Facing the Fire - At Gun Point - Where Two Streams Meet
When I left my German farmhouse that morning for school, I had no idea it was the last time I would see my home, a large 350-year-old farmhouse thirty miles north of Hamburg. It was just another ordinary day at school until about one o’clock, when the teacher called me out of class. “You should go home now, Otto.” I noticed that her eyes were slightly red. She did not tell me why I needed to hurry home, but I was concerned enough to try to call home from the train station. There was no ring. The line was obviously dead. I had no idea what might have happened, but by then I knew it probably wasn’t good. After the usual one-hour train ride I ran to the entrance of the station and jumped into a cab.
Something told me I didn’t have time to wait for my usual bus. Long before we arrived, I saw huge gray and black clouds of smoke billowing up into the air. My heart was pounding as the cab approached our long driveway. I recognized hundreds of our neighbors, area firefighters and policemen along with people I’d never seen before. I jumped from the cab and ran down through the crowd, the last half mile of our chestnut-lined driveway. When I reached the courtyard, I could not believe my eyes. The world I had lived in all my life was gone. Vanished. All up in smoke.
There was nothing—absolutely nothing—left except the raging flames. As the reality of the fire in front of my eyes began to sink in, I felt as if somebody had ripped away the ground from under my feet. The place of my birth, childhood, and youth was gone. I just stood there, taking in the heat of the fire and feeling time slowing down. As my gaze sank deeper and deeper into the flames, the flames also seemed to sink into me. Suddenly I realized how attached I had been to all the things destroyed by the fire. Everything I thought I was had dissolved into nothing. Everything? No, perhaps not everything, for I felt that a tiny element of my self still existed. Somebody was still there, watching all this. Who?
At that moment I realized there was a whole other dimension of my self that I hadn’t previously been aware of, a dimension that related not to my past—the world that had just dissolved in front of my eyes—but to my future, a world that I could bring into reality with my life. At that moment time slowed down to stillness and I felt drawn in a direction above my physical body and began watching the scene from that unknown place. I felt my mind quieting and expanding in a moment of unparalleled clarity of awareness. I realized that I was not the person I had thought I was. My real self was not attached to all the material possessions smoldering inside the ruins. I suddenly knew that I, my true Self, was still alive! It was this “I” that was the seer. And this seer was more alive, more awake, more acutely present than the “I” I had known before. I was no longer weighted down by all the material possessions the fire had just consumed. With everything gone, I was lighter and free, released to encounter the other part of my self, the part that drew me into the future––into my future—into a world waiting for me, that I might bring into reality with my forward journey.
The next day my eighty-seven-year old grandfather arrived for what would be his last visit to the farm. He had lived in that house all his life, beginning in 1890. Because of medical treatments, he had been away the week before the fire, and when he arrived at the courtyard the day after the fire, he summoned his last energy, got out of the car, and went straight to where my father was working on the cleanup. He did not even once turn his head to the smoking ruins. Without seeming to notice the small fires still burning around the property, he went up to my father, took his hand, and said, “Kopf hoch, mein Junge, blick nach vorn!” “Keep your head up, my boy, look forward!” Then he turned, walked directly back to the waiting car, and left. A few days later he died quietly.
Only years later did I realize that my experience in front of the fire was the beginning of a journey. My journey began with the recognition that I am not just one self but two selves. One self is connected to the past, and the second self connects to who I could become in the future. In front of the fire I experienced how these two selves started to connect to each other.
Otto, USA
As a solder in Viet Nam, I was confronted by a Viet Cong soldier one day. He pointed his semi-automatic rifle at me. I then took aim at him with my rifle. We were about 8 or 10 m apart. Normally I would have been quite nervous, but in this case time seemed to almost stop and I felt a calm stillness all about me. It was quite beautiful. There was the sense of being very present and being much larger than just my normal self. After a while the Viet Cong man lowered his rifle and said, “Me bullshit GI, me no shootâ€. I lowered my rifle and we backed away from each other. I often wonder what happened to him. When I think of this experience it is with a sense of gratitude and feeling of compassion for this man and his country.
Tom, USA
About 14 years ago I had a very precious experience with my son Thijs, at that time six years old.
Thijs needed an operation at the Radboud Academic hospital in Nijmegen Holland. Being one of his parents I was allowed to accompany him to the anaesthetic room and there, sitting on my lap, he received the anaesthetic. It has been proven that children, who receive anaesthetic in the presence of a trusted one, sleep and wake in a much more peaceful manner. At the moment that Thijs lost consciousness it seemed for a short moment that a 'second' Thijs was in my presents, one asleep on my lap and the other -so it seemed- that had left his body. I have no other words to describe what happened there. From that moment onwards I had the feeling that Thijs accompanied me on my walk through the hospital and the gardens. It was a feeling that Thijs was safe and secure, free from harm, together with me.
After about two hours, at the moment that Thijs regained consciousness his presence was gone. Returning to the recovery room I was approached by one of the nursing staff, who said: "you're just on time, your son has just regained consciousness." That was however old news for me.
What I'm trying to describe here is an experience priceless in nature, a gem in itself. In a way Thijs had temporarely taken farewell from his physical vulnerable body while in me grew the certain awareness that he was with me; I carried him with me on my walk through the hospital gardens. From that moment on I realized for the full hundred percent and never forgot it, that Thijs would always be present, even after his death - one day.
Seven years later, in 2002, our son died.
When I had the experience at the hospital we had known for years that he, within an unknown period, would die. From the moment we heard the news, the notion grew in me that at some point there was going to happen a change. A change from a past life with Thijs to a future life without Thijs. How were we going to deal with that? How was I going to deal with that? Could I prepare myself? When would he die? How would he die? In short, an endless list of questions went through my mind, again and again. Questions soaked in shifting feelings of fear or hope, love or hate, stress or peace, sadness or happiness. The one day I was a convinced believer in a spiritual world, the next day I felt like a convicted non-believer.
The experience described above came as a gift, as a kind of benediction when I was at the threshold of giving up. It gave confidence in the future and I understood that life constantly unfolds there where two streams meet: my inner impulses meeting the possibillities and opportunities that stream towards me from the future. Which possibilllities and opportunities I am able to see depends on the inner mood with which I attend the situation and the quality of the questions I pose to the situation. I understood that I would never be prepared enough but that it is necesarry to be in a 'preparing mode'. In Theory U this is called 'suspending judgement'. If I do my part of the job, if we do our part of the job, the complementary part will emerge.
When I work with clients my life with Thijs is my main resource of inspiration.
Winfried, Norway