An Oasis is a good place to pause and reflect. Each of my weeks provides ample inspiration in terms of topics; from coaching sessions, conversations with family and friends, my own reading, or one of the many podcasts I absorb when on the move. A topic will resonate with me early in the week and I get great pleasure from the iterative process of drafting, revising, polishing, and finalising each essay. Then comes the selection of a suitable photo, usually a product of yet another creative hobby of mine. I invite you take a little time out, to create your own six-minute oasis, find a comfortable chair, and read. You will hopefully find some inspiration from or a degree of identification in these Weekly Reflections. If you do, feel free to subscribe to this section. You will then receive future installments directly by email. Also, feel free to share the link among your circle of friends and associates. Finally, feedback and comments are always most welcome.
EnJOY!
While it is true that the spiritual path is open to everybody, not everybody follows the call. Some never even get to hear the call. This remains one of the great mysteries, to be simply accepted as a characteristic of the human condition.
For most of my life, I fell prey to the very widespread illusion that the cause of all my problems is ‘out there’. In practical terms, it unfolds roughly as follows: Whenever I experienced `irritation´ in the world `out there´ (when my plans fell through, when I didn’t get my way, regretted the past, feared the future, or when I adjuged that I was being treated unjustly of unfairly, etc.), I reacted by exerting more force to `kick the world into shape´. Despite my heroic efforts, it rarely worked.
Despite having lived in Continental Europe for decades, my inner clock still marks time as I first encountered the concept in my Irish childhood. While, in early adulthood, the hard Bavarian winters often froze our garden pond from early December through to late March, my soul would begin to yearn for the first flashes of colour even before January came to an end. The snowdrops, crocuses and narcissi spung up before my mind’s eye, causing a palpable perception of temporal misalignment between the inner and outer worlds.
Imagine a village in the foothills of a major mountain range, a village where time has appeared to stand still, bisected by a river, always cool from the glacial melt, framed on each bank by snowfields in winter and bright, iridescent, buzzing meadows in summer. Life was carefree and easy in this village until a strange phenomenon arose. First, a lone body washed up on the edge of the pool right in the middle of the hamlet. The inhabitants were perplexed and shaken. This had never happened in living memory. The corpse, which could not be identified, was respectfully buried in accordance with the cultural mores and the villagers returned to their daily routines…
A case was described whereby a struggling client — a very successful man by all the criteria of our society; self-made millionaire, respected in the community, handsome, fit & healthy, seemingly intact family life, vibrant social network, etc. — was having difficulties in his “empty nest” marriage because he felt that his wife was not displaying sufficient willingness to have sex with him whenever he (apparently often) wanted. “Oh boy! “, I thought, “this is not new to me.” Thinking back to my VIP (Very Important Patrick) days, when I was proud of the fact that my average working week surpassed sixty hours, when, as an executive in a multi-national corporation, I racked up many hundred thousand air miles, it was clear to me that I, too, had fallen prey to the “sacrifice indulge syndrome”…
In her book, Arendt notes that, by stoking tribal nationalism, any nation of people can be persuaded that it is surrounded by “a world of enemies”. This paranoid state then makes way for the ideology that states that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with and better than all others, thereby excluding the very possibility of a common family of humankind, a sisterhood and brotherhood of all humans, indeed of Creation as a divine whole. For such a ploy to succeed, the innate human sense of community (among peoples) and belonging (to the wider sphere of the natural world) needs to be smashed…
