[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="2_3" last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="" padding="" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" animation_type="" animation_direction="" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""][fusion_content_boxes settings_lvl="child" layout="icon-with-title" columns="1" icon_align="left" title_size="" title_color="" body_color="" backgroundcolor="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_radius="" iconcolor="" circlecolor="" circlebordercolor="" circlebordersize="" outercirclebordercolor="" outercirclebordersize="" icon_size="" icon_hover_type="" hover_accent_color="" link_type="" link_area="" link_target="" animation_delay="" animation_offset="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="left" animation_speed="0.1" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" class="" id=""][fusion_content_box title="" icon="" backgroundcolor="" iconcolor="" circlecolor="" circlebordercolor="" circlebordersize="" outercirclebordercolor="" outercirclebordersize="" iconrotate="" iconspin="no" image="" image_width="35" image_height="35" link="" linktext="" link_target="_self" animation_type="" animation_direction="" animation_speed=""] An Invitation Article by Angela Fischer, June 2016 As years go by I realize more and more that our time on earth is a temporary visit. We are invited to be guests on this wonderful planet for a very short time. It’s an early summer morning. I am driving back home from taking my son to a meeting point after a short visit with us. My gaze glides over the fields and the small valley, the bushes and the edges of forests, and the pastures with young horses. The day is still young and I am about to return to ordinary, everyday tasks after a couple of eventful days. And there it is: a sudden ray of light. And with it I feel so intensely the brevity of this visit on earth, the unique quality of that moment, when we are here; one lifetime, a particular event embedded in something so much greater and vaster. I don’t feel it as a concept, like written in books and aphorisms, I rather have that intense feeling and awareness, very tangible and almost physical, of a soul being here for a short visit – marvelling at this wonderful planet, mixing and mingling with it through the many events of life, painful and joyful alike. And I know: the moment I feel this, it has already happened. As if I turn at a door, and already leaving, see with a brief look whom I have been visiting, and that it is over so soon. Life – what a great invitation. And how rarely is it that we can see this! After we have been invited and, with so much help and grace, have managed to make the journey into this world, entering the place that welcomes us, at first we are all filled with a natural sense of awe. Every child’s eyes are filled with wonder, and it only ceases to wonder, when there is no response and no acknowledgement of this natural, deep sense of respect, and the curiosity and joy about this wonderful place that welcomes us. Only later do we forget. Guests bring gifts. And we all were endowed with gifts to bring to this invitation. But at some point we begin to forget about them. We are too occupied with ourselves. We take things for granted. We suffer, and then we complain. We forget what we were given; talents and qualities handed over to us like little parcels when we embarked on this journey. Because now we have other things to do, to develop a person that exists on earth – and sometimes we tend to take this too seriously – and we think we have to create a life. Overlooking that life is just there, and we are just part of it. Guests take off their shoes at the door, as a matter of respect. And often we forget about this too. At some point we, as guests on this earth, arduously need to learn again to take off our shoes. This was not necessary when we first came, barefoot and innocent, but over time, when we acquire those shoes that support our walk through life, we easily forget to respect the host and the place that invited us. It then seems a life-long lesson to take off our shoes, while being here for our brief visit on Earth. „I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known. Thus I created the world“. -Hadith We are invited, we are fed, we meet other guests, we come to know each other, we live together, we love each other and get angry about each other, we work and sow and reap, we sing together, pray together, laugh and cry together, we suffer and we have tremendous joy. That’s how it seems to be meant to be, so that the hidden treasure can be revealed to Itself and in the world. We are but a part of this mysteriously evolving process called life, and our particular visit is carefully designed for this. But how do we respond to this invitation? How do we treat the hospitality of the earth these days? Can you imagine a guest who is cordially invited and then destroys the home of his host, steps in with heavy boots, demolishes the furniture, is ignorant of the needs of the other guests – all the creatures that are living together? It is easy to point the finger to the really insolent human fellow guests, those who are destroying and exploiting our planet in large measure, but how many times did we forget? How many times did we sleep? How often were we ignorant, unconscious about the invitation, caught and lost in our own thoughts, concepts and emotions, occupied by our personal reactions on what was happening „to me“, not realizing that it was just part of the celebration, part of the revelation of the hidden treasure, and that there is no such thing as a separate experience, a separate existence! Only if we are conscious of this tremendously generous invitation, a visit that lasts for only a moment, and of being alive with a beautiful and wondrous physical body made of earth and stardust, that can feel joy and pain and love, that can taste and touch, bring souls together, gives birth and cares and is being cared for, that is indeed a wonderful temple and organ of experience, like the Earth herself, only then do we participate in service and love for the One who so much longs to be revealed. It is not about what we do as great deeds, it is not about footprints we leave after our visit – at best we don’t leave any, because hopefully we remembered to take off our shoes; hopefully we danced, at least sometimes, with light feet. It is rather about being awake and realizing where we actually are. We are visiting. We are invited. We are welcomed. And following that we respect the place that we are allowed to visit: this beautiful garden Earth. We share — not because anything belongs to us, but because we are a part of the one divine experience in multiple forms. There is no property to be divided, because we do not own anything. There is a divine reality to be experienced and to be mirrored to each other. And we share our gifts, which were given to us when we were sent on this journey —by being ourselves. We realize, it is about a great experience, but it is not about us. And we realize that every single gift that is being given to a soul coming into this world has the potential to contribute to an ever evolving, unfolding beauty and love of the Divine. Like any guest who is invited to a party, a celebration, or just a meal with friends, we can decide: which attitude do we come with for our visit, and what is the attitude we will say good-bye with. There is still hope that this beautiful garden that has been treated so rudely by its human guests can rejoice again, can sing again the song of its soul. Every single guest who wakes up and takes off their shoes will breathe fresh air into this almost suffocated world that longs so much to be recognized as a divine living being. [/fusion_content_box][/fusion_content_boxes][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="2_3" last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="" padding="" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" animation_type="" animation_direction="" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""][fusion_content_boxes settings_lvl="child" layout="icon-with-title" columns="1" icon_align="left" title_size="" title_color="" body_color="" backgroundcolor="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_radius="" iconcolor="" circlecolor="" circlebordercolor="" circlebordersize="" outercirclebordercolor="" outercirclebordersize="" icon_size="" icon_hover_type="" hover_accent_color="" link_type="" link_area="" link_target="" animation_delay="" animation_offset="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="left" animation_speed="0.1" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" class="" id=""][fusion_content_box title="" icon="" backgroundcolor="" iconcolor="" circlecolor="" circlebordercolor="" circlebordersize="" outercirclebordercolor="" outercirclebordersize="" iconrotate="" iconspin="no" image="" image_width="35" image_height="35" link="" linktext="" link_target="_self" animation_type="" animation_direction="" animation_speed=""] Reclaiming the Heart by Angela Fischer, December 2013 “ The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe .” ― Joanna Macy What is it that happened to our hearts? It seems we have sold them. We have sold them for so little. We as humanity have created the current devastation; and now we refuse to take it back - to take the destruction and the suffering and the pain back to our hearts. We do not want to feel the pain. But if we do not witness what is happening to the world, if we do not feel the pain, we are not able to feel love, either. And the earth needs our love desperately. Instead we try to bypass the suffering, and to love from somewhere outside of ourselves, not grounded, not rooted in our heart. But what does not come from the heart can never be real love and will therefore never have the transformational power which – as we know – is coming from love alone. We close our hearts from feeling what we can see everywhere in the world: the tremendous tragedy of what our forgetfulness, our disconnection from the divine has caused in the world, what it has done to the earth and to the whole of creation. Eight months ago I was given a deam experience that engraved itself deeply into my heart. I will never ever forget this. A woman was lying on the ground, hurt, fragile, almost dying, suffering tremendously. I knew it was „the Mother of All“, the Earth. People, half asleep, were stepping over her with heavy boots, not even noticing what they were doing. I sat beside her; I felt her pain, excruciating pain, unbearable pain. It took a long time until she was strong enough to communicate with me. I asked her what we could do, and she said, „You need to feel.“ YOU NEED TO FEEL. There was more to this experience, but this was one of the most important messages. Feeling is what is so deeply needed, what is asked of us. I shared this experience with others. And ist essence, beyond the individual perception of the person who had the vision, touched the hearts; but not everybody was interested. It has an effect on the heart. It shows us the darkness, and we are spiritually conditioned to look to the light. There are lots of spiritual concepts we can use as an excuse for not bothering at all. Of course, it is only human that we try to avoid suffering. But anyone who has gone through an individual transformational process knows that love cannot work as transformative energy, if we try to exclude what belongs to love: witnessing the truth, accepting it – which means taking it into the heart – and feeling the pain. To be happy in the 'love and light' that our spiritually focussed imagination tends to invent, whenever reality is too painful and responsibility seems such a heavy burden, is not only spiritual self-indulgence but also a state of infertility. Self fabricated love is not real, because the depth and the vulnerability of the heart are not involved. We could also say, it is an illusion; there is no truth involved and so it has no real power or energy. It does not burn. We cannot avoid the fire in our hearts. But we try to. We rarely listen to those who hold up the mirror. We rather like to soothe ourselves with spiritual fairy tales. Yes, this world is a wonderful, miraculous being. It is made from love, full of light. And at the same time we have created such a mess and made it a terrible, awful, desecrated place in the universe. So unless we take responsibility, unless we dare to walk all the way through the fire, witness the darkness and feel the pain, we can never really access the light of love in our hearts. And only love can transform. If ever another world is possible – a world every human being undoubtedly wishes to see for our children – it cannot be given to us without the participation of our heart, our feeling. I am convinced that only through love can we retrace the path to the sacredness of creation. Only through loving from the depth of our hearts which include the sorrow of longing, the pain of being a witness, the suffering of taking responsibility, can the world and human consciousness ever be transformed. „ There is a spiritual tradition of watching and witnessing: that events in the inner and outer world need to be witnessed. ( …) Your heart is just crying out to God, ‚Remember the earth, remember the earth.‘ We have chosen not to listen to the cry of life itself, even as we poison its waters and bring its species to extinction. The outer is just a reflection of what is happening in the inner. Humanity’s soul is starving… We need to stay attuned to the heart of the world and life’s essential message of love. “ — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Quote from the Book trailer: Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Darkening of the Light. Witnessing the End of an Era. Image: Carved woman by Ahmad Nadalian, environmental artist, with kind permission. 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ARTICLES – Oneness of Life

Spring Buds in a Time of Crisis

Spirituality over Generations

An Invitation

Forty Days after the Paris Climate Conference

How can we reconnect Life with its Sacred Source?

The Sense of the Sacred and the Feminine Body

Listening to the Hidden Heart of Seeds

Surrender and Feminine Power

Reclaiming the Heart

A Cry of the Earth – A Dream Experience in Delphi