In these days of deception, where the awareness of one hoax is undermined by the next scam already, I notice that most skulls that still have some functioning tissue in them are likely to become pressure cookers, thus making the roll-out of the 5G microwave network, to bring our brains to a boil, unnecessary. On so many fronts people’s mental health is being attacked that the reactivity they experience has taken on chaotic shapes, which is why I would like to focus today on what is healthy and whole prior to all that madness. And this not by longing back to good old times, but by seeing how health and wholeness can now be served and preserved.
Last night, Karin had just gone to bed, I walked from the kitchen to my writing desk and thought about my father’s and school teachers’ stories about World War II. To put it simply, freedom had been fought for and many casualties had been made. I thought of the Jews whose rights were deprived more and more, who were given Jewish stars, how their freedoms were slowly but surely diminished. It was then hoped by many that it would all turn out fine, until they were transported like cattle by train to suffer their fatal fate a little later. Remembering this made me realize that I felt happy that that madness was behind us, but that this was too early a shout, because humanity does not learn so easily, only a few do. And now it is not the Jews but all world citizens, with the exception of the elite who are on the agenda, who are increasingly undergoing the limitations of their freedoms. And it is only getting worse also this time.
This thinking reminded me of Etty Hillesum (1914-1943), born in the Netherlands, murdered in Auschwitz. Decades ago, I read a selection from her diaries and was deeply moved to read time and time again that this woman, amid the horrors of the concentration camp, was rejoicing in the recognition of God. I am not concerned here with discussing the existence or otherwise of God, with joy and amazement I experienced as a reader that circumstances that would be described by most as hellish, did not take away Etty’s capacity for experience of unity and happiness. She was currently in the concentration camp, but in her mind she was uninhibited by what her surroundings wanted to suggest to her about slavery, and wrote beautifully about it. She was not caught in reactivity; she had a self-examination running that kept her free from this. The following forty quotes illustrate this well.
***
March 15th, 1941:
And if only one decent German existed, it would be worthy to be protected from the entire barbarian gang, and for that one decent German one should not be allowed to pour out his hatred on a whole nation.
March 15th, 1941:
Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is freedom.
June 19th, 1941:
The point is to break free from the little me, to work, to the other people. Once again I am very dissatisfied with you. You act too much luxury with your soul. You do not have yourself under discipline.
October 5, 1941:
You should learn to rely more on your own experiences and perceptions and intuition and not think that you should get the most out of the books.
October 7, 1941:
Development does not count with time.
October 21, 1941:
My study is actually not the collection of knowledge, but the search for things behind things, very modest and simply put: the search for the riddle of life. What probably every person looks for in his own way. And the riddle of life does not exist.
October 22, 1941:
When this really becomes a fixed philosophy: what is worth a single life, while they die by the thousands at any moment, only then the destruction is complete.
November 30th, 1941:
And the heavy and the light, everything has to be accepted, as the different sides of my being
December 19th, 1941:
Sometimes there are those prose sentences in me, upright and almost grown up, but heaven knows where they walk.
December 19th, 1941:
Grace must find a well-prepared technique in its scarce comings.
December 22, 1941:
Let night be night and day be day, and do not treat one unjustly by the good memory of the other, and let every moment of a friendship unfold in its own worth, not compared, belittled and inhibited in its development through the memory of another moment.
December 23rd, 1941:
Resistant, steady, patient.
December 23rd, 1941:
Where does tolerance end and characterlessness begin?
December 29th, 1941:
Simplicity, which is only superficiality and simplicity, acquired through all complexities.
It is not that simple with simplicity.
January 14th, 1942:
I have the courage to make mistakes, so to speak, and still maintain my confidence.
February 27th, 1942:
I will travel through many countries and I will travel the faces of people like so many landscapes. From all corners of the world, where I will be, I will have something to say to people in my own humble way, but I have something to say in my own way.
March 8th, 1942:
Loyal, truly loyal to oneself and to the values ββthat are held in high esteem and have the courage to be unloved by others for the sake of that loyalty.
March 8th, 1942:
And then listen, listen everywhere, listen to the bottom of things
March 28th, 1942:
One cannot be relative enough in what one demands of others and not absolute enough in the demands one places on oneself.
March 28th, 1942:
This grief must provide you with all the space and shelter in yourself that it deserves and in this way the grief in the world may decrease, if everyone wears, bears honestly and loyally and mature what is imposed on him, but if you do not give it fair shelter, but opens up most space for hatred and revenge, from which new sorrows will be born again for others, yes then sorrows will never end in this world and will continue to multiply.
March 29th, 1942:
Despite the many people, the many questions, the multifaceted study, one must always carry with oneself a great silence, in which one can always withdraw, even in the midst of the biggest turmoil and in the middle of the most intensive conversation.
April 1, 1942:
And being very, very humbleβ¦. And getting easier. … Not only for yourself, in your quiet and best moments that feel simplicity and breadth in you, but also in your daily life, do not spread sensations around you, do not want to be interesting.
April 24th, 1942:
Surely the world has perished for each person individually and yet it still exists.
April 30th, 1942:
Never resign, never flee, process everything, even when it means suffering, that is not a problem, but never, never resign.
May 18, 1942:
That inner concentration erects high walls around me, in which I find myself again, gathering myself together from all the scatterings into one whole.
May 24th, 1942:
And I believe this is also part of the process of consciousness: recognizing its states and continuing to oversee and understand and put it into perspective and not take it too absolutely.
May 29th, 1942:
One should not add the smallest dissonant to this world, which is so full of dissonances.
May 29th, 1942:
I will always choose a messy desk full of books and papers, which is mine alone, over the most ideal and harmonious marriage bed.
June 2nd, 1942:
In later years it will be our pride and our victory that every destructive blow that has been tried to inflict on us has turned into its opposite and has only promoted our strength and our development.
June 3rd, 1942:
But I know that life will always consist of getting up and going to sleep and some meals per day and daily duties and in between one must get through with the big things that are believed to be whatΒ΄s life about.
June 5th, 1942:
The words should actually accentuate the silence. … It will then be about the correct ratio of words and wordlessness, a wordlessness, in which more happens, than in all words that can be found together.
June 10th, 1942:
Sometimes it is as if I have a large workshop in which I work hard, hammer and god-knows-what.
And sometimes it is as if I am inside of granite, a piece of rock, and strong streams of water continually crash against that rock and hollow it out. A granite cave, which is increasingly hollowed out and in which contours are chiselled and shaped. And maybe on a good day, the shapes will be ready with sharply outlined forms and I just have to copy what I find in me?
June 10th, 1942:
And it is part of the culture, the formation or what you want to call it, that you do not let words, said to you, let fly away in space.
Where it makes sense and where you find it necessary, you should answer the slightest appeal.
I think there are many unanswered and helpless questions floating through the skies, back and forth between people, and when everyone would start in their own way and according to their own ability, to put those questions out of their search and helplessness, for which he has an answer, a shelter, there wouldn’t be so many homeless questions.
June 10th, 1942:
When those insights, which I conquer behind my desk, in association with the noble spirits, do not penetrate into the smallest things of everyday life, when not one of the great realization about human values ββ… penetrates, then that “spiritual life” … makes no sense.
June 11th, 1942:
One does not have to hide his restlessness and sadness, one has to bear and endure them, but one should not surrender so completely to it, as if nothing else in the world exists anymore.
June 11th, 1942:
And so it must be? That one does not avenge one’s own gloom, sadness or whatever on others through unkindness? When we suffer, we don’t have to let others suffer with it, do we? When on this point once the education of humanity was taken up.
June 17th, 1942:
When one has the power for the small things, one also has them for the big.
June 21st, 1942:
Although we remain one narrow street, through which we are allowed to go, the whole sky is still above that street.
October 2, 1942:
Carry fruit and flowers in every place where one is planted, shouldΒ΄t that be the meaning? And should we not help to achieve this intention?
October 13, 1942:
One would like to be a bandage on many wounds.
***
Words of integrity, where not the environment but Etty’s inner life is the starting point for her ethics. Here ethics still sound too punitive and philosophical, here her Heart speaks with a free, inquisitive eye, willing to doubt everything that can be imagined, so fully living Wisdom and Love.
The freedom we gained after World War II has proved to be temporary. Freedom was also relative in a geographical sense: poverty, hunger, oppression and war prevailed in most of the world. We were supposedly spoiled here, and that has now come to an end. Now it comes down to recognizing the limitations of life here on Earth, improving the situation where possible, and residing above all in the non-reactive realm of sincerity where Peace and Love have not yet been lost.
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