The Words of the Beutl Family
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The Words of the Beutl Family |
My dear brothers and sisters,
I wanted to share with you the basic content of an article which I wrote for a journal whose readers are not members of the Unification movement. The following lines are a translation from the original German text with a few additions:
The main topic of this edition of Elflien news is certainly closely connected with the previous one under the theme of "Being wholesome out of one’s own strength". Therefore one or the other aspect or thought which I shared in my previous lines may appear again in this article. But I do think that it is important to have a close look at the given topic as we are all confronted with it from time to time on external or internal levels.
Personally I could experience for example repeatedly that upon catching a cold I was able to overcome it within a short period of time through conscious efforts -- or on the other hand that I went through a longer period of being sick by just letting the sickness go its way. How I responded to having become ill depended on my spiritual situation at the respective times. When I felt that I could not afford to be in bed for a few days then I was usually able to “quickly” restore my bodily balance and health again. For this purpose there was of course special behavior from my side necessary.
I suppose that most of the readers of Elflien news are well aware how strongly the state of our soul influences our body. As far as I am concerned, I am certainly convinced that one can hardly give this essential point of our inner situation enough attention. Generally we pay too much attention to internal aspects of our wellbeing which represent the foundation for how we feel on external levels. For this reason is indeed important that we are very attentive and really sensitive towards what is going on inside of us -- in our innermost soul.
Through scientific research we know nowadays that the various processes that are happening in our body are more complicated and interconnected than one may have presumed in earlier times. That means that there is much more going on than one would normally expect or be aware of. This is also true for the inner life of people in their souls. Accordingly we are called to invest especially into this area because there the core components that allow us to heal ourselves must be dealt with properly.
It is my firm conviction that the realm one needs to have the closest look at may be simply called “loving relationships” -- in which way do we experience and practice them? The word “love” may cause various associations in our hearts, causing positive emotions to be stimulated or reminding us of negative experiences.
Scientifically it is proven that children who grow up with little loving support are much more likely to become sick compared to those who grow up under the protection of loving family relationships. If there is a serious lack in this realm then it will result ultimately in substantial consequences for our emotional and physical health. Because the human desire for loving relationships is so strong, we are accordingly affected if we are not able to experience them in the way we are longing for.
Based on such an understanding I am dedicated to support the task of dealing in a profound way with our inner situation when the question of healing oneself out of one’s own strength is asked. One may try to suppress problems and burdens of the soul but they will anyway come to the surface in one way or another. Because dealing with one’s inner reality is a problematic task, most people prefer not to do it with a consequent attitude and prefer to hide their real inner situation, pretending to be more or less fine even though they may feel to the contrary in their hearts.
But it is this very realm of our heartistic reality that needs to be addressed in each one of us and taken care of properly in order to secure our emotional health just as well as providing in this way a strong base for our physical wellbeing -- to make sure that we will be able to heal an illness on the foundation of our own resources.
What I consider in this respect to be a core truth is the fact that the fulfillment in the realm of heart which we are longing for deep inside can only be found in the relationship to other people. This means, we do depend on others when it comes to fulfilling our innermost desires. Undoubtedly our success in building truly loving relationships will also find its practical manifestation in our inner harmony and health of our body.
From this perspective I would like to say in response to Elfriede Lienhart’s question concerning the limitations of healing oneself that the real borders of our possibilities to heal ourselves are found there where we are not open enough to deep relationships. This may be for one or the other among you an unusual answer but I am convinced that upon deeper reflection on the value of loving relationships for one’s own health it should be possible for everyone to recognize the great value of this essential aspect of life for the sake of being able to deal with the challenge of illnesses in an appropriate way.
According to our personality we develop relationships in unique ways which may differ greatly on an individual level but the decisive issue remains the quality of our connecting with others on the level of heart based on deep trust. In this respect it is such a wonderful blessing for parents that children trust them to begin with naturally from the time of birth -- until they make bad experiences leading to this vital inner connection to be broken.
Generally there is already a certain gab in the relationship between parents and children by the time the teenage years are reached, which is not really bridged any more in so many cases until the end of life, the external separation through death.
The bad experiences in the parent child relationship affect of course also other levels of relationships, hindering us to develop those close relationships of heart which would be essential for our inner and outer wellbeing and accordingly to our untarnished happiness. This means that in many cases we do not have enough preconditions which are essential for us to have the strength to deal with difficulties in our health satisfactorily. We do not invest enough in this causal realm of building strong bonds of heart as parent and child, as brother and sister, as husband and wife, as friends…
Many of the readers will we familiar with the statement by St. Augustine: “Love and do what you want.” He explained that we are to have love at the bottom of our hearts and from such roots nothing bad can develop. Personally I want to add: “Love in the right way and…” because it is essential that we love with the right heart in order to be able to do what we want. Only on the foundation of our hearts being fully aligned with the eternal truth and our deepest conscience will we also be able to harvests the fruits of our loving in a responsible way, which enables us to find healing whenever the need arises.
To put it into one sentence: The inner need for inner healing must be dealt with first in order to secure our being able to overcome difficulties with our health in the long run so that our body will always have enough support from our mind and soul to cope with sicknesses.
In this respect it is definitely important that we become more aware of the fact that love is the most precious of all medicines. But it is not simply one which we can take by ourselves. We depend on others -- on the relationships we develop with them -- in order to secure our own emotional and bodily health and therefore we are well advised to put our special attention to this most important realm while setting our priorities accordingly.
I wish that you may all experience ever growing realms of loving relationships that are enriching for your hearts and represent a source of strength in order to respond to the need for healing in the way it is originally meant to be -- with the power of our hearts and our ability to love deeply…
Sincerely, Nikolaus Beutl
PS: For those who are not familiar with my reflection about the theme: “To be wholesome out of one's own strength” which I mentioned at the beginning I wanted to add this article here:
Dear readers of this journal,
The word "wholesome" which refers in my understanding to a state of bodily and internal health. If we are suffering from some kind of unhealthy situation we are trying to solve it by using some kind of remedy, depending on where we are putting our trust.
Nowadays there is quite a wide variety of external or internal means for solving health problems available. As much as people are different from one another the special support to which a person responds well may vary greatly and I think that one should be positive about any kind of method which helps us to achieve and stabilize a healthy state of our mind and body.
Ultimately I am convinced that it is love which represents "the highest of all medicines" as Paracelsus expressed it. Love is not just an emotion but a loving heart is mobilizing the intellect and the ability to feel or to be compassionate as well as one's will to enrich a person in the best possible way. Adding to this is the intuition which may be very helpful to realize what a person may need the most at a given time in order to restore the internal or the bodily balance. Mr. Ruediger Dahlke explains in his book: "Sickness as the language of the soul" that external suffering has ultimately its origin in an unhealthy internal state of mind.
Concerning the topic of this edition "To be wholesome out of one's own strength" it is obvious for me that it is our ability to love which is most of all challenged in order to achieve such a goal. Inside of each one of us there is an incredible potential of abilities to love which we could only develop to a limited extend because in the realization of love we all depend on others. Nobody is able to experience loving relationships without an object for his or her love. I see it therefore as the most important aspect on the way to being more "wholesome" to care about one's real internal situation - how far we feel fine concerning our ability to love. We should sincerely ask the question: Which unfulfilled desires are we carrying around within ourselves?
To the German word ‘wholesome’ there are different words related which have the same stem such as ‘salvation’ or ‘holy’. I regard it as worthwhile in this context to think about what is holy for each one of us.
In the different religions we find various understandings concerning the question of what may be considered as holy or worth of our special attention which is usually also expressed in certain external forms. Unfortunately people get stuck often with external symbols or rituals. In this way the general consciousness concerning the need of areas in our life which are holy to us is lacking. For me it is obvious that these should be related to heart and love and therefore it is necessary that our personal world of love relationships is whole and not broken in order to experience wholesomeness. I see this as the most important task in one's efforts towards realizing the core content of the topic of the present edition of this journal.
In the last but one edition of this magazine we were considering how to create harmonious relationships and in the previous issue the possibility of experiencing heaven on earth. The valuable content expressed there is also relevant for the present main topic because functioning relationships are a basic foundation in order to feel really wholesome.
The more we succeed in developing them in the direction of being heavenly the more we are moving towards a wholesome internal world in us which surely expresses itself in an external healthy state. Statistically it is proven for example that people who are living in functioning partnership relationships have less health problems than others who live alone.
The human body has a rather strong foundation to activate the self healing-system but many times we are hindering this natural process through our wrong attitude or false concepts. It is natural for us to wash our body regularly but should this not be also true for our spiritual body? A purification of the soul is at times expressed in tears which have astonishingly a different level of salt content according to the motivation behind them. It is my understanding that our internal self should be regularly cleaned and freed from unnecessary ballast in order for our internal resources to develop without restrictions.
Each one of us may have individual practices or fields he or she is concentrating on. The important point is that we are doing such an inner work consequently and make an honest inventory from time to time concerning our real internal situation.
The German term for “being wholesome” derives from the words “holy” and “to be” namely, “being holy”. Each cell of the body has the potential for being wholesome stored in it, whether it be a sick or a healthy human being. Just as the former is longing for a healthy body the other may be concerned about his or her spiritual well-being.
It is interesting that the word god has its origin in the Indo-Germanic “ghau - guda” which has the meaning of “the one we are calling out to”. It is in my understanding of our basic situation that it is very important to care about the direction of our desires in order to feel entirely wholesome.
With children it can be easily observed how they are naturally strengthening their inner and bodily situation by laughing and crying, by freely expressing their emotions. A mental equilibrium is the best fertile soil for our inner potential to develop in the right way. Especially the aspect of laughing or experiencing joy has been proven to play an important role. In my children I can see how they are eager to be merry and joyful, pursuing intuitively the right attitude.
Christian Morgenstern expressed it in such a way: "Laughing and smiling are the door and gate through which a lot of goodness may enter into human beings." This is also my conviction and I am mentioning it in this article as such a behavior is quite helpful to mobilize our own resources or energies.
To sum up or conclude I would like to stress that I appreciate the manifold offers to improve our inner or external well-being but the way to being truly wholesome leads through a basic improvement of our heartistic situation. An old German saying goes: “A joyful heart makes our feet feel light.”
This is only one of many remarks which could be mentioned here pointing to the fact that our internal condition determines to which extend our energies are mobilized or hindered to flow freely. In this respect I wish for each human being to recognize and to use as much as possible the positive stimulations in our surroundings and to protect oneself of negative influences in the right way. Because this is an important practical condition for being able to let our own forces be effective and to be able to go through one's life in a wholesome way.
Sincerely yours,
Nikolaus Beutl