The precision with which we are supposed to be able to exercise control over every thought-impulse — which is responsible for the chain reaction of emotions and feelings that unravels as a result of it — is an aspect of our inner dynamic for which we never get lessons in order to understand it better. Accustomed to falling back on reflex thoughts that shoot before they have been allowed to marinate in the insight of the greater whole, we become cowboys of a Wild West on our own inner landscape. Unlimited power and unlimited possibilities combine to make the tongue one of the most lawless outlaws on the battlefield of the ego.

If you do not like the plot of a story or the characters in it, you do not walk up to the screen of your TV or to the cinema-screen to change it there. No, to change the story you must replace the script at the projector. The same is true of the happenings around us. If you do not like what you are experiencing, you will not manage much by forcing things right from the outside. At most you will only stay powerless and frustrated. What happens around us is usually a projection of a reality that, on a deeper dimension, is already true. And it is there that we must look for solutions. The starting blocks of change must stand in the right place. Otherwise all attempts at change will be temporary and ineffective.

As a community, the collective ego of all of us together will create its own story with main characters who, obedient to the nuances of spiritual content or the lack of it, faithfully represent the heroes or the villains of our story — a tale legible to everyone and a daily reality. When the pages of our book come loose or fall out, everyone is very quick with a diagnosis. It is, however, the prognosis which never gets beyond being one of the items on the agenda of a committee or an action-group before it fails us.

If our present reality is unacceptable — more still, if it is unbearable to the point where we are willing to let the change begin with ourselves — then, for the first time, it becomes possible to turn the ship around, away from the iceberg. Then it is time to consider our spiritual options. Then you look the iceberg in the eye, but you deny that it will be your end or your community's. Then you know that there is a resurrection, a triumph of Light over the darkness, which can change the dynamic of your problem. Then you make sure you are centred in the core of your relationship with God — there where new context and exuberant joy are not only possible but a given. Where endless possibilities can become true because love, faith and hope break through fresh and purified to make miracles a part of our daily experience.

Groete Amanda Kreitzer