Janine Müller
(delivered at the ZEGG New Year gathering, 2000)
Peacework
is in essence nothing else than to cultivate joy and delight,
as powerfully as possible.
I put
this sentence at the beginning of my lecture like a beacon,
because it brings together all the conclusions that I have
drawn from my stay in Albania and Kosovo. It shows that
the confrontation with grief and destruction lies in the
outer world and that the perception of war lies in your
own inner self. I would like to take you on a journey of
research during which these connections will unfold.
Firstly,
that which I hold to be true:
I am
a human being. I am a part of the network of living things:
plants, animals, stones, air and seas. I am a part of the
6-billion strong community of humanity. Each being on the
Earth is, at this very moment, breathing just like us: in
and out, in and out. The bear in Canada, the zebra in Africa,
a child in Grosny, a black musician in New Orleans; we are
all one big organism. Everything I do has an effect on the
Whole, and everything that happens in the Whole has an effect
on me. The tooth which is sore can put the whole body into
a nervous strain. If someone massages my hand, my whole
body feels relaxed because of it. And since we are a part
of the network of life, then we are effected by the situation
of the Earth: the wars, the poisoning of the seas, the violence
against animals. Our inner selves feel this as increased
hopelessness. This effect occurs whether we see ourself
as part of the Whole or not.
The
question, then, is : Is there any hope at all? And if so,
what hope, and under what conditions?
This
summer I was in Albania and Kosovo for six weeks with the
project Balkan Sunflowers, which organises social reconstruction
projects in the Balkans. I worked in a refugee camp in Tirana,
I helped look after volunteers from all over the world during
their stay and helped them deal with their experiences,
and I made two trips to Kosovo with Wam Kat in order to
support the projects there. At the beginning of January
I will make such an inner and outer research trip again.
The
time there made my heart bigger, expanded my spirit and
gave me new courage.
Hope
doesn’t come to me from outside. Hope comes from my knowledge,
not only intellectual, that I am a part of the whole and
therefore I have an effect on the whole. It comes because
I abandon powerlessness and take a fresh look at the world
in order to understand more how it works, and then act according
to the inspiration which this knowledge gives to me.
I live
in ZEGG. Here I can understand the bond with something more
and more universal. I can develop and build this bond on
a daily basis in the community and within an ever-growing
world-wide network around it. I experience key-situations
from being together with people, where I no longer have
fear: no more fear of being hurt by a man when I surrender
myself to him; no more fear of losing him if he goes with
another woman; no more fear of showing to other people that
I am a religious and sensual person. In such moments I wish
that this paradise would never end and that the whole Earth
could be free from fear. It was with these experiences of
trust and ‚being at home‘ that I watched the pictures of
the Kosovo war, which like for many others felt much closer
to me than other wars. This created so much inner pressure
that I had to act.
At the
beginning there are many questions:
I want
to know, how it can be that I kill you and you kill me.
I no longer make an exception for myself since the time
during a ten-day meditation-marathon when I experienced
a fantasy of annihilating a particular woman. For a whole
hour I envisioned all 90 of us participants jumping on her
and battering here until she didn’t move anymore. Simply
because she continually picked here nose and I couldn’t
concentrate because of that.
I want
to know how far I have come with my understanding of the
world and my influence in it. Can I, in concrete situations,
contribute towards transforming the energy of destruction
into a creative power?
I want
to know whether it is possible to take my love for life,
which I so often feel, and go to one of the darker places
on the Earth and plant there a seed of healing.
I want
to know how the consciousness of a person changes when he
is confronted with that which he had repressed beforehand.
I want
to know whether there is any hope for the Earth?
I only
really know that which I experience myself. That’s why I
call it a research trip.
In my
luggage I will take with me a thought from Sabine Lichtenfels,
taken from the "Morning Prayers" in March 1999.
It expresses what gives me protection and a source of strength:
"Do not project on the power of those who follow destruction.
By being linked with the law of eternal life you are protected.
If you can enact in yourself the full and conscious principle
of trust, even in areas of threat and danger, then your
power to initiate change will be limitless. That is THE
power which can heal the planet."
I have
arranged my thoughts under four questions:
- How
does one overcome powerlessness?
- How
does one overcome fear?
- What
role does community play in the creation of inner and
outer peace?
- What
is the relationship between a sensual life and the capacity
for peace?
So,
how does one overcome powerlessness? The simplest answer
and yet the greatest challenge is: Listen to your innner
voice and follow it unconditionally. The inner voice is
the telephone of the universe. It shows us our path. As
soon as I follow it, the fear will disappear and hope will
take its place.
During
the bombardment of Kosovo my inner voice was unmistakable:
"That what you are seeing is unbearable. That’s not
on! You have to go there." That was a sobering voice,
and it was totally clear that I would do it.
As the
telephone of the universe, the inner voice shows no consideration
for the limitations of the everyday consciousness. It is
the bridge by which we can go from the reality where we
are seperated beings to the larger reality of connectedness.
This step from seperateness to connectedness is the spiritual
‚Change of Epoch‘ (referred to in a lecture the previous
day) which has to happen if there really is to be a
change here on Earth.
Joanna
Macy (a founder of Deep Ecology) said "When we make
the Earth our home again through the ability of sympathy,
then we will see a huge joy and a huge power arise. Whoever
can hear the language of the birds and the music of the
cosmos, they also have the sensibility which can hear the
screams of pain from the deepest abysses of existence. To
hear the Earth crying within ourselves. That is the person
with the limitless heart, the person who has once again
found the connectedness with the large network." That’s
how it is. There are many paths to get there; the work in
a crisis-area is at this moment the path for me.
On the
first trip through Kosovo I saw clearly the numbness of
my feelings . This numbness is our normality, our soul’s
and body’s armour which protects us from pain. This inner
armour results in outer armour. That’s why I am speaking
in such detail over this observation. There is a monster
living in us and that will be so until the light reaches
the darkest corners of our consciousness.
I am
in a bus en route from Pristina to Peja, crossing the country
from east to west. I am going with Wam to visit and support
the projects which are just establishing themselves there.
I see countless burnt-out houses and I feel nothing.
That
is irritating and I try to make clear to myself that this
picture is just the surface of a mix of fate, fear, terror
and loss of loved ones. I also stand in front of bombed-out
houses in downtown Pristina and feel nothing.
I notice
that I even have the desire to see a town that has been
reduced to rubble and ashes, in order to enter the reality.
There
are only a few special events that break through this paralysation.
. In Peja we go over a bridge and someone explains to me
that two days beforehand they found a murdered elderly serbian
couple there.
This
couple had not wanted to flee like the others. They had
done nothing to anyone and wanted to stay in the town. It
was simply enough that they were serbian for someone to
kill them. I cry, because they were old and unprotected
and their trust had not been of any use to them.
My defence
is weakening.
After
six weeks I am back at home and little by little I begin
to understand where I have been . I react to the evening
news differently than before. Here there is something about
East Timor, there something about Chechnya. I feel threatened,
on this planet. The reality of the violence is overpowering.
That has been the case for a long time, it’s only that I
haven’t felt it on this scale before.
Resignation
was close, but I had made a clear decision against it. Since
I had just discovered a possiblity for action where before
there had been a taboo-zone. And I saw my questions were
still not being answered. Though I knew they have an existential
meaning for the future of me and of the whole humankind
on this planet.
So,
how do I overcome the fear, the one in daily life, the fear
of intervening in what happens in this world.
Somebody
gives me a book from Aung San Suu Kyi, the woman from Burma
who won the Nobel Peace Prize. She is a woman who inspires
me. She reminds me of the inner power and knowledge in myself
and in every person.
For
decades Burma has been ruled by a cruel military regime
and Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader of the democratic opposition.
She was under house arrest for six years (1989-1995), seperated
from her husband and her children. Her political friends
served many years in jail and were exposed to uncertainty
and torture. Her way of behaving towards the fear, her friends
and her so-called enemies, her refusal of any dramatisation
of the situation, her search for insight, even for perfection,
her humour and her sobriety despite everything: all this
has a deep resonance within me.
There
is a true story, also made into a film, which shows the
power of a fear-free behaviour:
Aung
San Suu Kyi is travelling with her political friends. Watched
by a Major and some officers from the army, her opppressors,
they visit villages and towns. It’s evening and as a group
they are heading towards the house where they will stay
the night. They are heading down the middle of the street.
Then they see soldiers on the side of the street, who are
kneeling and have their weapons ready. The captain bellows
at her that she should leave the street clear. They move
to the edge of the street. Then he says that he would let
them shoot anyway, even if she walked along the side of
the street. Aung infers from this that it is forseen that
she will be shot. Hence, she thinks, she might as well walk
in the middle of the street. As she is walking over to the
middle of the street there is an exchange between the commanders.
There is no order to shoot. Meanwhile Aung’s group walks
through the group of kneeling soldiers. Later it was explained
to her that the captain tore his military badge from his
shoulders and asked what his purpose was, when he didn’t
once get the permission to shoot. Aung described what was
happening inside her: "I had a completely clear head.
I thought, what shall I do? Shall I turn back or shall I
continue? And then I thought, in this situation one doesn’t
turn back. .... Running away doesn’t solve any problems.
... In this country we need to pose a whole heap of questions
and then answer them. That is the only possibility to be
able to solve our problems."
For
me this scene has become a symbol of the belief, that in
EVERY situation one can transform fear into contact and
freedom through a spiritual effort.
At another
point she also states: Each revolution must be a spiritual
revolution.
From
reading her interviews I’ve had many powerful thoughts about
fear, friendship and pacifying the spirit. These can help
to understand how she is able to act like this.
I’ll
mention the most important:
You
do not need to have fear when faced by people who you do
not hate. Foster positive thoughts about the people facing
you and they can do you no harm.
Do not
permit others to take possession of your inner-self, nor
your feelings nor your spirit. As soon as you begin to feel
hate, you yourself have failed.
You
will reach your goal if you have humour.
(At
the beginning of Aung San’s house arrest, her contact with
the outside world was broken, but not by disconnecting her
phone at the exchange. What actually happened was that men
came into her house and crudely cut the telephone cable
and took her phone away. She found that hilarious!)
Do your
work with your full power. That is the only remedy against
despair.
Work
for a world that is free from fear. At the same time do
your best to free your own heart from fear.
Do everything
that is humanly possible not to live in fear. That is all.
For
this friends are a great support. Aung had many personal
friendships with her political colleagues. They helped each
other to avoid becoming vindictive. "Our mutual care
held back the angry feelings which are present in everyone."
In her own way and according to her own possibilities she
created a type of community.
With
that I come to the question, what is the meaning of community
in the creation of inner and outer peace?
Community
is a vessel in which a person can observe the effects of
the habit of thinking ‚seperate‘ instead of ‚connected‘,
and in which the person can let go of this habit. The way
the Earth is at the moment is the result of this spiritual
habit. By community I don’t mean just a fixed place such
as this community, but also a ‚community spirit‘. A community-minded
person will take care of trust and truth everywhere, since
he knows that everything is connected to everything. And
because the deepest longing of humans is the same everywhere,
namely for a life in which they feel recognised and respected
in their search for meaning, for permanence in love, for
a fulfilled sexuality, for solidarity and friendship, for
a meaningful occupation and for relationship with the universal
connectedness. It is in this sense that a community with
aims like those of ZEGG can be seen to be structurally working
its way towards peace.
Whether
I look back into history or whether I make myself aware
of the incomprehensible horrors which are happening at this
moment, I know either way that the elementary inner human
life impulse has been so repressed that people have to forge
their path violently. The symbolic picture of a ‚normal‘
human is one with a tie, with a briefcase in his hand, anally
retentive and afraid of saying what he thinks. He can‘t
really cry, can‘t really love, can’t really breathe, nor
enjoy, nor be angry. A person who is so civilised that he
doesn’t really shoot with a gun shoots indirectly..
War
is inside us.
In our
community we create the experience of not condemning ourselves
for what a normal person does. Instead, through techniques
like Forum, which we hold regularly, we try to study and
transform ourselves.
As I
was preparing this lecture I came across a text with the
title ‚I carry the Yugolsavia War within me‘. It was written
by a spanish doctor and peace worker, Jose Luis Gil Monteagudo.
He asked himself whether somewhere in his inner self he
could find the same characters that play roles in the Kosovo
conflict. Is there within him a Milosevic, a NATO, a paramilitary
soldier, a serbian village or a kosovo-albanian? Extremely
radically he overcomes his last resistance to, for example,
imagining himself as a murderous paramilitary, and finds
that after all, he can find a part of them all in himself.
"All of this disgusts me, but I bring it to the fore
in order to see it instead of repressing it. I have repressed
it long enough, now I want to have a clear look into it.
I don’t want to see any enemy outside of me. I know who
the real opponent is (himself). I don’t want to make
an enemy of him, if I did that I would hurt only myself.
I want to forgive this opponent, and for that I need to
unmask him, as lovingly as possible but without compromise."
Myself,
I can find at once a NATO General inside me, who is fighting
for something just and attacks in the name of peace. I would
like to give an example from the time just before Christmas:
we were discussing as a community how we wanted to celebrate
Christmas. Among other things we were talking about consumerism
and grandmothers who send too many presents, etc. I was
outraged because Christmas is about creating a holy space
among humans. I declare the others to be stupid, wrong and
that I am right. (We had a very moving Christmas which brought
us all close together.) However, in this moment I cut myself
off from the others at lighting speed and unpacked my weapons
in the name of higher values. I was fighting for a just
cause and felt justified to dish out verbal sword-thrusts.
To NOT fight a war would have meant not to have let the
connection be torn down and, for example, to put forward
my ideas of Christmas as an affair for the heart.
At this
point I would like to give a particular thank-you to those
who took on organising the Christmas celebrations.
This
example shows clearly the role of community in the transformation
from a ‚seperated‘ behaviour to a ‚connected‘ one. People
who can, from both sides, express what they think and see,
can really accelerate this change.
We here
now are also a huge community. You can, if you want, from
time to time ask yourselves: does what I am now thinking
serve war or peace?
I have
talked a lot about overcoming powerlessness, about overcoming
fear, about the meaning of community in the sense of a peace-building
power. Now I would like to explore the significance of such
a peace-building power between man and woman. I can only
do that here in a limited way; this whole project has had
this as a central point for decades. I would like to do
it from the angle of looking at how the step to outer peacework
was for me also a step forward in my innermost healing.
It is
because the one thing affects the other that I gave this
lecture the title ‚The Joy of Peace‘.
The
confrontation with the pain of this world does not drive
me to resignation, but towards a deepened consciousness
of being alive, a deepened consciousness of being a woman,
and to the growing naturalness, even urgence, of acting
sensuously. I have this picture of a set of scales; with
every person with whom I share a sensual situation, the
worldwide balance shifts towards warmth and trust and away
from cold and fear. This picture can be applied to every
action and every thought.
The
cold in the world drives my whole being to promote, wherever
I can, warmth, sensual enojyment and a cellular trust. Sexual
action arises from this naturally.
In history
the repression of sexuality has, for example through the
persecution and torture of witches in the Middle Ages, lead
to the wiping out of trust on a cellular level. . Fear is
registered as information in our body’s knowledge. I have
known for brief moments this ‚Original Trust‘ from sensual
and sexual situations. It is with this level of biological
trust that a child, arisen out of sexual love, comes into
the world and looks to us for his sensual home. In this
sensual home nothing must be done and everything is allowed
‚to be‘. As adults we are also looking for this. This condition
is the body’s and soul’s desire in which there is no more
fear.
Next
to this we find the other truth:
I am
watching the pictures on the television. Young soldiers
have been shot and they lie in mud and dust. I can often
feel a connection with their bodies, their hands and arms
and with that for which these were made. Not to destroy
life, to pull the trigger and shoot, but for sensual contact
with children, with girlfriends, with parents, with animals,
with plants. I know what life is really there for and hence
I have to take a stand.
As I
participate more in the whole, which I am part of, the personal
things which we call problems and take very seriously fall
away. Does he love me? Do I still have a chance as I get
older? Do others think the right thoughts about me? Etc.
I now find such things to be time and energy wasting. I
trust more and more that when I do what I want to do and
need to do, then everything that I need will come without
effort.
I am
interested in the universal human being. As such, I follow
my impulses, I follow the attraction to a man with a free
spirit, with a simple, sensual perception, with a surrender
to a cellular opening-up and trust. I am independent from
a fixed fulfilment, and at the same time convinced that
the whole sensual joy of the world is given to me as a present.
Because it has a universal correctness, because I want it
and because, in all simplicity and lightness, that is what
I take care of. I freely go away from a man and trust that
it won’t be long before I will meet this luck again.
Peacwork
is the cultivation of joy, wherever it is. Politics, sexuality
and love belong together.
With
the fear fading away from me and with the growing connectedness,
my inner ‘wider love’ can develop itself, a ‘wider love’
for everything that lives. This leads to an all-embracing
consciousness in every core area of life. Religiously that
could read: love and compassion are not divisible. There
is only one Being.
Erotically
it could read: sensual love is universal. Its role is to
create the experience of cellular trust between people,
between man and woman.
Politically
that means: everyone counts who is aware of his true potential
and actively takes part in the creation of a world community
of all beings.
After
these intimate themes, the focus now moves again to the
outside world.
On the
7th January I will, so to say, take the training
one step further. I will spend seven weeks in Peja in Kosovo.
I will be working in a cultural centre, with the inner picture
of bringing people together so that ‘connectedness’ and
compassion can grow there as well, because I see this as
the only medicine against the inner and outer cold, against
fear and hatred, against hopelessness. I will have my toolkit
with me: the spiritual toolkit that you now know, a community
behind me, a body that is fit thanks to cold showers, good
nutrition, human and male warmth and my belief in the goodness
of humanity.
I invite
you, on this last day of the century, to find a new determination
to make the Earth into a home for us and for all beings.
As all-embracing as you can feel.
Perhaps
you can feel as far as to the women in South America who
work in the banana plantations where the ground has been
poisoned for decades by pesticides and whose wombs have
become infertile because of that. And whose bananas we eat.
Perhaps
you can feel for the dogs in Tirana. Their friends, humans,
have abandoned them because of their own problems. Now the
animals have formed packs again. Once a year the police
are allowed to spend all night in a free-for-all dog-shoot.
There are hundreds. Behind the police cars the lorries follow
to load up the corpses.
May
our revolutionary spirit awake again. May millions of people
give up their participation in what we today call civilisation
and decide once again to build the community of humanity,
to build a life free from fear.
That
is the most worthy aim which I know. This is what I mean
when I speak from the "Joy of Peace".
ZEGG
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