has not been accepted in your environment since you were a child. As you were totally dependent on your environment, nonnacceptance by your parents, relatives and teachers made it impossible to process and integrate parts ofyourself. You started rejecting pain, anger, fear, love and lust for life. As repressed emotions they started a life of their own, beyond your control. They became unconscious. Actually, you do not know by experience about these emotions, their power, their origination or the mechanism of repression. Because you condemned these your energy patterns in the past, you will autoomatically condemn them when seeing them in other people. It is one way to discover your unconscious shadow. Feeling a strong dislike of some aspects of somebody' s ' character' , you can be sure to have projected one of your own disowned qualities.

Development is the next step in your investigation of the mind. Once you know the structure, you start to investigate its dynamics. Once you know how the different aspects of your self are interreelated, you can begin exploring them. You identify yourself alternaatively with either your awareness, your mindful self, your identified
or your disowned self. Mindful identification is the key to this differentiation and development. Mindful identification means that in order to know your qualities better, you start becoming them. By becoming the different energy patterns, 'voices' or sub-personalities of the self, they start telling their stories. By giving them space, attention, love and encouragement, they will show their hidden faces. It is a process of Inner Dialogue. You will be surprised. Countless new aspects, qualities, facts, insights, feelings and emotions will be revealed to you. Your self appears to be the richest source of information, experience, possibilities and creativity you have ever dreamt of. Much is owed to Voice Dialogue, the unique approach ofHal Stone and Sidra Winkelman. About our differences, see under 'sharing'.

Your self or psyche is a unity of complementary forces, of yin and yang, light and dark, strong and weak, minus and plus. These forces balance each other. Their number is countless as they correspond to the totality of your functions, vital psychological and etherical. They constitute your potential. The vital archetypical functions are related to the deeper layers of your psyche, while the psychological and etherical ones are more on the surface. The vital forces are very strong, while the others are more subtle. Now, at the moment of your birth you start to identify with many of these functions, dependent on constitution and environment. There is a strong need for survival, therefore you identify with those energies which suit your purpose best. Thus you are developing the ego/the protector/the controller followed by the pleaser, the dreamer, the rational self, the playful child, the adventurer, the cunning young child, the lier and so on and so forth. These patterns are being 'crystallized' by the process of identification. Through identification the 'blank' primordial energy will be transformed into structure and dynamism. These patterns are also called: complexes, voices, partial selves, sub-personalities or mindsets.

Among the countless sub-personalities there is one which holds a special position. It is the ego/protector/controller. Survival is the strongest need to a newborn baby. You are totally dependent and vulnerable, therefore your first and main concern is for security, protection and control. Y ou have to survive as aseparate entity. Hence your concern for a faculty that will care for you as aseparate self. Thus the ego is born. The ego is a dynamic force, a tendency. It translates any experience into the interest of your separate existence. It is the bird that builds the nest of your self-definition, your personality. The ego protects your vulnerability. It has to be honoured as long as you need it. Once awakened, you will gradually disidentify with it. Then its grip can be loosened. Then you will break down the dominant position it has been holding for such a long time. Awareness will replace it and transcend your need for security and through the mindful self you will develop freedom of choice between 'conflicting' tendencies. And in case you need the protector / controller, you can use it any time you want.

One way to und erstand the presence of your countless mindsets is to consider their origin. It starts with your birth process and the first weeks or months of your life. This period is entirely dominated by your need for survival. Therefore, mindsets formed in this period might make the strongest impression on your psyche. Energy patterns, like fear of the unknown, fear for sudden disasters and death, the conviction that life is a matter of survival and struggle and the fear of deprivation, all belong to this first vital period of your life. Identification with one or more of these mindsets may control your entire future life. Many of them are reall y too strong to process. They go underground into the subconscious as the 'hardware' of your disowned self.

The second period of your life is dominated by the adaptation to your family environment and the forces of growing up. Many of your mindsets are being formed either by identification or resistence to parental regulations, prohibitions, emotional instability and behaviour. It is here that the loyal, the docile, the responsible, the perfectionist, the inner parent, the altruist, the idealist and the adventurer on the one hand and the dreamer, the escapist, the warrior, the saboteur, the hypochondriac, the killer, the lier and selffpity and so on and so forth are being born. Remember, these forces all have complementary opposites. Identification with one pole always means an unconscious or a disowned self on the other side of the spectrum. It is what 1 call the process of excIusion.

Last but not least, there is the period of further social and intellectual conditioning. Identification with the demands of society results in the development and crystallizing of your pusher, inner critic and rational self, counterbalanced by the suppressed forces of aggression, love, sex and creativity. It is through extreme identifiication with your intellect that the process of alienation is being completed. You therefore lose contact with your body and natural environment, with your vital forces and emotions and with your Higher Self. Once suppressed, they become your destructive and demonic partial selves. Once disowned, they start destroying you, humanity and the natural environment.

HaI Stone and Sandra Winkelman stress the voices to be opposites on a power/vulnerability continuum. It can be conceptuualised as a lemniscate. They call the power pole the parental side and the vulnerable pole the child side. In all ofus, they say, our energies are constantly moving between these two sides. Its quality is archetypical. It means that it belongs to the deeper layers of our energy systems, therefore inevitably in a man the energy flows between the father and the son, while in a woman the flow runs between the mother and the daughter. The father and mother poles represent power and control, while son and daughter poles represent your vulnerability. In all important relationships the parent within you bonds with the child in the other person and vice versa. In your unaware state your bonding is archetypical and thus unconscious. This bonding is dominating your relationship. Your mindful self lacks freedom of choice. It is the servant of one of your subbpersonalities, the dominant father or YOUl' good mother rather than being the principal function of your awareness. By becoming aware, your own inner parent -child axis becomes more transparent, thereefore you become conscious of the parent-child relations in your partnership . Moreover, the individuals involved manage to meet each other also at the levels of their mindful selves and their awareness, thus loosening their archetypical ties.

In the "Master your mind Meditation", unconscious and/or disowned selves are being freed by the process of mindful identifiication. It is a process by which you give space to the energy you want to explore while at the same time identifying with it. For example, if a thought comes up like: 'Yesterday afternoon I feit very depressed', you, your mindful self, will invite this voice to tell its story. You address yourself to this voice as if it were aseparate person. Ifthe voice agrees, it mightstart tal king like: 'Yes, I feltvery sad yesterday afternoon. It was after Mark 1) met his boss' and so on. You identify with the voice by becoming hirn or her. Your whole body-mind system will change its colour by becoming a particular voice. You will be surprised, you not only HA VE different subbpersonalities, but you ARE them. Before, the different voices were a chaotic confusion, now you manage to treat them as separate energy patterns. Giving every voice its full space, they will start revealing their entire 'soul' to you. Unraveling the countless different voices is the first goal in the "Master your mind Meditation". Y ou develop a special alertness to other voices which might interfere. They will have their opportunity at another time.

Exploring and developing the selves is one part of the process of Inner Dialogue. In this process you develop a new dynamism between the different faculties of your mind. You identify with a particular voice and then alternate by identifying with your mindful self. Your mindful self reflects on the voice "Yes, I recognize this voice as belonging to me", embraces it emphatically, is alert to other voices interfering and decides whether or not to continue with this particular voice. Both identifications are pervaded by the clarity of your awareness. Depending on your progress in the "Basic Awareeness Meditation", you will observe your thoughts simultaneously or alternatively. Only very aware and experienced minds manage to witness and identify at the same time.

In tlie Inner Dialogue you will switch easily from one faculty of your mind to the other. You move from mindful identification with a particular voice to the reflecting, embracing and actualizing of your mindful self. Through awareness, your mindful self learns not to identify with a few of the voices only, and by doing so it becomes the function of enlightened activity. Awareness will expand becomming all-inclusive; your mindful selfwill empower itself and your life will be enriched by an ever broadening spectrum of experiences. Your level of transparency will be raised. Through ongoing integraation a healing process will be initiated.

Your human and social environment reflects your own state of mind. Unraveling your mind means bringing clarity to your relationships. Putting an end to the domination of your inner selves means ending the power of archetypical bondage, hence transcendding your relationships into creative ones. You might become a facilitator guiding your fellow human beings to inner emancipation.

The dynamics of social organisation will be more clear to you. You will be able to see the interrelation of things and events more easily. You will be able to watch the chain of social or organisational processes from a witnessing position. Y ou will watch them with great clarity while at the same time being part of them. Therefore your vision of your organisation will be a transcending one. Y ou will develop a new sense of direction for your company and a new sensitivity to global, ecological, cultural and social priorities. You will want your organisation to become transformed and integrated in a meaningful context. Helping it survive this way means helping the earth survive.

Footmassage

Today try observing, identifying and reflecting. Start by watching and feeling your own body and extend this feeling to your partner. Massage intuitively. This is the observing part.

Then you forget about watching and get lost in the feeling of touching while massaging. You forget yourself and your body completely. This is the identifying part.

After some minutes you start reflecting, asking yourself 'what shall I do next' and 'how shall I do it'. Then you finish by massaging some pressure points. Go back to watching and feeling.

Outgoing catharsis - Babylalia

Lay down on your back, your feet drawn to your buttocks. Close your eyes and ground. Start making baby noises like rrrrrrr. Start slowly and gently and then increase. Or bIblbIblbIbI, your tongue between your teeth while your lips are bubbling. Watch and feel. Go into it as totally as possible. Let there be no gaps. Allow anything to happen. If saliva is coming out of your mouth, do not suppress it. Make your noises as loud as possible. Allow your body to move with the sounds. Try shaking your pelvis. Sexual feelings might come up. After some time the brbrbrbr might change into any other sound like crying, shouting, screaming, mumbling or hummming. Your body might move, kick, jump or become chaotic. Allow anything to happen. Keep grounding and watching. Go consciously crazy.

Ingoing catharsis - Embracing

Embracing is humanity's oldest healing 'method'. It is so natural, that no therapist invented it as a technique. When children are in distress, parents let them talk first and then they embrace, hug. Friends, relatives and lovers do the same. And in time of disaster everybody does it. It is a deep insight when you und erstand that your real distress is the result of exclusion, non-acceptance, denial and rejection. Whatever anguish you might have experienced, if there is somebody who will listen and will embrace you, your emotional wound will heal more easily.

Secondly, 'what you need you give'. Remember, when love, warmth, attention and caring become an obsession to you, when you feel a constant shortage, then it is not you who feels this need but your inner child. Rather than identifying yourself with the needs of your inner child and trying to get these needs satisfied through somebody, you recognize this need as coming from your inner child. You disidentify. And now the paradox. You, the one who tried to get love, warmth and attention so desperately just a short time ago, will start giving these qualities to your inner child. You will be surprised. You, the one who feIt this lack so painfully, begins overflowing with it. You appear to be an inexhaustible source of love. And now the exercise.

Stage 1

As you feel pain, fear, anger or distress, you visualize your inner child feeling this. 1magine this child to be yourself at an age of zero to six years old. It appears to be somewhere inside you, preferably between your second and third chakra. Watch and fee!. First you allow it to express its emotions to you. 'I feel so alone', 'nobody cares about me' or whatever.

Then let the child stop talking, start feeling. Through feeling and imagining you start nurturing, caring, loving, hugging and embracing your inner child. You take it "into your arms" feeling the child 'physically'. Do not ask anything, do not ask 'what is the matter'. Do not worry about the 'cause' of things. 1nsight always comes spontaneously after the separated selfhas entered your inner space. Just love, embrace, protect and feel.

Do this exercise any time you feel pain, distress, anguish or fear. You will be surprised. As the process of acceptance and embracing proceeds, your inner child becomes quieter. Being in tune with your inner child gives tremendous peace and joy.

Stage 2

Imagine yourself to be pregnant of yourself. Visualize your inner child - you - to be in your belly, in your womb. Feel and visualize your child in all circumstances continuousl y for one month, 24 hours a day. During one month your child is the most important thing in the world. Through watching, feeling and visualisation a very intimate contact will grow between you and your child. You become more and more in tune with it. Imagine its shape, feel it floating and its movements, feel your own body changed, anything that helps you to make this experience more real. Feel your weight to have moved to your beIly. Mothers do this 'exercise' für nine months uninterruptedly. For you one month must be possible.

Stage 3

Carry your newborn - you - in a babysack on your body für one month continuously. Feel your child on your skin on the fronttside of your body. Make the feeling as real as possible. Visualize your child. If an object can help you, use it. A pillow for example. Start nurturing your child with your love and admiration. Give it anything it needs. If it wants to express its distress, be totaIly open and accepting. Let it talk, but return to the feeling aIl the time. Give it everything you have. Let your child feel your love through kind tal king and quieting, caressing and holding it tight, through your bodily contact and warmth.

Many traditional as weIl as modern parents carry their children this way a long time after birth. The result is a great basic trust in later life. As an exercise it can help tremendously in healing all kinds of wounds you have carried with you for too long a time already. Try it.

Bodycontact awareness - Bone awareness

This exercise confronts you with three aspects of yourself. First going into the very core of your body, your deepest within, your bones, confronts you with your fear for darkness and death.

Secondly, your bones are your bodily framework. By becoming aware of them, you will be more sensitive to itsinner structure. Therefore your perception of space in the outer world will be more real.

Thirdly, 'going into your bones' is a Dutch expression. It means to go where your deepest and most repressed emotions are stored. By becoming aware of the space between periost and bone, these emotions will be freed, creating a deep sense of inner peace within you.

You lie down with your neck stretched. Ground and relax. Your arms are alongside your body, your handpalms open to the sky. Start visualizing and feeling your bones in your right foot. Studying a medical atlas in advance might help. Then you creep into the space between periost and bones. Remember, the periost is very sensitive. Watch and feel. Start feeling and creeping up to your lower leg. Be very open, allow any sensation to enter your awareness. Proceed very slowly. By watching, feeling and creeping you will create space, loosening the tightness of the periost. Go up until you reach your pelvis.

Feel the difference between your right and left leg. Then start doing the same in your left leg. After completion, feel both legs together. You might extend this exercise to your pelvis, spine shoulders, arms, neck and skull.

Master your mind Meditation

First you start grounding in layers. It is my favourite grounding. Through this grounding you will feel relaxed, alert and powerful. Sitting in an upright position you start feeling the underside of your legs in contact with the floor. Be very open and receptive to all the sensations aroused. Proceed very slowly with great awareness. After its first completion you move to the underside of your arms. Your arms rest on your lap in the traditional way, hands folded into each other, left in right. You start feeling the underside of both your arms until this part becomes heavy. Conseequently the top side of your arms will feel light, fresh and transparent. Next move is for women only. Start feeling the underside of your breasts. Let your attention move very gentl y, until the energy separates itself into a heavy underside and a light upperside. After that you move to your tongue. Feel the underside of your tongue until your tongue relaxes itself. Last but not least, you move to your eyes. Move into the underside of your eyeballs. By feeling it the underside will become heavy. It relaxes.

Now you start the entire procedure again. Feet, legs, arms, breasts, tongue and eyes. And again and again, until your body has balanced itself. It will do that in accordance with both the law of gravity and the centrifugal forces of the earth. Your body adjusts itself spontaneousl y to these forces; therefore the way you sit should be optimal. You should sit with great awareness.

You observe a thought coming up, for example 'I probably might not live long'. Immediatel y your mindful self reflects on it and asks the thought to talk. You talk to the thought as one would to a real person, as part of a voice which it is. When the voice agrees, he starts talking:

"Yes, it is about Mark. I am al ways very worried about hirn. I really care for hirn you know. I am always concerned about his welllbeing. Ifthere is the slightest feeling of not being well, I immediatel y ask myselfifthere is something wrong. Worrying is what Ido all the time. I am very afraid that Mark will become ill. I think of it all the time. Now I feel thathe is seriously ill and will die soon. It is terrible. I do not know what to do. I feel so sorry for hirn. But I cannot help feeling these things. I know Mark feels very upset and worried about my thoughts. I know it makes hirn unhappy and depressed. But I feel it is true. I have known it already for so me time. Therefore Mark does not like me. He ignores my feelings all the time. "

After this the mindful self asks the hypochondrie voice: 'You do not like to be ignored, do you?' Hypochondriac: "No, of course not. Because if he would become more aware of my message, he might start doing something about it. Now he is playing the victim, you know. However much he is plagued by my constant interferrences, he remains totall y passive. I think he is very afraid of the truth. He might save his life by recognising and acknowledging me, by taking me seriously."

Then the mindful self observes a slightly different but very intriguing energy behind the hypochondriac. Because the mindful self likes to hear this voice, he asks: I feel there is a second voice coming up. May I have a talk with you?" The voice agrees and starts talking: "Of course, it is about Mark. I agree he will probably not live long. In fact his end is very near. He has cancer you see. But it is very strange. I have told hirn so many tim es, but he simpl y ignores me. He will not listen. I told hirn to prepare for the end. By organizing a proper farewell party for example. But he will not. That is why I makehim feel scared. I will not restuntil heunderstands and accepts. He is already very afraid of me; that is why he stays numb. But I will not give up, no never. He has to listen to me. I shall certainly get hirn, he cannot escape. His death is inevitable. I shall chase hirn until he surrenders. I shall kill hirn."

After the voice has told his story, you stop and again identify with your mindful self and start reflecting. For example: "Yes, I heard the story very clearly. I am shocked. Of course, I knew about my depressive thinking, about possible cancer and an early death. But this is different. Here is somebody who wants to kill me. To experience such a powerful and murderous killer within myself, it is terrible. I know he will not rest until he has destroyed me. I am trembling. It is unbelievable."

After a small pause in which Mark tri es to relax by watching and feeling his body, his awareness grows. His mindful self realises the necessity of embracing this voice consciousl y. Thus he visualizes hirnself opening his arms for the killer and embraces hirn. He watches and feels this energy 'physically'. After all, the killer is part ofhimself, the result of rejection in the past. Mark realizes he is not scared. In fact, his heart feels very open allowing the killer to enter his inner space. Soon afterwards Mark feels very strong. For the first time he feels completely at ease, not distnrbed at all by the idea of being very ill. He starts smiling. It is a great relief.

Encouraged by its progress, the mindful self asks the voice if there is anything more to say. He invites the voice to complete its story. SuddenI y the unbelievable happens. An insight jumps into his mind. "I shall kill hirn!" The 'hirn' is not Mark buthis brother Peter! A waterfall of memories flows into Mark's consciousness. He remembers hirnself as a two year old child. At that time his brother was born. As his brother was very weak, he got all the love and attention Mark received before. In a very short time Mark feIt terribly rejected and very alone.

Immediatel y after that he started hating his little brother , as he was the cause of Mark's misery. His hatred was total. "I shall get hirn, I shall kill hirn. I will not rest until this creature is destroyed and I will never give up" .

For the second time Mark was shocked. The reality of the 'killer within' was a fact that could not be denied. He asked the voice about his real nature. The voice answered: "Congratulations. You discovered my real nature. I was there as your brother was born. I feIt so sorry for you, as you were so sad all the time. Nobody understood you, nobody helped you. You feIt so rejected. So I decided to help you. In fact I suggested to you that you kill your little brother , because your little brother was the cause of your misery. "

At this point Mark disidentifies with the voice and returns to his mindful self. His mindful self has been facilitating the entire process by creating space and a good atmosphere in which the voice feIt at ease. Remember, each voice has a particular energy, mood, content, story and atmosphere. While facilitating, the mindful self prevents other voices from interfering.

Now the mindful self reflects: "Yes, I can remember this now. At that time my hatred was limitless. Thinking of it at this very moment, I feel the same intensity coming up. This voice can still kill my brother . It could do terrible things to hirn. It is terrible to feel this hatred, this killer still within me, so very much alive. At that time I must have been very afraid to show my hatred . If my parents had discovered it, they would have rejected me totally. I could not have borne this. Therefore I surpressed it and my killer went underrground. Hs energy was not able to get out anymore, so I started to become afraid of it, because its energy started to direct itself inward to myself. Thus the process of self-destruction began.

Then Mark embraces his killer for the second time. After wh ich he feIt much better. What happened? Once you acknowledge, experience and integrate the part which was disowned and thus split off, the negative or vicious character of the voice disappears. This is the way oftransforming negativity into positivity. Not by simply replacing negative thinking by the positive. No, that is just another way of repressing yourself. The only way of transformation is through awareness. Okay, if there is negativity, just watch, feel, love and embrace it, let it become part of you again. You will be surprised. The lier, the deceiver, the fearful child, the irritated and aggressive one, the cynic, the hypochondriac, the killer and all the others lose their separate existence and therefore the power to distract you, to dominate you. Their separate existence was the real problem! Once integrated, their transformed energies become available, serving the whole.

Thus Mark's mindful self realizes the necessity of doing something about it. He has to accept his killer fully, become more and more aware, express its energy through outgoing catharsis followed by integration into his conscious self. Once integrated, his killer energy might benefit hirn a great deal. It certainly will support all kinds of creative and positive outgoing activities. Therefore he decides to practise the Master your mind Meditation regularly, to go into Voice Dialogue and to put emphasis on dail y catharsis exercises. Last but not least, he promises hirnself to actualize his experience, to talk with his brother as soon as enough clarity, inner peace and courage has been established in his soul. He finishes his meditation by grounding, feeling and watching.

Summary

The Master your mind Meditation is an Inner Dialogue fully integrated into meditative practice. It consists of the following stages: Establishing genuine awareness; Recognizing a thought by the mindful self (Remember, almost every thought is part of a complex, a pattern; it is the top of an iceberg.); Identifying with the thought; The voice teIls its story; Frequent returning to watching and feeling the body; Identifying with your mindful self; Reflecting, embracing and actualizing; Repeating the procedure; Sitting in awareness.

Sharing

Share your experience of the "Master your mind Meditation" (MmM). Discuss its dynamics. I encourage you to study Voice Dialogue by reading HaI Stone's and Sidra Winkelman's book 'Embracing Our Selves'. If you feel the need to do so, join Voice Dialogue sessions. Y our inner facilitating will be certainl y improved by it. There are so me conceptual and practical differences which have to be mentioned here.

The MmMeditation is a self-help technique, while Voice Dialogue is guided by a facilitator. In MmM the function of the facilitator is being executed by the mindful self.

In MmM awareness is a quality of great clarity, insight and inclusiveness through on-going bodycontact and meditation. In Voice Dialogue it is a moment of silence and observing, a shallow shadow of the real awareness.

In MmM the position and function of the ego is being obtained by awareness and witnessing, hence through real insight. The ego appears to be the protector/controller, thus being a sub-personality.

In Voice Dialogue the ego is a psychological concept and hyypothesis, thus arbitrary. What is called the aware ego is the mindful self in MmM.

In MmM the mindful self is an energy pattern in which relecting, embracing and actualizing are equal aspects of the same function. In Voice Dialogue the aware ego contains reflections and a little actualizing. Ironically, HaI Stone's and Sidra Winkelman's 'Embracing Our Selves' has no actual embracing.

Last but not least: share the outcome ofyour meditations, your actualizing. Actualizing reflects your real progress.

SUMMARY

Footmassage
Observing, identifying and reflecting * 15 mins
Outgoing Catharsis
Babylalia * Go consciously crazy * 15 min
OR
Ingoing catharsis
Embracing * Stage 1, 2 and 3 * 15 min
followed by
Bodycontact awareness
Going into your bones * 15 mins
Master your mind Meditation
Inner dialogue and mindful identification * 25 mins
Sharing
Discuss the dynamics * Study Voice Dialogue * 15 mins or longer

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH YOUR BODY AND NATURE

Use every opportunity to go out into nature. Make it a top priority. You need to feel nature regularly. Your body-mind is part of it, therefore it needs to be nurtured. Go alone. Even your dosest friends will distract your openness and attention for your natural environment. The essence of nature is silence, therefore create the most favourable circumstanees for your stay.

Once arrived practice direct pereeption. Become very open and receptive, not hindered by all kinds of thoughts and considerations. Your reflecting mind tends to perceive everything in memories, commentaries and systematic coneepts. Rather than enjoying the tree as a tree, a totally new, astonishing and refreshing phenomenon, your mind immediately jumps on it by memorizing its name, commenting on its qualities or when you saw one last time. 'Enjoying' nature this way is 'enjoying' your coneptualizations about nature. Real nature is not involved at all. Try to avoid this. Look at your tree as a child, as if you see it for the first time. Watching and feeling nature this way will give you tremendous joy and refreshment.

Looking more c1osely, you might feel the need for communion with the object of your observation. You feel so familiar with the flower, however, you fail to feel a real relationship. The flower always remains at a distance. If you want to restore the unity, try the following: Relax and look at your flower for some time. Try to be very open and receptive. Surrender to the flower and forget yourself completely. After some time return to normal. Then close your eyes and go within. Watch and feel your body's contaet with the earth for some time. When you are standing, watch and feel your feet; while sitting, you watch and feel your backside. After some minutes you open your eyes and look at the f1ower. Repeat the same procedure. Give yourself enough time for witnessing. Then reflect on the quality of your witnessing. What is the differenee between the two appproaches?

After this experience you happily proceed on your journey into nature. You see countless beautiful things, trees, ponds, flowers, frogs, birds, butterflies and rocks. You enjoy your walking very much .. There are so many things to admire. Y ou jump from one object to another. You wish you could be a little quieter, so you try the following. Slow down the pace of your walking and start feeling your feet in contact with the earth. Do this with great awareness. Walk very slowly, so that a deep silence enters your being. Do it for at least ten minutes. You will be surprised. Both your walking, your watching and feeling your own body and your perception of nature around you become equally precious to you. Everything around you becomes part of your extended body, therefore you love the trees, the flowers and the grass as yourself. As your sensitivity grows accordingly, you might express your joy by tauching and embracing the tree blissfully.

The 'five elements exercise' might help you to deepen your experiences. While walking you add any sensory sensation to your aware body. First the earth by feeling your feet. Barefoot walking is a good idea, of course. Then add the air to your grounding by becoming aware of your breathing followed by feeling the warmth or the cold on your skin. 'Adding to your aware body' means your awareness expands every time it becomes open to a new sensation. It contains all the sensations simultaneously. Hence 'the feeling of warmth or cold added to your aware body' means it is added to your existing awareness of both your walking and breathing. Take same time until each new part is fully integrated. Continue by smelling the fragrances around you, followed by becoming aware ofthe sound of the birds, insects or the waves on the beach. Last but not least, you surrender to the blue sky. By lying down and deeply relaxing with your open eyes staring up, you will become one with it. Suddenly everything has dropped off and a deep benediction will be entering you. It is the bliss of not existing. Remember, in real peak experiences you are not there. Your inner space becomes one with the outer. There is only one sky.

Back horne you reflect on your experiences. You would like to have additional understanding about what happened to you this day. Ideas about the origin of nature and yourself are bubbling up in your mind. In this case the 'evolutionary vision exercise' might be something for you. Start relaxing and grounding. While watching and feeling your body, you imagine it to be a fish. You imagine your body changing into that of a fish. Lying on your front with both your arms along your body, you start making movements like a fish. You feel your gills swallowing water. Y our skin feels the water, your body temperature has lowered and it is very dark around you. Do it for at least five minutes. Then relax, watch and feel.

Next your body starts changing to that of an amphibian. Little arms and legs grow out of your body. You enjoy both being in the water and crawling on the land. You breathe air. After feeling this for at least five minutes, relax, watch and feel.

Your next step is to become a reptile. Any reptile you like. For example a dinosaur, a crocodile, a snake or an imaginary one like a dragon. Feel your body changing to that of a reptile. Enjoy being a reptile. Move, bite, eat, -fight, kill, make love and sleep like a reptile. Let your body express it totally. Then relax, watch and feel.

In the same way you transform yourself into the next stages of evolution. Become a bird, a primitive mammal, a pig and a anthropoid, an urang utang or a chimpansee for example. After you finished the exercise you relax, watch and feel. Many valuable intuitions might co me up.

Footmassage

Ground, watch and fee!. Extend your body to your partner's. Study his or her footsoie. There are three reflex points in the middle of your footsoie wh ich correspond to your second, third and fourth chakra. The first reflex point is about eight or 10 cm from your heel, the second about 14 and the third about 18 cm from your heel. Study a retlexology atlas. As you start massaging the first point, both öf you feel your breathing in your second chakra, about 2 cm below your nave!. While massaging the second reflex point, feel your breathing in your third chakra, in your plexus solaris. Your next reflex point corresponds to your heart chakra. By breathing simulltaneously through your corresponding chakra's your energies will merge. It is a beautiful experience.

Outgoing catharsis - Panting

Sit like a dog. Ground and close your eyes. Feel yourself to be a dog. Wag your tail and sniff. Go within, feel and relax your abdomen. Then, while your tongue is hanging out of your mouth, start panting. Shake your whole body with the rythm ofyour panting. Feel your belly simultaneously. Pant as intensely as you can. Watch and surrender to it totally. Become a dog.

Man-dog relationship is a very old one. They both feel attracted to each other. Why? It is very paradoxical. You like your dog because you repressed your own dog energy. Because you need to control your disowned animal instincts, you like to be the master ofyour 'outer' dog. Therefore having your dog and becoming a dog are totally opposite to each other. Go into this exercise and you will be surprised. Your dog energy will be freed and become available to you. You might keep your dog, but a totally new awareness will enter your relationship. Try it.

Ingoing catharsis - Inner Transformation

Chinese, Koreans and J apanese read their books in a vertical way, from top to bottom. There is a great wisdom in it. The flow of mind is vertical. Thoughts come in through the top of your head, are being transported along a verticalline and leave your body through the feet. J apanese call this the inner digestion of the mind. In the West many esotheric therapies are also working with the same concept. Their exercises work with light coming into the head, washing the dark corners of your soul while going down. Both insights have something in common. There is a main stream of energy supporting your system by entering the head flowing downwards through your feet into the earth (and vice versa). It is a cleansing energy.

Try the following simple exercise. The upright position is best, but any position in wh ich you will remain relaxed and clear is okay. Close your eyes and imagine all your worries, distress, tensions, anger, pain and fear coming into your forehead with every inhalation. With every breath you take them in, while bringing them downward to your belly with every exhalation. There you breathe them out as purity, relief, peace, lightness and joy. Y our worries enter your forehead and leave your body 2 cm below your navel as light. On their way downwards a miracle happens, the miracle of inner transformation. The site of this miracle is your heart. In your heart darkness is being transformed into light. So move more and more to your heart. Very slowly and you will find yourself inhaling your distress directly through your heart- chakra and exhaling lightness through your ki-point, radiating purity all around you.

Bodycontact awareness - Aura-extension

This is a very basic exercise in order to restore the unity with your body and nature. Lie down on the floor and ground. Close your eyes and go within. Start feeling the contact of your skin with your dothes from within. Watch and fee!. Play with your body. Go to every corner until your entire skin has become aware. Next step is starting the whole procedure again by feeling the energy of the skin contact extending itself a little bit. Feel the energy a little outside your body. Watch how far you can go while still feeling it. Feel the limits of your extended body everywhere around. Then you visualize this energy, your aura will extend itself in all directions. Let it grow slowly, until your extended body fills up your room. Proceed by visualizing your aura extending itself to your natural environment. Imagine your body becoming all-inclusive. The grass, the flowers, the trees, the animals, the rivers, the mountains, the sea, the clouds and the sky, everything becomes part of it. You realize your body is part of nature pervaded by your all-embracing awareness.

Tree of Life Meditation

Thls meditation will bring you in tune with the in-going and out-going, the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the earth. Through it you will become balanced with the forces controlling nature, nurturing all sentient and non-sentient beings alike. To achieve this, I shall first complete the 'meditation in layers'. Thus sit in an upright position and relax. While grounding, your legs becomeheavy. While feeling their underside, you imagine countless roots growing out ofyour legs into the earth. Watch and feel the roots grow downwards very slowly, until you feel deeply, strongly and unshakenly rooted. Next you proceed as normal by becoming open to the underside of your arms, breasts, tongue and eyes respectively. Repeat this several times. At this moment your energy has divided itself into the heavy underside and the light upper side, reflecting gravity and the centrifugal forces of the earth respectively. These forces balance each other. Now the paradox. By adding just a little more weight to gravity, your arms start lifting up. While feeling your rooting a little more intensely, your hands will open simultaneously. Both hands divide and your arms make two large half circles mirroring each other left and right. The movement should be very slow. When your arms reach a half circle position, they stop and remain in their place without the slightest movement. There they stay. Both arms are in line with the two sides of your body. They are like branches of a tree. They are so open to the left and right side, that you feel your tensions at your heart chakra dissolving. You might feel blissful rapture. Tears might come. The essence of this meditation is: Your awareness is not in your arms, it is in your rooting only! By uninterruptedly being open to the feelings ofyour rooting, your arms will stay there without any effort. They are so transparent that they have no weight of themselves. Therefore your position is effortless. It is effortless because it is in tune with the balancing forces of the earth. The same forces which regulate the growth of a tree, plants or the grass. Sittingthis way is knowing the tree from within. You know the tree by becoming it.

Now, in this mediation there are two ways body and mind will be transcended. The horizontal way is the effortless upward moveement of your arms by your aware rooting. All your awareness, your constant watching and feeling is needed, therefore your mind is free of thoughts, empty. Notice: from the first moment you identify with your thinking, your arms become heavy!

The vertical one is to stay in this position as long as possible. The early Christians and Gnostics practised this meditation for many hours continuously. By 'holding out' for a long time, while step by step expanding your awareness, you suddenly transcend body and mind. Suddenly a blissful peace may enter your inner space making it timeless and limitless. Your awareness of bodily sensations has disappeared, your body has been 'dropped off. It is the no-effort quality of no-mind, the first genuine glimpse of Enlightenment.

So practise this Tree of Life Meditation regularly. And if you cannot maintain it, simply return to your original position. Relax and start again. By doing it regularly, your entire life will be transsformed.

A standing position is also possible. Just open your legs and put your feet firmlyon the ground and keep them about one meter apart. Unlock your knees. In a few minutes your feet will become a little heavy. Then start moving your arms up on both sides of your body opening and stretching them to the sky. Y ou will feel your heart chakra opening itself. A major emotional breakthrough may happen. Feel and watch your breathing. Once firmly grounded and centred you stay motionless for unlimited time. Practise this meditation in open air. It will deepen your contact with nature.

Sharing

Remember, there are three ways to establish a relationship with the environment. Thinking about 'Our Common Future' you realize the earth to be one organism of which your body-mind is a part. You reflect on the on-going destruction of nature. You underrstand the gravity of the situation very weIl. Consequentl y, a great transformation is needed to save our planet.

The second way is an emotional one. You love flowers, birds and trees. Every time you see them, you feel enchanted and very happy. You have a special relationship with these objects of admiiration. The emotional relationship is very important. Feeling is added to thinking, thus intensifying your commitment.

The most fundamental and lasting approach is through awareeness. You real ize your body is the nearest part of nature. It is the part whlch is available to you all the time. By watching and feeling, you will extend your awareness to your body and its immediate surrounddings. By becoming connected, body and nature become one, while watching them simultaneously. Nature becomes apart of you, therefore you become available to it.

Sometimes you may share an Earth Ritual (From 'Insights' Tokyo), especially at the seasonal solstices. First there is a "Gathhering". Together you make an offering place where you bring flowers and fruits. Then incense is placed to the East, a candle to the South, a cup of water to the West and a stone to the North representing the four elements air, fire, water and earth respectively. Next part is the "Purification". All participants will bring a wand. In the centre of the circle a bowl of water is placed, together with a plate of salt. One after another the participants take the bowl and
allow all negative thoughts, concerns, emotions and illnesses to flow into the water. Then you put some salt into the water. Stir the water with the wand and ask the Earth to trans form your negativity into vitallife. Breathe healing energy. Stage three is 'Calling the Direcctions'. All the participants turn to the four directions inviting the spirits of the Earth to join the Circle - you invite perceptions and visions of the element air from the East, the warmth and energy from the element fire from the South, the emotions and depths of the element water from the West and the wisdom and grace from the element Earth from the North. The fourth stage is called 'The Circle'. Now you do anything you like. Maybe you share some healing and consultation, maybe you massage or just relax. After having expressed your gratitude to the spirits of the four directions, you open the Circle. Everybody takes a flower from the offering place. Celebration is the last part of the Ritual called the "Feast" . Here you celebrate the energy raised by your refreshed awareness, the unity with the earth and the bonding with your friends. You express your gratitude for life. Chant, sing, drink, eat, dance and laugh.

I heard about people who organize a 'Council of All Beings'. Now, this is a very good initiative. It reflects reality as it iso In the context of Reality, all sentient and non-sentient beings are utterly equal. They are pervaded by the same Quality. Their Essence is the same. Thus the grass, the frog, the mosquitoes, the bush, the flowers, the trees, the rocks, the waves, the clouds and us, we all have the same value. Therefore we have to encounter all creatures with the same respect. They have the same inherent rights to live.

All beings are part of you, they are your 'voices'. Thus for sharing a 'Council of All Beings' you can use Voice Dialogue as a technique. Alternatively you identify with whatever plant or animal you like. Through you they will start telling their stories, their emotions, their struggle for life. After everybody has expressed his or her 'voice', you will have another round where your mindful selves will reflect on it. You recognize, acknowledge and embrace all the voices expressed by the members of the group. After that you actualize by planning or going into action.

SUMMARY

Footmassage
Massage and breathing * Chakra points * 15 mins
Outgoing catharsis
Panting * Become a dog 15 min
OR
Ingoing catharsis
Inner Transformation * Distress breathing in * Purity breathing out * 15 mins
followed by
Bodycontact awareness
Aura-extension * Nature as your extended body * 15 mins
Tree of Life Meditation
In tune with the forces of the earth * 25 mins
Sharing
Become available to the environment * 15 mins or more

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH YOUR HUMAN ENVIRONMENT

Friendship is the way to restore the unity with our fellow human beings. It is also the way of transforming your automated world into a humane one. Ultimately it might save our planet.

All milin spiritual traditions have emphasized compassion as a tool toward the improvement of human relationships. A great effort was needed to und erstand it. It seemed very far away, not at all accessible in daiiy life. Therefore it could not develop its real power. It always remained somewhat vague, so you missed the chance of commitment. A new approach is thus needed. Look therefore to a common experience that is familiar to everybody. You call it friendship.

Friendship is a quality of the heart. It is based on freedom and love, spontaneity and naturalness, acceptance and mutuality, generrosity and sharing, beingfully yourself. Being close friends is a blessing, probably the most beautiful ofrelationships. Friendship is sharing the same space. With areal friend you feel at horne. You feel very close without identifying with each other, without any claimming. Though fully yourself you do everything in the interest of your friend. You would risk your life ifnecessary. As there is great clarity of understanding, words are not needed all the time. While being with your friend, awareness is at an optimum making both of you very beautiful people. Both of you are very much alive. Without deliberately doing so you spontaneously stimulate each other's wisdom, intuition, creativity and gentleness.

Through the Best Friend Meditation everybody will become your friend. So make it your daily practice. Do it with great awareness. Feel the quality of friendship all the time and you will become a tree sheltering countless people. Practising friendship this way will be very powerful. It breaks through all conventions, habits, interests, power structures, institutions and nationalities. It is really the way to make the whole world your friend. From it great action will arise, awakening all beings.

Footmassage

Relax and ground. Extend your body to that of your partner's. Start massaging the inner line of the foot, bottom to top. Do it very gently, caressingly.

This inner line corresponds to the spine. Therefore watch and feel the corresponding parts of your back during your massage. By doing this you will be very much in tune with each other.

Outgoing catharsis - Laughing

This exercise used to be one of the favourites of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He suggests you to do the following. Stretch all parts of your body for some minutes and breathe deeply in and out. Then you start laughing. Laugh for five minutes continuously. Let your laughing be total. In the beginning it might be a bit difficult. Laughing for no reason feels a little strange. You are not used to it. Y our laughing has to be serious all the time. Y ou need a reason for it. Otherwise everybody will think this person is crazy. Laughing for no reason means you are not taking yourself seriously. When your laughing is total, you laugh at existence and existence is laughing at you. In fact, it has been laughing at you all the time. After five minutes lie down, relax, watch and feel.

Ingoing catharsis - Hyperdramatizing

I still remember very weIl that we had the opportunity as studcnts tu ask the professor questions after his lecture. Just the idea made m~ afraid. Standing up in the middle .. of 400 students with everybody looking at me, no that was too much. I was very frightened ofmaklng a fool ofmyself. My heart used to beat heavily and sweat appeared on my forehead.

At that time I came across the writings of a very unusual Dutch psychiatrist dr. J .L. Arndt. He wrote: "it is the child in you who is afraid" . And the child is that part of yuu wh ich has not grown up with you because of its grief, self-pity, anger and fear. So he looked at how healthy children solved these kind ofproblems. And he found out that they solve them by making them worse. When a child is afraid, he or she imagines a tiger to be in his or her room. Imagine a tiger to be in your room, under your bed. It is an unbearable idea. And remember, for a child imagination is very real. Thus a child is working with the unbearable. He is able to live with a terrible reality. He creates it! He creates it because by doing so he will know every corner ofhis fear. And by knowing there will be no need to be afraid anymore. His fear simply disappears. So this is the technique. Relax, dose your eyes and wait. Wait for so me distressing or some worrying thought to come up. If nothing comes, think of arecent problem or something that has been bothering you for so me time already.

For example, I started to visualize that the professor had horns on his head, that he had become a devil' s head spitting fire from the moment that I was going to stand up to ask my question. But not only that. I also imagined all the 400 student colleagues to burst out laughing. The laughter was so monstrously loud that an earthquake occurred, the floor of the lecture hall broke open and dragons appeared who swallowed up everybody.

So I hyperdramatized the feelings of my inner child the way my teacher suggested. And it worked. In fact it worked miracuulously. Confronted with the agony ofmy phantasies, the real distress appeared to be far and far less frightening, so it disappeared after a very short time. Since then I have asked many questions. I was even able to ask stupid ones! So, when you are afraid of crossing a square, imagine terrible things happening from the first step. And rememmber, create your phantasies as grotesque as possible. Images dose to reality will not help. Make them very, very bizarre. By hyperdramaatizing, you feed your inner child with healing energy. H yperdramaatize any worry, distress or sorrow. You will be surprised. After some time they will disappear and never co me back.

Bodycontact awareness - Chakra Breathing

Life energy is continuously expanding and contracting. It is a rythm. Look at day and night, warmth and cold, summer and winter, relaxing and contracting and you will understand its dyynamics. The dosest experience of the life rythm is through your breathing. It is coming out of your inner space and returns to it. Energy appears to come out of space. In space, life and death are one. By expressing themselves into matter they separate. With every inhalation you breathe life in, with every exhalation you breathe it out. Through your breathing, life is continuously being expressed by
its eternal source and is returning to it.

When living life to the fullest, your opening and closing is optimal. It can be experienced through chakra-breathing. First study the geography of the chakras, so that you know their location. Then lie dow, relax and ground. elose your eyes and watch the inner edge of your eyelids. Move your attention to your first chakra. I prefer your first chakra to be between your genitals and the anal opening. Watch and fee!. After a short time you move to your breathing. Watch and feel. Move back to your first chakra and watch and feel your breathing there. You feel your first chakra breathing. It is opening and closing itself according to the rhytm of yollr breathing. Staythere for a while. After someminutes you moveupto your backkside. The sacrum is the location ofyour second chakra; therefore you stay there watching, feeling and breathing. After that you go up along your spine to the loins, your shoulders, your neck and the top ofyour head respectively. This is the first half of the exercise. You might have experienced it already: This exercise needs much awareness, subtle feeling and slow progress. Watch and feel where your attention is needed most. If there are some blocks, then you stay longer at a particular chakra. Keep grounding and watching. You remain the observer in any circumstance.

In the second part ofthe exercise you move downwards along the frontside ofyour body. So first watch, feel and breathe your third eye, followed by your throat, heart chakra, plexus solaris, your kiipoint 2 cm below the navel and back to your first chakra. You may end with hreathing your footsoies and the palms of your hands.

Best Friend Meditation

Sit in a circle, close enough for your hands to hold each other. Relax and ground. When your legs feel heavy, start breathing your feeling. You start with your right foot and proceed very slowly until your whole bottom, in contact with the tloor, has become aware. Then move up and repeat the chakra exercise while sitting. After having completed the full round from your back to your front, you move to your heart chakra. Move into it, feel the space behind your sternum. After a short while, start visualizing your best friend in your heart. Look at your friend with a very clear eye. Visualize all the beautiful qualities ofyour friend and feel what they mean to you.
Memorize many moments and situations of togetherness. Sense the feelings as they are aroused by imagining your friendship. Go deeper and deeper into the depth of those feelings. Feel this depth in the inner space of your heart.

Once this depth has been established in the inner core of your heart, forget about your friend. Drop the image and just watch the feelings which have been aroused. Feel their inner quality. Realize this quality to be yours. By allowing your friendship to enter your heart, you opened yoursel to your own inner being. It is your own being which is flowering now. Once you realize this, you will experience great benediction and gratitude. Friendship is not only something coming from the outside. It appears not to be dependent on a particular person. It is your own inner quality, it is the quality of your own heart, your own inner being. It is a self-realization.

Now the process goes in the other direction. Friendship appears to be always there, now you start finding friends for it. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young sang a song a long time ago: 'If you ean't be with the one you love, love the one you're with'. They captured the idea in that song. Being yourself aware, open and accepting, free and loving, spontaneous and sharing, everybody appears to be your friend, no one remains a stranger to you. Feel the quality of friendship within all the time and you will flower, pouring your fragrance around you indiscriminately. Your friendship will be all-embracing.

Now, visualize some of your friends, neighbours and collleagues. Open your heart for them. Watch and feel.

Visualize your enemies, people who are antipathetic or detestable to you. Take them in your heart with every inhalation and feel compassion and friendship with every exhalation.

Visualize your parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents and the generations before them. Feel the friendship vibrating in your heart. Visualize the whole of humanity in your heart. Embrace all those different people, all colours, all nations. Watch and feel.

Finish the meditation by holding each other's hands for a while. Feel the energy while firmly being grounded.

Sharing

Feeling friendship is one thing, actualizing another. Put your inner experiences into practice. Make friends in daily life. Visit, write or call your neighbours, enemies, colleagues and parents. Visit your ancestors' grave. Share these, your experiences in this last part of your meditation.

SUMMARY

Footmassage 
Watching and feeling your spine * 15 min
Outgoing catharsis
Lauging * Laughing without reason * 15 min
OR
Ingoing catharsis
Hyperdramatizing * Creating your phantasies as grotesque as possible * 15 mins
followed by
Bodycontact awareness 
Chakra Breathing * Expanding and contracting * 15 mins
Best Friend Meditation
Finding friends for yours friendship * 25 mins
Sharing
Actualizing your friendship * 15 mins or more

TO RESTORE THE UNITY WITH THE DIVINE

Everything is constantly returning to its source. Reality is one great moment in wh ich everything is being expressed and destroyed simultaneously. In your inner space, thoughts co me up and dissappear. In your body, cells are being born and die. In the great Void, you are born and will die.

Becoming one with the Ultimate Reality means both the greatest ecstacy possible and the greatest fear. Y ou die to a new life. It is like being a caterpillar about to die, not knowing about his new life as a butterfly. Dying is going into the great Unknown. It is your real homeland, yet you are afraid of surrendering to it.

It is because you are too much attached to your actual life as a caterpillar. To you this is your only reality. You stick to the concept of a self. Therefore you create the idea of personal reincarnation, the survival ofyour soul. No, dying to the Ultimate is dying to the new, therefore the 'old you' will disappear completely.

There are two great ways of realizing your spiritual death, the unity with your deepest core. Both are necessary. They are the way of meditation and the way of love.

Through meditation your awareness expands to ever greater depths. It is a process of gradual jumps. You proceed very slowly and after some time ofpractice, you suddenly jump into a totally new reality leaving the old totally behind. It is like a body-awareness exercise. First there is the awareness of your right foot. But by continuing, this awareness dissolves completely into the awareness of your right leg. The smaller has disappeared into the larger.

The second way of losing yourself without fear is through love. The des ire for unity helps you in overcoming it. That is the miracle of love, you love to surrender to your beloved, you love to die into hirn or her. In forgetting yourself, you experience an existential peak. For a short while you are no more there, you dissolve. This 'being no more there' is your moment of bliss. Therefore surrender is crucial to love. In love you do not want to possess, you want to be possessed by your beloved. In spiritual love, you want to be possessed by the Divine, your Ultimate Reality.

Footmassage

First relax. Take any position in which you watch and feel your bodycontact with the floor. Both of you become open and reeceptive. Slowly this feeling will extend to the body of your partner. Make contact by taking a foot into your hand. Do not do anything but feel and watch. Then, when your partner's foot has entered your inner space, start massaging . Y ou massage with no mind effort on your part. You keep watching and feeling your extended space and the doing will come by itself.

Outgoing catharsis - Crazy Horse

This is an exercise to be done with very rythmical music. You may use any music you like. Try one ofthe first parts 01' Bhagwan's Dynamic Meditation. While standing, unlock your knees and relax. Watch and feel the contact 01' your feet with the floor. Keep this feeling all the time. Start running on the spot. Intensify it as much as you can. Breathe deeply through the nose. Do it for five minutes. Become a cyelone. Then suddenly: watch. Watch the backside of your eyelids and make an inner step backwards. Let your body go crazy. Observe what happens while becoming chaotic for another five minutes. Now your cyelone will go really wild while the centre, your inner self becomes very silent and peaceful. Try it.

Ingoing catharsis - Cremation

SlIrrendcring to the Divine is like an insect being attracted to the light. Neither YOll nor it will survive. Both will be burned. This is your problem: heing tremendously attracted to the Eternal Light and being tremendously afraid at the same time. You are afraid you are going to die. Intellectllally you know that only your ego, your artificial self will dissolve, hut this knowledge does not help you to overcome your tremendous fear within. You need a little help. Hence this cremation exercise.

Relax, elose your eyes and imagine Iying on a stretch er with your feet fight in front 01' a cremation oven. Ground and watch your breathing. Pay elose attention to the lowest part 01' exhalation, the moment your exhalation disappears into nothingness. Imagine you are dead. When peace enters your inner self, then you imagine that someone behind you starts pushing the stretcher into the oven. You feel the heat coming into your feet burning them to ashes. First your skin is affected by the fire, then the deeper layers follow. Very, very slowlythe next part ofyourbody, your lower legs are being pushed into it. Remember you are being pushed, you cannot do anything but surrender. Keep watehing and feeling. Keep watehing your back and your breathing. Realise your watehing is not affected by the burning, only your body iso As the process continues, your knees, your upper legs, your pelvis and your trunk enter the oven to be burned. Let the heat become as intense as possible. Everything has to be burnt so that nothing is left. Some extra courage is needed for the last part, your head. Do not be afraid, surrender to it.

You will be surprised. You will not be affected by being burnt at all. Y our mind and bod y will disappear, but you appear to be more alive than ever before. Your awareness will be very bright, fresh and alert. Having experienced this you need not to be afraid of the process of dying. Once you have experienced this, you can enter the Light any time the Light invites you to do so.

Bodycontact awareness - Inner Space

Lie down and ground. Your eyes are closed, your awareness moves within. By going into your right foot you enter the inner space of your body. Visualize this space to be empty, void. Then you start going upwards very slowly. Entering your lower leg you feel and create space, emptiness. After you have reached your pelvis, you start on your left foot and do the same. Take some time for your knees as these are particularly sensitive areas. After reaching your pelvis again, you move up, watehing and feeling your pelvis as space. Keep watehing all the time! Then your loins, breast, neck and head follow. By feeling the head as empty, your watehing becomes space. Your observer appears to be space. Now your whole inside body has become space. Start again at your right foot, feeling the outer space on your skin. Move around your body, feeling and imagining the outer space everywhere. Now your skin is just a flimsy film separating inner and outer space. Then suddenly let it dissolve. Your inner and outer space become one. As you are still there, who, what or where are you?

Ultimate Surrender Meditation

Life is a balance between energy being born and returning to its origin. You are part of this energy. It is only by becoming less and less attached to yourself that this energy can be feIt. Y ou should have realized a certain quality of openness already. When you feel a subtle inner longing for something you do not know, than this meditation is for you. Then the Unknown is probably searching for you.

Sit and ground. Watch your breathing, especially the moment of exhalation that disappears into the unknown. Extend this moment just a little. Do this a few minutes.

Next step is to use a mantra. A mantra can help you to create the right atmosphere. Ithelps you to become open for surrender. U se any mantra you feel deeply related to. Ifyou belong to a religion, try a traditional one. 'Not my will but Thy will be done' and 'Namu Amida Butsu' are two fine examples. Maybejust 'Yes' is enough for you. Bring the mantra in tune with your breathing.

After some time you move to your grounding again. While watching and feeling an inner whispering is bubbling up in your heart. By feeling your feet, legs and bottom, you repeat very gently: "I love my foot, ankle, lower leg, knee and so on. Feel a great gtlntleness for this, your body. It is a beautiful gift. You did not create it. It is amirade. Your body is innocent, it is dosest to God. It is your greatest help in becoming aware. So love it as a most precious iltl, üS ü benediction. After the grounding you move up, bottom to top, t'oelini yuur skin in contact with your dothes. Become very sensitive tu thls feeling. Now imagine this feeling to be aroused by touchlngl Somethlni ur somebody is touching you from the outside very, very gently. Extend this touching to your entire body. Imagine that the whole cosmos is loving and embracing you. Surrender to it! While witnessing with great clarity, you dissolve, you disappear into it.

If you are a devotion al type of person, this Ultimate Surrender Meditation is for you. Then you will J1nd it easy to surrender to the Great Unknown. But if observing is your main quality, then the Mirror Meditation might be more suitable tor you. First look at yourself in a mirror very quietly. After one or two minutes you sit down in meditation. Y ou relax while keeping your spine straight. When your lower part becomes a bit heavy, start feeling your legs and your bottom in contact with the floor. You ground. As soon as you feel balanced, you start imagining a mirror standing in front of you. You imagine yourselfto be reflected in the mirror. You start observing yourself in a very relaxed way. You watch your legs, your beHy, your hands and arms, everything, paying special attention to your face: your mouth, nose, eyes, ears and your hair.

After having observed yourself weH - you were looking at your image all the time - you imagine yourself as the observed. You imagine that your image is watching youl Let it look at you for at least three minutes. You will be surprised by this shift in perception. Feel it. After these three minutes you return to yourself; continue watching and imagine that your image is coming doser to you. With your inner eye wide open, you aHow your image to enter your space very, very slowly. Finally, feel your image touching you, disappearring into you. Then look into the mirror again. It is empty! Look into the empty mirror for at least three minutes. Y ou stare into the mirror and you see nothing, it is just void. There is no image anymore, just the mirror. Then, within a fraction of a second an inner shift is made; suddenly the mirror also disappears. This is the ultimate shift. Nothing is left, no watcher, nothing to be watched. There is only watching. You may forget about everything, about yourself. If so, enjoy your timeless and limitless state.

After that you relax. While relaxing you may ask yourself the question "Who am I". Do not try to ans wer the question yourself. The Great Unknown will do it for you.

Sharing

This sharing is acelebration. Express your longing, searching and surrender into singing and dancing. Become possessed by divine intoxication. While dancing, surrender to it completely, watching your dancing simultaneously.

SUMMARY

Footmassage
Intuitive massage * 15 min
Outgoing catharsis
Crazy horse * Watch your body *  go crazy * 10 min
OR
Ingoing catharsis
Cremation * Enjoying the dying process
followed by
Bodycontact awareness
Inner Space * Inner and outer space become one * 15 mins
Ultimate Surrender Meditation
Returning to the Source * 25 mins
Sharing
Celebration * 15 mins or more

CREATIVE INTEGRATION

Meditation means being your aware self. Relaxing, feeling, bodycontact and witnessing your mind, that is it. It is not a process. Becoming aware is a jump from your ignorance into inner clarity. There is no path that you have to travel.

Secondly, observe your motives. They are decisive. If you try to reach some goal or if you try to escape from something, it is not meditation. There is only one motive, it is the desire to live life to the fullest, the desire to be fully yourself.

My students are all people with a passion for life. They want to be open to the here-now, to every single moment. They enjoy life to the optimum, therefore they do not want to miss it. Through practice of meditation they actualize their innermost core, while through awareness they restore their wholeness of life. They become all-embracing. Awareness, acceptance, friendship, surrender and action are the qualities of their awakened mind, their Maitreya Mind, radiating light, love and empowerment all around them.

The first step in Restoring the Wholeness of Life is to step out ofthe identification with your thinking processes. Once freed, your awareness is able to embrace, pervade and integrate the different areas oflife as they are your body and nature, your mind, your fellow human beings while surrendering to the Divine. Thraugh awareness everything appears to be part of you. You are the Whole, you are Life.

Once you have realized this, creative integration is born. It means that you mirror and evaluate any mind process in any field of human 'progress' to the interest of the whole. The whole being the balance betweeen the different life-spheres pervaded by and inteegrated into your all-inclusive awareness. Any achievement wh ich supports new developments in the interest of optimal integration of your mind, your body and nature, friendship and your surrender to the Divine will have top priority.This could be spiritual training and creative education, holistic health and medicine, the environment and integral farming, peace and human rights and all other priorities which support the interest of all life, sentient and non-sentient.

It also means developing the art of creative dying. In your aware mind, any process which does not reflect the interest of the whole will not survive. You simply will not identify with it, you will not choose for it. As you develop all the qualities to become whole: clear insight, intuition, sense of interrelation, sensitivity, love, compassion and vision, your strategy will be a transcending one. Through empowerment and intensive cooperation with other people, you will drop, stop, transform or restructure any process, developpment or achievement which counteracts, blocks or destroys the survival and further evolution of our beautiful planet.

Now the meditations. First practice basic awareness everyywhere, every day, in all circumstances. The Maitreya Mind Training Programme itself is an ongoing five days programme. You might not manage to do the full programme every day, so make short vers ions for daily use. Practising meditation at horne is one, sharing it in a group is another. Try to meditate in a group at least once a week. Last but not least, try to join an intensive workshop or seminar. For full integration I suggest you join the three months programme of your Maitreya Mind Centre.

HEALTH AND EMPOWERMENT THROUGH
ECOVITALITY

In this decade there will be no health without a healthy environment. A lot of toxic waste is already accumulating in our hoc! ies. There is a great danger of rapid degeneration of the species. In our llfförts of 'Restoring the Wholeness of Life', we therefore nelld an environmentally oriented redefinition of health. I call it ecovitality. It is based on the concept of the human flow system as adynamie equilibrium of input-processing-output in relation to its environment. A healthy Iife-style programme has been worked out accordingly and is available to everybody. Health, regeneration and yes survival will, now and in the future, greatly depend on the implementation of this ecovitality programme. Emphasis has to be laid on regular and optimal detoxification and elimination of toxie waste.

Health and the environment are an extension of each other. That is what we are finding out together. To be exposed and inhale daily so much poisonous matter through food, water and air alerts even the most inveterate cynic. Most of us feel that this cannot go on like this. And thus we want to do something about it.

When planning steps to tackle it is important to first get some insight how a few things are interrelated. What exactly is the connection between the environment and our health, how do environment influences affect us and in what way can we influence these processes, so that both our health and the environment benefit?

In the first place it is good to know that our metabolism is a flow-system. We absorb daily nutrients, water, air and poisonous matter, digest and burn them and then dispose of them as waste. If there is balance in this input -processing-output, then we are healthy. Al sort of factors may disturb this dynamic equilibrium, however. Overload occurs, for instance, when we eat more than we can digest, food is badly burned, we poison ourselves or if our waste disposal is insufficient. Accumulation of poisonous and waste matter then takes place in the body. The cells suffocate in it, are damaged and degenerate, the same process which occurs at this moment around us in nature.

We can thus see clearly that we are an integral part of the threatened environment. The environment appears to be one big family, a system ofinfinitely vulnerable connections, a total ofwhich we are an indissoluble part. Our health is dependent on that. Its quality is largely determined by theprocess of input, processing and output. Environment and lifestyle are the most important factors in this. If we interact with them in a creative manner, then our selffregulation is optimal. We then radiate health.

A closer look at the flow system

Intake

In your choice of food you yourself determine the quality, content, quantity and to a large degree also your intake of chemical left-overs and additives. Illness-causing foodhabits are: Choosing of food of inferior quality (not-organically grown food), excess in sugar, white flower, animal protein and luxury items, food with chemical additives, junkfood. The consequences are: slow degeneraation of cells because the lack of vital minerals and vitamins, decrease in resistance, digestion disorders with symptoms of self-poisoning, food intolerance, chemical allergies, chronic-disease, mental deteerioration and apathy.

Advice: switch to organicaIly nutritious food without chemiical additives and little or no agricultural or' other residues. Vegetables, fruits, potatoes, grains, coldpressed vegetable oils, soy products, seeds and nuts, butter and sour milk products are central in this.

Digestion

What benefits you is what you digest. Optimal digestion by chewing weIl, don't ever eat too much (of a quarter of what you eat you live yourself, oftheother three quarters the doctors!), be relaxed when you eat and adapt your food to what you are able to digest. Often separating carbohydrates (potatoes, bread, rice and pasta) and proteins (meat, fish, eggs, soya) is necessary. See for this 'Fit for Life' by H. and M. Diamond.

Because disturbances in digestion and its consequences is affecting a growing number of people, this is important advice. As regards dairy products, preferably or even exclusively choose the sour milkproduets like eurds and biogarde. They have a favourable influenee on your intestines.

Transport

We consist for 70% of fluid! For a good circulation we thus have to drink a lot. Recommended are: filtered water, mineral water, various herb teas, fresh fruit and vegetable juices and coffee substitutes. For transport the quality of our blood vessels are further of great importance. Arterosclerosis is not caused in the first plaee by cholesterol, but by excess consumption of animal protein. Moderate or stop therefore intake of meat, fish, eggs, milk and cheese.

Metabolism

So-caIled oxidation processes are central in this. Nutrients are broken down with aid of oxygen to water and carbon dioxide. Energy is released as a result. When there is insufficient combustion, all kinds of half processed material remain in the metabolism because of which our tissues and cells become 'clogged'. It is therefore important to stimulate our combustion on a daily basis by motion, deep breathing and in particular physical exercise. Jogging, a good walk and for instance swimming are very suitable (or regular physical work of course!). The Japanese hot bath 'furo' is recommended.

Detoxification

Your body goes every 24 hours through various metabolic phases. In the daytime there is input and digestion, at night transport to and absorption of nutrients by the cells, while the body must dispose in the morning of its waste products. That means that we should not burden our body in the same time with ingestion. Assist as much as possible with the body and its self-purification,so that it may do its job optimally; that is intelligent behaviour. Until noon nothing but fresh fruit and juices is the best regimen for this. Fresh fruit whatever you want and as much as you want (exept too much of the sweet) gives energy, is easily digested, has a high fluid content and is alkaline-forming which supports purification. You will notice yourself, you are going to feel quite energetic! (Again: H. and M. Diamond 'Fit for Life)'.

Please note: This advice is not applicable to children with hypersensitivity for salicylates.

Elimination

The better your waste produets are disposed of daily, the more energetic you will feel. It is therefore sensible to attend now and then to the various cleansing systems. These systems are: liver, intestine, kidneys, skin, breath, mucous membrane and menstruation.

* Take a 'liver flush' every three months, squash one fresh orange and one fresh lemon, add a finepressed toe of garlic and a dessert spoon of olive oil to it. Mix and drink it half an hour before breakkfast.

* Clean out your intestines 1 or 2 days per month. Aids: Magneesium sulphate (MgS04) one level dessert spoon on 1 glass lukewarm water (half an hour before breakfast or before going to bed), a water clysma, green powder or laxative tea. Once a year a bit more extensive purification treatment of the intestines. See for this : E. Rauch 'Inner body c1eansing' Haug Verlag, Heidelberg.

* Occasionally a drink or circulation treatment: 2-3 liters of fluid a day over a 3 to 5 day period together with a urine expulsing agent, for instance Solidago drops, 3 x per day 30 drops.

* Transpire regularly and actively through exercise and drinking of hot lime-tree blossom tea with a bit of honey to start with or go once a week to the sauna.

* Breathe in deeply on a regular basis. Through it you will lengthen in a relaxed way both the in- and exhalation. Through the nose! Open your window in the bedroom (except in case of serious airpollution).

* The mucous membranes are cleansed when you for instance not suppress but support a cold. Each cold is an attempt of the body to rid itself of superfluous toxic and waste material. Support with a steam bath and a homeopathic agent.

* Insufficient menstruation is not healthy. Toxic matter remain and accumulate in your body. The body invents emergency solutions like dumping of waste in the skin. As a result you get an impure skin, pimples and rash. Stimulation of the menstruation among other methods are hot baths for the feet and the abdomen, massage of the footsole, nasal reflex therapy and some herbs.

Circulation of food and toxie matter:

Environment, agriculture, foodprocessing industry, commmerce, kitchen, ingestion, digestion, transport, combustion (poisoning and accumulation processes), detoxification, excretion, environnment.

THE EARTH CARE INITIATIVE

The 'environment problem'. The word by itself is misleading. After all, what or who is the problem? The 'environment' we talk about, the natural cohesive factor of life, has developed without problems already for millions of years and that in a most human friendly manner. No, the 'environment' cannot be the problem and we know that too. By our behaviour we have inflicted already gigantic and irreparable damage to our natural living environment, to such an extent that we have now even endangered our own survival. Hundreds, even thousands or more unique species - plants and animals - have already forever disappeared from the earth. There is something seriously wrong with a species that destroys itself and others to such an extent.

We are the environmental problem

Although nature regulates itself and stays at an equilibrium, we are the only ones who think we need to grow. We have an insatiable want of still more of the same. Eating, success, 'love', money and power, we never seem to have enough of it. Everything is judged on the amount, on quantity. Our life is centred around accumulation, around "having". Because of it we are caught more and more between accumulating and exhaustion, between wealth, structural poverty and hunger, between economic growth and the exhaustion of irreplaceable sources; industrial agriculture and exxhaustion of the soH; overproduction and overconsumption with as a result pollution, immunological weakness and illness; concentration of power, ambition and meaninglessness; personal enrichment and loneliness. We pay ahigh price. Ifwelet our life be ruled by having, then this is at the cost of quality, our being. Accumulation destroys our joy of and meaning to life, peaceof mind and balance, health, creativity, openness, bond, love and friendship, all the qualities we crave for after all. Having is the inability to be. It is a surrogate behaviour, a substitute, an addiction.

the white man treats
his mother the earth
and his brother the air as merchandise
which he can exploit and sell again
as cheap bright beads
his hunger will gorge the soil bare
and only leave a desert

Indian chief Seattle

Human society has developed as a cancer swelling, completely grown out of context. This growth is the result of our faHure to remain in balance with all that lives. Therefore, our most important task is to fit ourselves belatedly in, to interconnect with living nature. Nature is our teacher, she is incomparably wiser than uso We can learn everything from the trees, the bushes, the soil, the cycles and the dynamic balances between all those different forms of life. Besides the so necessary restraint and management, the accent thus has to be put on giving up our dominance over nature. This requires a complete internal switch, awakening of ourselves and our actual situation.

we are apart of the earth and
the earth is apart of us
the smelling flowers are our sisters
the rendeer, the horse, the big eagles
our brothers
the crests in the river, the juice
ofthe flowers in the meadow, the sweat of
the pony and of the man, it is all the same
life, our common life

Seattle

A second obstacle for a complete understanding of the environment is our '1'. All of us have built a self-image and made parameters between 'I' and 'not-!'. These parameters are arbitrary, arrived at by more or less chance experiences, interpretations and conclusions. Condltloning by our environment and society played and playa role In thls. Because of it there is a permanent conflict between the parts of UB we accept and do not accept. In particular the character traits that or unwanted by or unattractive to society often get the worst of it. For men it often is their vulnerable child and for women their strong side, for instance. And many of us have deep inside unresolved grief, anger are fear. Not only does it cost a lot of energy to keep these emotions under control, but often we act them unconsciously out on our environment. How much hasn't the environment suffered from our insensitivity respectively destructive behaviour!

Consequence of these very complicated relations, conflicts and tensions within ourselves is that we are constantly 'occupied with them'. We are constantly in thought, in our head, concerned with ourselves. Becauseofthis, reality hardly gets through to uso We are not really open for it. Whole worlds are therefore locked out. Even with our own body we have DO or only minimal contact. And it is quite 'normal' that we walk hours through the forest without even be susceptible for one single moment for what lives in it. There is a distance that cannot be bridged. Weshall therefore never call the tree 'our brother' , that is too far away from uso It can be quite shocking to suddenly realise that you never got further in life than your own little world, the realisation that you never have had any real contact with your environment. And how can there be compassion for something for wh ich you have not had any feeling?!

The 'environment' holds up a mirror to ourselves. It shows at every point where we have bogged down. By insight into and acknowledgement of our true situation, a healing process can be started. This is a condition for the healing of our society. Only when you have discovered the better values in yourself -liberation of inner strength, clarity and compassion - then there is energy available for the healing process of our structures and institutions . 'Wholeness of creation' presupposes therefore wholeness of ourself. A complete understanding of the environment can lay the basis for this: opening yourself for reality as it is, development of existential connection with your environment starting with your own body, acceptance of your not-acknowledged parts, development of a clear al ertness, love and inner power and the enlightened actions that spring from it.

In your efforts to care for the environment you have to start with yourself. For how can you care for nature as a whole ifyou do not manage to care for the smaller problems, those which are nearer to you? Thus you have to empower yourself gradually, step by step. With every step you williearn. Your awareness, love and strength will grow, preparing your next step.

Therefore my concept of environmental action starts with your own body and mind. It is called The Earth Care Initiative. It consists of a cleansing and balancing programme. First you cleanse your own body and mind through health-food, detoxification, catharsis and meditation. Then you start reorganizing your houseehold, your garden and your immediate surroundings, restoring the ecological balance. Your share your experience with your neighhbours and friends. After that joint actions for cleansing a wider area will follow. Many such actions based on awareness and selffexperience will be very powernIl. They can cause quantum leap transformations with great effects on a larger scale.

PUBLICATIONS
by Han Maitreya Stiekema

* Leaflet 'Health and Empowerment through Ecovitality'. Free. * Leaflet 'Earth Care'. A spiritual-ecological initiative. Free.
* Some 10 books all of them in Dutch. Some of which are now being translated into English.

4 STAGIONI

for my friends

AUTUMN

autumn has found in me
its heart
and mourns

just observe these shrubs
their silent resignation
has moved me

the leaves who
lost their lustre
console each other in the earth

and the sun in
its rustywarm glow
takes leave

alas
all around is dying
in Me

WINTER

coming home
I walk
not of this world
in the splendour which
I am Myself

oh how fine are
the crowns of alt those
wintergreen fir trees
in contrast with
the bluecool sky

intoxicated by divine
drunk joy I do not
know anymore
what to do
I am Alive

SPRING

how unpronounceable
perfect is this
endless moment

the warm spring sun
so incredibly
comforting

and aye now
I suddenly perceive
that blossom here
everything is transcended

see I am
the essence of the
bricks next to me

how inconceivably
new rest the
hands in my lap

the silence that
I Am
whispers Itself in
the things around me

SUMMER

with my feet in
the summersoft soil
everything becomes
a transparent mystery

I bewitch the
trees with my silence
never they smiled
to me like this

the trees are
just like my gait
gentle gestures from
the same Source

without Me
no gait no trees
I Am the One who
is behind everything

I completely and all
transparent
the whole existence
a smile