July 25, 2004 - Berlin, Germany

The old ways don’t work anymore. The way we are with each other, with our world, with ourselves doesn’t work. All that we know is but a memory. How we think we should be, act, think, do cannot be anymore. We feel an echo of how it was, and think this is how it should be now, but it isn’t, and we know that. It’s possible to behave, act, in the old way. But it is just that – an act. It is absolutely not the truth of who you are. It is a hollow performance, empty, superficial, unsatisfying.

And so. How to be? Any answer to this question can only come from the past, from the memories, the echoes of how we think we should be. There is nothing to go on anymore, nothing to hold onto. No “Truth”. All that we know is based on something created by ourselves: our morals, our ethics, our philosophies. These are created out of our fears, our need for security, our need to KNOW.

Anything we can think of will not be it. It is only now, being with not knowing how to be. Something utterly new wants to come in. Perhaps what is new has always been there. I don’t know any ofthis, I have no idea. It is only my sense, my experience that I cannot be in the old way anymore. And why not? My purest barometer is my body. My body immediately indicates to me if I’m in anyway acting from a place that is a performance, a doing, a copy of something that was before.

I spend a lot of time alone, or unsure. Feeling my mind trying to pull together some kind of motivation to do something. Many “I should’s”, but no energy or inspiration to follow up on these. Sometimes there is a simple moment wherein movement happens. I pick up the telephone and call someone. I open the door and go out. The mind is not involved, not in any big way. There is no effort involved.

The last days I’ve noticed two things – if there is effort involved in an action or choice I have immediate physical and mental stress; if there is doubt about a certain action it seems I am being called to do nothing. Only the effortless, clear ‘yes’ wants to be followed. At other times there is listlessness, wondering ‘what to do’. There is nothing to do. I feel a kind of inertia, and my mind tells me this is ‘dangerous’. And then in the grey light a bright spark appears, all by itself. No doing on my part.

There is nothing we can do. Well this is not quite true, we can choose not to re-create the old ways. Not to support anything that goes against the still, small light within. And then, just to wait and see what will happen. This means being willing to be different, willing not to run with the crowd; willing to risk losing everything that you 'know', and perhaps discovering something completely without precedent.

(With thanks to Volkhard, for the lovely inspiring conversation today.)