For several months now, we have felt that we have lost track of what is happening in the world. Our everyday life is disturbed, much uncertainty and fear is in the air. To understand, we are looking for explanations, for reasons. Conspiracy theories make their rounds, we are looking for «someone» who caused all this. It is an ancient pattern to be able to accuse someone of breaking into our «normal» life. The history of mankind provides ample examples of this.

Thinking is a tool for objectivity. Something precious that man is given: Thinking can lead to realizations, create new things, ask questions and find answers to questions.

Associative thinking is not objective. It is interspersed with emotions, is reactive, refers to the past, does not respond to the present.

It has been proven that 80% of the impulses go from the abdominal brain to the head brain and only 20% from the head to the abdomen. The abdominal brain „thinks“ only subjectively, ego-related, reactively based on past experiences. „That is how I experienced it – so it is". It is programmed for defence. It blinds us to new things.

When it burns, it needs trained people who have rehearsed fire extinguishing to the point where every handling has been practiced. You cannot start practicing in an emergency.

Associative thinking, which has a firm grip on us, is built on countless connections of brain cells, which have been established over decades. You cannot change them from one day to the next. The connections between the brain cells are "crystallized”, they do not dissolve on command. If we simply superimpose «positive thinking» or «uplifting ideas» on the processes of associative thinking, they have no power.

8. I want to eat,

and I want to be eaten. – Amen.

New Testament Apocrypha Acts of John, Manichaean Gospels of Leucies (one of John's Companions)

Everyone has a "root theme” in their life. It can be a simple or complex topic composed of different components. Working on it is a life's work.

The root theme has been given to us since birth. However, it is covered up, wrapped in experiences so that it can reveal itself. Its «blueprint» is made visible through experience. It is often concealed by compensation, which makes becoming aware of it more difficult.

In the morning, my soul has gently emerged from sleep. The prayers before falling asleep were present in consciousness: I prayed for clarity; what is the cause of the suffering in the conflictual situation in which I am currently in.

I looked into the calm water, where no movement had taken away the clarity. I saw down to the ground: The crystal-clear water let me see to the depth where the pebbles shone by the light falling on them. Everything was calm and pure.

At the end of this Talk with Agi Reijo said: I like it the way you start talking every time with freshness as if you had forgotten all the reactive ways of expression and can start anew from the beginning. Agi: I only prepare myself and through that I get a theme, but I do not work it out in any way. It is formulated in me out of the present moment; what I express comes to me when we start talking.

In very hot climates, where the heat of the sun has great power, people are usually as brown as mahogany; and in the hottest countries they are negroes, with black skins. A learned man once travelled into one of these warm climates, from the cold regions of the north, and thought he would roam about as he did at home; but he soon had to change his opinion. He found that, like all sensible people, he must remain in the house during the whole day, with every window and door closed, so that it looked as if all in the house were asleep or absent. The houses of the narrow street in which he lived were so lofty that the sun shone upon them from morning till evening, and it became quite unbearable. This learned man from the cold regions was young as well as clever; but it seemed to him as if he were sitting in an oven, and he became quite exhausted and weak, and grew so thin that his shadow shrivelled up, and became much smaller than it had been at home.

This is the first chapter of Jelaleddin Rumi's only known prose work originally published in English as "Discourses of Rumi". This original was translated by A. J. Arberry, published in 1961.
The present sample is from a version based on the Arberry translation, though with changes, and made by Doug Marman (Little Known Publications).

As I was wandering in this temporal world, Allah led me to a straight path. Walking on it in a state between sleep and awakening, as if in a dream, I reached a city which was enveloped in darkness.

It was so vast, I could neither see nor conceive of its limits. This city contained everything which was created. There were people from all nations and races. So crowded were the streets that one could hardly walk, so noisy was it that one could hardly hear oneself or others. All the ugly actions of all the creatures, all the sins known and unknown to me, surrounded me. In awe and amazement I watched the strange scene.

Once there was a little mouse. He was a busy mouse, searching everywhere, touching his whiskers to the grass, and looking about. He was busy as all mice are, busy with mice things. But once in a while he would hear an odd sound. He would lift his head, squinting hard to see, his whiskers wiggling in the air, and he would wonder. One day he scurried up to a fellow mouse and asked him, Do you hear a roaring in your ears, my brother?