Help for the soul in daily living

February 2012
Dear Readers,
What is this issue of Help for the soul about? It is about finding a way that differs from
the ways we have known so far. In diverging from the known lies the solution.
So let yourselves be taken along without allowing any images to hold you back, images
that have long revealed themselves to be on the wrong track. The path that leads us
further takes us straight to the heart of the matter and leads us beyond a boundary that
until now blocked us.
So, read on and walk on. My wife Sophie and I are your companions on this
path, with love.
Yours,
Bert and Sophie Hellinger

Overview
The other consciousness
Ecstasies

Other ecstasies

Conclusions

Letter from a friend

Obituary

About the light

I and we
Meditation: Everything

Sophie Hellinger: The I and the you in constellation work in groups

Bert Hellinger: The early experience of separation and its effects on our relationships
later in life

11

Meditation: You and I

11

The I

12

How our relationships succeed

The moment

13

Yes

13

Extras
Bert and Sophie Hellinger by Jayin Thomas Gehrmann

15

Letters to ponder:

17

Following the core

17

Reflections on carnival: Lighthearted

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The other consciousness

Ecstasies
Ecstasies are states in which we end up beside ourselves. They are under the control of
powers that take possession of us, whether toward something destructive or toward
something that takes us along into creative spheres. These states let us delve into
spheres in which we grow beyond our ordinary way of being; into the sphere of high
art, for instance, or into a sphere of uplifting music, an amazing peace movement, a
trailblazing invention.
We observe such ecstasies again and again, yet it doesnt enter our awareness
that at work behind them are powers that do away with our habitual boundaries to let
us become one with something all-encompassing. All self-centeredness ends here; a
pure we rules supreme in this sphere.
Can you follow me? Would you like some examples?
Take an example that we experience daily, without giving any thought to the
scope of it.
During a great soccer game, for instance, what happens to the spectators? Are
they still with themselves? Or are they beside themselves? What forces have suddenly
been unleashed, lofty and ruthless ones, what an enthusiasm and what a readiness to
use violence?
All the spectators end up in ecstasy. When they wake up from it, they may ask
themselves: Where were we? What made us go so wild?
What we can also observe in this is: The larger the number of people taken
along, the more impressive the ecstasy. In this sense, ecstasy is a mass phenomenon.
This is a relatively harmless example. Another example is war.
Take WWI and WWII, for instance, with how much enthusiasm did German
soldiers go to war? What kept them in a state of willingness to sacrifice everything,
even when they all must have realized that the war was lost? To the bitter end, they
remained in ecstasy.
Or take the great revolutions. The French Revolution, the communist revolution
in Russia and China, and also the industrial revolution, and the computer revolution

that ties many to the internet, as if in self-forgetful ecstasy. These are all ecstatic
movements, without concern for the victims.
Can we hold anyone to account afterwards? Were the great leaders with
themselves, or did they operate as if in ecstasy, possessed by other powers, until their
task was accomplished?
Can we sit in judgment of them? On which powers would we have to sit in
judgment then? Is personal responsibility not an empty phrase here, without any
connection to distant powers that were at work here?

Other ecstasies
Yet there are also other ecstasies. In contrast to the destructive ones, they are collected.
Thus great music can only come to a composer in ecstasy, and the same goes for any
other great art.
These ecstasies let us forget our mundane world. We withdraw into a
transcendent sphere from which we awake again different than how we were before.
The question is: Which powers are at work in these ecstasies? Are they like the ones we
are familiar with in our daily life? Or do they transcend us by far, without being able to
resist them?
Obviously these ecstasies come from another consciousness, beyond good and
bad, beyond war and peace, beyond our will and our ability.
Naturally another question comes up: Are they of this world? Do they belong to
this world? Or do they belong into another expanse in a spiritual space? Do they
belong into another consciousness?
Can I answer this question? Am I allowed to, as if I had the ability and the
authority?

Conclusions
What effect do these deliberations have on me? What do they do to me?
I keep away from gatherings where I could run into the danger of being taken along
into some fields in a manner that I may lose my own self, fields in which I become

unconscious for all accounts and purposes, and where in the end I become less rather
than more.
By the way, in many situations in our daily life we also behave as if in ecstasy;
for instance, when we eat or drink more than is good for us, or when we behave as if
addicted in other ways, also if we experience ourselves as if possessed, like in sport or
in our work. The question is: How can we wake up from these ecstasies?
On the other hand I find myself willing to be taken into other ecstasies, in which
I may also lose myself, but from which I wake up more conscious, more human, and
more given to, in accord with a consciousness that takes me along into a movement in
which I transcend my present boundaries and yet remain with myself. How? Sober.

Letter from a friend

Dear Bert, my dear friend and companion,
May I put it that way? not only because you have been accompanying Brbel and
myself [sic] in our life since 1973. In recent months you are have been particularly
close to me. I have the urge to tell you about it: My heart is full of joy when I read in
your books Journeys to the Core and Natural Transcendence. I enter a land of breadth
and overflowing movement that takes me along and guides me to new shores. I am
presently reading the books for the third or the fourth time, and every day I discover
something new, revolutionary, and compelling.
What you formulated so precisely and beautifully about Recollection,
Center, Emptiness and fullness, Movements of the spirit, I cant list them all -- I
experience all this every day anew. At the same time reconciliation with my existence
is becoming deeper. I delve into an unconditional taking-giving love to my mother.
This extends to my birth in my mothers body and to the primordial mother. Through
your poetic texts, your prayer at the morning of life and the stories, I begin to grasp in
its spiritual meaning what I have found in my body and in my feeling (Find and trust
your best and deepest feeling by A. Janov 1974) and to expose myself to it anew. Your
deep insights have far-reaching implications, I have not found anything like this in any
worldview, religion, or philosophy; these are your insights about conscience, and

beyond that, the unconditional Agreeing to everything that is, without value
judgments of good and bad.
All our emotional fads and particularities deserve respect, which is really the
spiritual form of love. Often they are formed through our primal pain and the survival
mechanisms the child formed in tough times. In my therapy I experience this emotional
world as the spirituality of the child. Partly it is survival loyalty that must serve the
alleged divine authorities. Or on the other hand it is the opposition against an
adversarial, bad world. But beneath it is the flow of this undisrupted Yes from a
magical source that carries us and contains all things. A magical river calls to a mature
spirituality, to a mature way of being man or being woman. They are in accord with
love and respect for all.
In my booklet In the middle of the mess from the nineties, I described my
findings and experiences at the time in a clumsy-unprofessional way. At a conference
in Unna you asked me if my book was a constellations-book, which I denied. Today I
would say it recounts in a humorous-biographical-historical way how the all-moving
spirit wants to lead us to a new spirituality, all the way from our human childhood as
primates from millions of years ago.
Your philosophical insights that come from judgment-free observations of the
world, take hold of me in a new way. Nowhere in literature, poetry, philosophy,
science, religion, psychotherapy have I found anything similar. You push open an everexisting door. A new spiritual revolution that opens to kindness and love is beginning.
No one in science and therapy seems to take notice of this. Why is this so? Did not the
embryo we were at the beginning experience this unconditional agreeing in our
mothers womb? Our mature agreeing leads into an incredible depth and fullness.
Unconditional agreement changes spirituality and life. In myself I sense: I need time to
internalize it, and also the Yes to the world as it is in its greatness and in its mystery,
cannot be done away with any more.
After a holiday on Cypress with Brbel a few days ago I read the book by
Tiziano Terzani, a journalist focusing on Asia, Another Round on the Carousel -About Life and Death. After a difficult cancer operation in a top clinic in New York he
went on a quest for healing. He travelled through the entire philosophical, religious,

and medical world in East and West and tells us about it. Wherever he goes as I
would like to describe it he finds life to be a real grind that one must meet with
strenuous effort, ongoing practice, sacrifice, medicines, improvement, and change. In
732 pages of his account of his journey through the continents the words love for the
world and the worlds love for us only appear in two brief remarks.
Where is the gate, and when can we enter the space of the Yes and of love?
How do we leave our various Nos behind? This has been occupying me for years.
Every day a friendly world comes towards us in physical, emotional and spiritual
ways. When and how do we recognize the Yes behind the Nos that try to push in
front of the Yes? For me it happened through leaving behind all the trappings around
my mother and my childhood. This was a painful event, like a loss, and much in me
resisted the process. Heines poem of the Lorelei and its beginning, I know not what
its it meant to tell me, beside many other things, became a gate to walk through -a gift. I feel love for the many who encouraged me and bestowed gifts on me.
Thank you, Bert,
Klaus and Brbel Bieback

Obituary
A few days ago I received the news of Dezso Palmais death in Hungary. He was the
leading family constellations practitioner in Hungary, and he also organized the last
course for Sophie and me there. His death touched us deeply.
Years ago, for one of my birthdays, he had written a poem and sent it to me in
German. Since then it has a place of honor in our home. In loving memory of him I
include it in this newsletter.
Bert Hellinger

About the light

A child asked The Almighty:
Tell me Almighty, did you see that newborn
Whose eyes marveled at me, whose lips smiled at me?
Well, I saw it, for I was the one who gave birth: to love!
Why did you allow my little sibling to die,
Nine months old in delirious fever, helpless?
Did you not see that I cried, and how bitter mother and father were?
Well, I saw it, for even the one who died there was me, unable to live.
Tell me Almighty, did you see that wondrous man
who was strong, from his eyes poured forth mildness and love,
who gave bread to the poor and made thousands happy?
Well, I saw him, for I was the one who knew to hold back.
Why did you allow those people who
with their daggers drawn, brewing poisons, spewing out flames,
to kill, plunder, torture, trample thousands?
I was the one who did not know how to bridle that hatred inside.

Tell me Almighty! Did you see the spring, how the trees are budding?
I wonder, did you see the blossoming flower of love?
I wonder, did you see the tears of joy, and the cozy and homey nests?
Well, I saw it, for in all of that I am its life!
Why do you allow the infinite suffering on earth?
Of the sick, the hungry, the lonely, those killed by the pain of homelessness?
Do you not see the lost child and the tears dropping down to earth?
Well, I do, for the tear, life renewing itself again and again, this is also me.
Tell me Almighty, whether you see me, me who does nothing but ask you?
The Almighty lit a candle and in its light He saw Himself.
His eyes were glowing, and He was very glad to be able to ask.

I and we
I would like to say something about everything. So, when we observe ourselves, when I
observe myself for, instance, then sometimes I think, it is enough. I have done enough. I
have written enough books already. When I say enough something in me tightens up
as if I pause in a movement that leads further.
Meditation: Everything
Now just close your eyes. We imagine how this is for us. Where do we pause
and say: It is enough. What happens to us then? What happens to our strength? What
happens to our joy? What happens to our relationships? Really, its a pity. Now we
readjust inside, towards everything. Everything there is. Everything that is given to us.
Everything that lies before us. And we are full of joy, and we say: Yes, I take it all. We

feel how this makes us wide inside, and we notice what happens to our environment
when we are in this frame of mind. What happiness!

Sophie Hellinger

The I and the you in constellation work in groups

What does I really mean here? I has the function of setting boundaries. I means: I define
myself against something. What is this something? It is the you, the other person, the
other thing. Now I dare say this: This is also me. It is also necessary in order to get to
know the other. Young children, very young children, like this one, for instance,
(Sophie points to a little boy) say I, but for them it does not have a meaning yet. He is
still one with his mummy, and his mummy with him. In one field, in one aura, in one
energy circle.
What does it mean then to get to know something or someone? It means I define
myself as I, and I recognize the other. I recognize them: This is you, this is the other
one, this is the tree, this is the world, this is a house, and I am here. I set up a boundary
between me and the other.
Each time I recognize something I become a little more I. I push the boundary of
my I a little bit further outside. Know, knowledge is the really great word. Not for no
reason is the word knowledge used for sexual intercourse in the bible. It is said of
Adam, after he ate from the tree of knowledge: And he knew his wife.
How does it happen, this knowledge? He knows her as the other. He knows her
as the outside, the one opposite him, the stranger to whom I do not say I. Knowledge is
derived from knowing. He knew his wife. Knowledge means here: I take something
inside, I real-ize something that is outside. This is a real-ization. With every realization I
move my boundary further to the outside.
My subconscious, my consciousness, becomes a bit bigger and wider. The
attention we give to another person flows back to us immediately, right now.
Energy always follows attention. For this it is not necessary to do a constellation. Not I,
I do it here, but you, you do it here. I offer my observation, my whole attention, and

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you, the observer, you receive something back from them. But if you phone now, or
write or think of your self, then you have not directed your perception there, and your
boundary remains where it was.
There is no objection to that. Perhaps some people must become stronger within
their boundaries before they can say I. People have to be strong in their I in order to be
able to say you at some point.
Some remain only in their own I. They say: What you do does not interest me,
but what I want, that must happen now. I want it now -- I, I, I.
You dont need to wait long for an answer. A small reaction from outside will
come immediately, a tiny little response. This response shows that the I is narrow and
small.

Bert Hellinger

The early experience of separation and its effect on our

relationships later in life
I would like to share an observation that is important for everyone here.
To the participant and the representative for his wife in a constellation: Before you
stood here, you reached your hands out to her and you waited for her to come.
This is a basic movement of life. You wait for the other to come. The
countermovement is: I am coming.
This is based on an experience, of course. There is no evaluation in this. It is just
a matter of succeeding. Also when you shook your head during the thank you, there is
an experience of separation in this, an early one. Therefore I also look at that in you.
The participant bows gratefully.

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We all go through such experiences of separation, a very early one from our
mother. Then there is a rupture. This is the decisive separation that stays with us
throughout our whole life.
Then we protect ourselves against this pain through a word. The word is: I. This
is a movement of protection.

Meditation: You and I

Now we will do an exercise together. Just close your eyes. The decisive experience of
separation is always the experience of separation from our mother, away from our
mother. This is very early, an early trauma that has its effects on our whole life.
We imagine our mother in front of us at some distance, and we look into her
eyes. We sense how on the one hand we are waiting, and on the other hand, inside, we
say No. Nearly everyone has gone through this experience.
Now it is important that we find a good way to overcome this distance. We
succeed in this with one short word: Yes. We keep saying it inside, until our whole
body resonates with this Yes. When it does, we take the first step towards her. In spite
of the fears, in spite of the disappointment perhaps, in spite of the deep pain: Yes,
Mummy. And we take the first step. And the second one, and again a small one. With
each step we experience inside ourselves how our I remains behind, and the you
comes closer to us, until in the end, when we have found our way back to our mother,
our I dissolves in the you.
Arrived there with our mother, what a relief, whole again at last.
Okay.
To the participant: All the best to you.
To the group: How are you? Even though we are so many here, we are all taken along
together into a movement towards another expanse.

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The I
I would like to say something about the I, something quite terrible. Can you still listen
to me? What is the greatest arrogation of the I at all? When someone says: My God.
There is nothing worse than that. There cant be anything more arrogant than that.
What happens to this I? How many wars have been waged, each side with My
God!
The German soldiers well I was also a young soldier had a belt buckle on
which it said: God with us. Is this not arrogant beyond all measure?
So. The overcoming of the I succeeds with the overcoming of this image of God.
Shall I say something else about this? Good, the word good means: I. Bad
means: you. Right means: I. Wrong always means: you. This comes from our
conscience.
There used to be, and it still exists today, a widespread idea that our conscience
is the voice of God inside us that we must heed, at all cost, this voice. What kind of a
voice is this? Always I.
When we deviate from our conscience then we deviate from our I, and we turn
towards something greater.

How our relationships succeed

The moment
Our relationships succeed in the moment, in the immediate attention to another now.
What opposes the moment? Our old memories, our old disappointments, our old
injuries.
When we look into each others eyes and perceive each other as we are now, as
we are also in our depth, when we agree to one another as we are now, we look away
from the superficial, into our depth. We also look into each others suffering, perhaps

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even into our shared despair. Suddenly a deep compassion fills us, a deep mutual
understanding one another the way we are.
This moment of understanding we extend with love. It becomes our daily life,
our normal daily life, and yet fulfilled.
Fulfilled with what? With a deep happiness.

Yes
Yes means I agree to something as it is. This way I agree to people as they are. More
still: I agree that I share my life with them. For instance, when I say Yes to marry my
partner.
And anyhow, everywhere in my life I gain someone or something when I say Yes
to how the person or the thing is.
What happens to me in this moment? What happens to the other? Whatever or
whoever it is also turned to me. They also say Yes to me. When this becomes a full Yes,
we become one heart and soul.
Yet often our Yes is a limited Yes, a Yes with reservations, a Yes with a No.
What happens to us then? What happens to the other? What happens to our
relationship?
Does it remain reliable? Does it become a shaky affair? How much security does
it offer us? Are we beginning to have our doubts about it? Can we pick up this Yes once
more, so that it can become a full Yes?
The question is, which paths are open to us.
The first Yes goes to ourselves, as we are, exactly as we are, without any
reservations. A Yes to our so-called good side, and a Yes to what we and others reject
in us. A disability, for instance, or a weakness, or some guilt and its consequences.
In the face of all this we make ourselves say this full Yes, humbly and with love.
What happens then? What happens to the other people? What happens to an
animal that shares its life with us? What happens to the nature around us, which is in
need of our care perhaps?

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How do they change? How do they turn to us? What happens with our Yes for
them and to their Yes to us?
Most intimately connected to our Yes to ourselves is our Yes to our origin, our
Yes to our mother, our Yes to our father, our Yes to everyone on our family, as they are,
our Yes to our homeland, our Yes to our culture and to our language, and our Yes to
fate.
Now we close our eyes and we check where our Yes deviates from this fullness.
Perhaps it has even turned into its opposite in the course of time, so that a No took its
place.
Step by step we give the Yes the first place. Step by step we leave the objections
to this Yes behind. Step by step we allow our heart and our love to become wide open.
We spread our arms wider and wider. We let our eyes shine with a radiant Yes, with a
wide open Yes, with a full Yes.
Even when there is still some hesitation on the other side, we persevere with our
Yes.
What miracles are suddenly happening! What happiness has come to shine on
us! What peace moves in and what love!
Every growth, every progress, begins with a Yes. Every life, every development,
every fullness reveals itself in the end as a single all-embracing Yes.
Everything creative that we succeed in with our relationships, everything that
heals, every reconciliation, every new beginning, are a full Yes that says Yes beyond all
obstacles, towards the new. This Yes wills and loves, whatever it demands from us, and
above all, whatever it gives to us and to others.

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Extras
Bert and Sophie Hellinger
by Jayin Thomas Gehrmann
Until a few years ago family constellations according to Hellinger clearly meant family
constellations according to Bert Hellinger. Since they established the Hellinger school,
Bert and his wife Sophie increasingly do their constellation courses together. Do they
both do family constellations according to Bert Hellinger? Or does one now have to
speak of family constellations according to Bert and Sophie Hellinger? Does it make a
difference? There are certainly differences. From a distance, even from the distance of
classical family constellations, theses differences may appear small. From close up,
they stand out, and sometimes they are irritating.
When they work together and tune into a client at the beginning, Bert does this
in rather a spiritual way: He goes silent, closes his eyes and turns inward. He resonates
with the client and his or her field. Then he turns to the client with calm and composed
seriousness. With this, he has already created a spiritual field into which he takes the
client.
When Sophie sits next to the client one can observe that in many videos she
also works with the client in a parallel mode. She also has her eyes closed, and she also
goes inside. But her facial and physical expression rather give testimony of what is
working inside her. Obviously she joins in on a more physical level. When she
emerges from turning inside she often has a stunningly clear image about the clients
issues, especially when it concerns physical symptoms.
Unfortunately -- at least thats how it is for me it is hard to follow her. How
does she arrive at this knowledge? Perhaps she knows the participant from her energyseminars? Or does she have such an extraordinary intuition? Is there anything to
understand, is there anything to learn? Different from Bert, she usually doesnt say
anything about it.
Bert emphasizes again and again: I work for the whole group, and he does.
Both Bert and Sophie work for the client, or rather for the clients system or field. They

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work on the themes that the clients bring along. This is often not the topic that a client
consciously names, but rather the theme that is at work in the background. When Bert
works for the whole group, for all the participants of the seminar, this means: He
chooses a field of themes, and also a person who presents a special case, and he works
in a way that everyone can learn from it and grow through it. Sophies focus is
primarily on the client. She is with the client and the clients field, everything else
seems to disappear from her focus.
These two differences lead to another one, namely the use of words. Bert, when
he goes inside, feels completely present and clear. This means, he remains in contact as
an internal observer, and at the same time also at a clear distance from what he
observes. When he turns to the client next to him, he is immediately present and clear
on the outer level again. What he says then is clear, short and precise. And in this state
he completes his session with the client.
When Sophie goes inside, she goes into deep contact with what she encounters.
She is taken by something, also very much on the physical level, and she lets it happen.
When she emerges from this state, she is immediately connected with the client in the
here and now, and she asks or tells the client something that she brought along from
her inner connection with the clients field. This often gives the impression that she
needs to reorient herself again, as it were, here on the surface. Sometimes the right
words seem to be missing, so that she says one thing describing it in three different
ways.
Her way of turning to the client is different from Berts. It feels much more
immediate, more physical so to say, in a spiritual way. The fact that the two work
together as man and woman constitutes a difference. In his talk, The male and the
female in our body, Bert explains that in our body we are not just separated into a left
side, the feminine, and a right one, the masculine, but also into an upper, the
spiritual, male half, and a lower, physical, female one. And that is exactly how I
see the two work. According to this separation we have preferences either for Bert or
for Sophie. And here, too, there isnt a valid and an invalid way. It is also not about
bringing the two modes of working closer together, and making the differences

17

disappear, but instead acknowledging them both for what they are: A more spiritual or
a more physical, a more male or more female approach.
As a rule we are more identified with one side, we like it more, we prefer to be
there. For those who want to test this in themselves, at the end of his talk Bert begins a
meditation on this. When we prefer one side over the other, we fall out of our center. In
the center, which is the heart here, both come together as our father and our mother,
as one in us.
In some way we can also look at Sophie and Bert in Berts constellation work as
mother and father: When the mother sends the child to school in the morning, she
checks if the jacket is buttoned up properly, if the child has a clean hanky in the pocket
and the lunch is in the school bag, and she also gives the child some admonitions and
a kiss before she sends him off. The father says: Now, be off! We probably prefer one
way to the other. And which one is better? Both.

Letters to ponder
Following the core
9.10.87
Those who trust in a good providence in accord with the greater whole, they also wait
against outer appearances and against objections and fears. This is a great spiritual
achievement. In contrast to this, having many deliberations expresses distrust. Then
what brings things together and guides everything, withdraws, and one remains alone,
with only oneself to rely upon. This trust is like preemption of death, and thus there is
no help here either, other than humility and trust.
3.1.89
Some difficulties continue because we can only see one particular way in which their
resolution can happen. It is better to trust that the essential will occur when the right
time has come. But often we are somewhat in the way of this providence with our
planning.

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7.3.89
That you first perceive the reality of this world, and then later find it in what you read,
may be a result of contemplation. The concern about others diminishes when one trusts
that they are also carried by a good power, no less than us. The criteria for intervention
or letting be is recollection. When I am recollected in what I am doing, it has a good
effect; if I become restless, it may be in vain. It is similar with letting be. When in
doubt, one should withdraw.
1.5.90
When one, like you have now, has experienced that there is a good providence and
guidance, when one follows the silent soul, one no longer stray far from the essential.
The memory of it gives trust and strength.
3.7.90
The great soul often withdraws when we, instead of turning to it, rather look for council
and help in the outer world. Only when the soul itself leads us there, can we really do
it without being weakened. Those who finally listen to their own soul and its guidance,
leave their childhood behind, and they are alone and also free.
21.12.90
Forgetting is a spiritual discipline, and it has to do with moving on. Those called do
not dwell with their successes, they move on instantly, so it says in the Dao Te Ching.
The same applies to failure, of course, and to the wish of being remembered. You must
also agree when people have a distorted view of you, and then move on. Inexplicably,
we become entangled in fortunate circumstances, and equally in unfortunate ones.
Agree to each one equally. And renounce the question, Why? For each response to it
is fleeing what is and what is at work.

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3.1.91
We are perhaps more likely to reach some completion when we hand ourselves over to
a good power that works through us, and when we cease wanting to influence the
direction. This power takes care of both the power and the counteracting force at the
right time, for the counteracting force only appears to be adversarial.
22.3.91
When we have the feeling of being in desolate wasteland, it often helps to imagine how
our own roots go deeper into the ground, until they can tap into the water that flows
undiscovered, so that now our roots can participate in the fullness of the whole.
23.4.92
One thing you would do well keeping in mind in your work: the respect for the secret
that endures everywhere, and agreeing to ones own measure. The real learning
happens through contemplation that unswervingly ignores what theories perhaps
imparted to us, and rather looks at the effect and the end.
1.10.93
Looking back is always in vain. Looking to the future is the order of the day, and
orienting ourselves towards what remains. What endures begins anew, and therefore
also from below.

Reflections on carnival

Lighthearted
Cheerfulness is contagious. We are taken along by it in a light way. It is as if we hover
lightly above the ground, easily moving over obstacles.
The serene leaves the worries behind. It is given to the moment and taken along
into a lightness that connects to many and lets us forget past discords. We float past
them.

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Cheerfulness wants company. It brings people together, for it is contagious. In

serene company we let go. In such an atmosphere often a touch is enough to resolve
something and get it going.
Joyousness shines like the clear sky. It is not dimmed by any clouds. It comes
from the heart, from a cheerful heart.
Cheerfully, we also take each other by the hands. We form a circle and begin to
dance.
Free and easy we let many a thing be bygone, and we look forward. We look
ahead in serenity.
In high spirits we forget our little self. We enjoy the company of many cheerful
people. Nobody forges ahead. Free and easy, we are connected to each other on the
same level. The oppositions cease to be.
Joyfully we look into each others eyes. Our eyes twinkle with delight. We enjoy
each other as we are.
Free and easy, we remain on the ground and with the near in every way. In high
spirits, we also become exuberant. We let go of much that burdened us.
There are special occasions when we are full of joy this way; for instance, at
weddings, or on New Years Eve, and we really get boisterous. In a jubilant state, we
love playing with the firecrackers.
When we are lighthearted, can we still be reticent? Or do we openly go to each
other?
Often we are surprised how wide we feel with other cheerful people and how
generous. In such a happy mood we love to buy a round for everyone. We enjoy
sharing something with many others.
With all this gaiety I could hardly hold my horses, I nearly galloped away. Many
happy celebrations have taken me along in my memories and I am looking forward to
the next lot.
Do you feel the same?

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