Monthly Archives: June 2026

by | June 30, 2026 · 1:59 pm

On Abundance and the Squeeze

Over the past few months, I have been squeezed by the Spanish tax authority in a way I can only describe as grossly unjust. An anonymous bureaucracy can be exceptionally cruel and indifferent — arbitrary decisions handed down by people who will never see your face, in a process over which you have no control. Amid the anger and frustration, I found myself asking the universe what lessons this situation holds for me personally, sorely testing my own faith over fear.

The first thing I am beginning to understand is that abundance is not a reward for good behaviour. The universe does not withhold it because you have done something wrong. What I am experiencing — this feeling of being squeezed from the outside — is one of the oldest initiations on the spiritual path. The Celts would say you are standing at a thin place, that permeable boundary between what was and what is trying to be born.

Money is one of the most misunderstood subjects in spiritual teaching. The familiar saying that “money is the root of all evil” is a misquotation. What Paul actually wrote in his first letter to Timothy is that the love of money is the root of all evil — a crucial distinction. Jesus himself did not condemn wealth. He pointed, again and again, to the danger of attachment. “Where your treasure is,” he said, “there your heart will be also.” When the heart anchors itself to external resources for its sense of safety, it has already lost its freedom. The lesson, then, is rarely about money itself, which is merely an exchange commodity. It is almost always about trust.

Where does your sense of safety and trust live?

Ask honestly: where does your sense of safety live? If it lives in the balance of an account, the universe — in its ruthless compassion — will go directly to that place and shake it. Not to punish, but to show you that the house was built on sand, and that there is rock underneath if you are willing to dig.

The Celtic teacher John Philip Newell, drawing on the deep well of the Iona tradition, speaks of the soul as something that cannot be diminished by what is done to us from the outside. Peregrine monks — those early Celtic wanderers who cast themselves onto the sea without oars — understood that security was never found in possessions or permanence. Their freedom came precisely from having so little to lose. That is a radical kind of abundance.

Injustice, when it arrives, asks a question beneath all the noise: Am I willing to hold my integrity and my peace even when the external world behaves badly? That is not passivity. That is spiritual sovereignty.

Abundance, in its deepest sense, is a state of inner orientation before it is ever an outer condition. The mystics did not teach prosperity. They taught permeability — the capacity to remain open when everything in you wants to contract and defend. This does not mean surrendering the fight. What deserves to be contested should be contested, with clarity and persistence. But the fight must not become all-consuming, must not cloud the mind with bitterness or corrode the spirit with anger.

It is about returning, again and again, to that inner temple that cannot be taxed — and remembering that true abundance has always lived there.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S. In the coming days, I’ll share more about Letters from the Threshold, a Sunday letter where I explore many of these themes in greater depth. For those who find value in thoughtful reflection and deeper inquiry, there will soon be an opportunity to subscribe.

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by | June 24, 2026 · 8:53 am

The Age of Everything—and the Hunger for Meaning

We live in an age saturated with ideologies.

Whether political, cultural, religious, or social, ideology is always trying to tell you who you should be and how you should behave. It defines identity by drawing boundaries between those who belong and those who do not. In a world that feels fragmented, uncertain, and complex, ideology offers certainty—but usually at the cost of curiosity, nuance, and human connection.

Almost every ideology shares another trait: it idealises the past.

The drumbeat is that there was once a golden age when people were happier, communities were stronger, society was safer, and life was somehow better. History tells a different story.

As I write this from London on a beautiful summer day, the sky is blue, the air is fresh, and birds are singing in the park outside my window. It is easy to forget that only fifty years ago, many of Europe’s great cities were shrouded in traffic fumes and industrial smog.

Go back further, and the contrast becomes starker still. Few of us would choose to live in the Middle Ages, when life expectancy was dramatically lower, disease was widespread, famine was common, and countless women died in childbirth while men perished in wars or from illnesses that are now treatable.

By many measurable standards, humanity is living through an era of extraordinary progress. Millions have been lifted out of poverty. Freedom has expanded across much of the world. Medical science stands on the threshold of breakthroughs that may one day conquer diseases such as cancer.

And yet something seems deeply unsettled.

Why does grievance feel so widespread? Why do anxiety, loneliness, and depression continue to rise? Why do so many people feel disconnected in the most interconnected age in history?

Perhaps because meaning cannot be manufactured by prosperity alone.

A healthy life is not one without difficulty. It is the capacity to navigate life’s inevitable cycles of gain and loss, joy and sorrow, certainty and doubt. Yet the world around us constantly sends a different message—that happiness depends on external validation, social approval, achievement, possessions, or carefully curated identities.

At the same time, many of the institutions that once offered a framework for meaning have lost credibility or struggle to speak in ways that resonate with contemporary life.

Deeper questions surface as a result:

  • Where have I come from?
  • Where am I going with the years I have left?
  • Who am I beyond my career, income, gender, age, or social status?
  • What remains when the labels fall away?

These questions have come up repeatedly in my podcast conversations, workshops, and personal encounters over recent months. Beneath the noise of current events, I sense a growing hunger—not for more information, but for wisdom. Not for certainty, but for deeper understanding.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S. In the coming weeks, I’ll share more about Letters from the Threshold, a Sunday letter where I explore many of these themes in greater depth. For those who find value in thoughtful reflection and deeper inquiry, there will soon be an opportunity to subscribe.

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by | June 16, 2026 · 10:01 am

The Marketplace of Meaning

For most of human history, meaning was inherited. People were born into a family, a culture, a faith tradition, and a set of expectations. Whether one agreed with them or not, there was a framework.

Today, meaning has become a marketplace where thousands of voices compete for your attention. Coaches, influencers, therapists, spiritual teachers, political commentators, podcasters, and self-help experts all offer explanations for why you might feel lost and promises for how to find your way.

Many provide genuine value. Some are insightful guides. But the sheer volume of competing narratives creates a new problem: paralysis. When everyone claims to possess the answer, how do you know whom to trust?

The Seduction of Certainty

Human beings have always been uncomfortable with uncertainty in times of rapid social change, economic instability, political division, and technological disruption; certainty becomes a highly desirable product. But the individuals who gain the largest audiences are often not those who ask the best questions but those who provide the simplest answers.

Complexity rarely goes viral. Certainty does. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that simplistic explanations rarely survive contact with reality. The world is too nuanced, human beings too contradictory, and life too unpredictable to fit neatly into slogans and soundbites. Discernment and depth require patience.

The Difference Between Guidance and Dependency

There is nothing wrong with seeking wisdom from teachers, mentors, therapists, or spiritual guides. The problem arises when guidance turns into dependence. A good teacher helps people think for themselves. A dangerous teacher trains people to stop thinking altogether and to blindly follow.

One of the quiet tragedies of modern life is watching intelligent, capable people gradually surrender their own judgment. Every decision must be approved by the guru. Every life choice must be interpreted through the framework of the therapist. Every uncertainty requires external validation. The result is often a dangerous form of mind captivity.

The same pattern can often be observed in dysfunctional relationships, where one partner gradually surrenders their independence and begins to define their identity entirely through the other. Decisions, values, and even self-worth become filtered through the relationship. What may initially appear as devotion can ultimately become a loss of self, replacing personal agency with emotional dependence

Outsourcing the Work of Living

Perhaps the greatest temptation of our age is to outsource the difficult work of self-examination. It is easier to follow a celebrity’s life than to confront your own. Easier to consume endless content than to sit quietly with uncomfortable questions. Easier to adopt someone else’s beliefs than to wrestle honestly with your own doubts and issues of faith.

Yet purpose is not something another person can hand to you on a silver platter. No influencer, teacher, author, or spiritual leader can ultimately answer the questions that belong uniquely to your own life. That is something you can only discover.

They can illuminate the path, but nobody can walk it for you.

Living With Questions

I suspect that wisdom is less about possessing answers and more about developing the capacity to live with important questions.

  • Who am I becoming?
  • What matters most?
  • What kind of life is worth living?

These questions can only be revisited repeatedly throughout life. Perhaps maturity begins when you stop searching for someone who will think for you and start cultivating the courage to think deeply for yourself. Not in isolation, but with humility. Not with certainty, but with curiosity. Not seeking a guru to follow, but seeking the wisdom to discern.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S. In the coming weeks, I’ll share more about Letter from the Threshold, a Sunday letter where I explore many of these themes in greater depth. For those who find value in thoughtful reflection and deeper inquiry, there will soon be an opportunity to subscribe.

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by | June 8, 2026 · 9:18 am

The Thin Line Between Character and Choice

A few days ago, I had a fascinating conversation on the LivingToBe podcast with Eric Robinson.

What makes Eric’s story remarkable is not simply that he spent twenty-four years as an FBI agent investigating terrorism, violent crime, and some of the darkest corners of human behavior. Before all of that, he was a church minister. At first glance, those two worlds seem miles apart.

One is associated with compassion, spiritual guidance, and the care of souls. The other is with criminal investigations, threats, violence, and the pursuit of justice.

Yet as Eric shared his journey, I became increasingly aware that both vocations revolve around the same essential question:

What makes people choose the paths they do?

In ministry, he encountered people struggling to become better versions of themselves. People wrestling with their weaknesses, failures, fears, and doubts. People attempting, however imperfectly, to live according to values, principles, and moral commitments larger than themselves.

In the FBI, he encountered a very different reality. Not simply people who made mistakes. But individuals who consciously and deliberately chose destructive paths.

This distinction has stayed with me.

Much of modern culture encourages us to explain away human behavior as entirely determined by circumstances. We speak of trauma, environment, social conditions, and psychological influences. These factors matter. But there is another reality we sometimes hesitate to acknowledge. Human beings have the power of choice.

Every day, most people are trying, however imperfectly, to align themselves with values that create trust, cooperation, and human flourishing. They seek to improve their relationships, contribute to their communities, and become more patient, generous, wise, and compassionate.

The majority of people, I would argue, are engaged in this work of character formation.

Yet there are others who move in the opposite direction with purpose and intent.

History repeatedly reminds us that human beings are capable of organizing themselves around hatred, violence, and destructive ideologies with the same commitment that others devote to goodness and service.

That reality is uncomfortable because it challenges simplistic narratives.

We often prefer to divide the world neatly into good people and bad people.

But reality is more complicated. The potential for both creation and destruction exists within every human heart. Character is not a destination we arrive at once and for all. It is a series of choices repeated over time.

The people Eric investigated were not a different species. They were human beings whose decisions, beliefs, resentments, ambitions, and justifications gradually shaped them into who they became.

The same process operates in all of us. The difference is direction. Some people intentionally cultivate wisdom, integrity, and responsibility. Others intentionally cultivate grievance, resentment, domination, or self-interest.

The consequences eventually become visible. One of the most important lessons I took away from my conversation with Eric is that understanding human behavior requires us to hold two truths simultaneously.

We must have compassion for the forces that shape people. But we must also recognize personal responsibility for the choices people make. Without compassion, we become judgmental. Without accountability, we become naïve. Wisdom requires both.

Perhaps this is why so many people today are hungry for deeper conversations.

We are surrounded by commentary but longing for understanding. Surrounded by information but searching for wisdom. Surrounded by certainty but yearning for perspective. The questions that matter most rarely have simple answers.

Why do some people become more compassionate after suffering, while others become more bitter? Why do some use power to serve while others use it to control? What enables a person to remain anchored in values when confronted with fear, temptation, or adversity? These are not merely social or political questions.

They are deeply personal ones. Every day, you are participating in the ongoing formation of your own character.

Every day, you are in the process of becoming who you really are by remaining curious enough to keep asking better questions and courageous enough to examine the choices that shape your life.

Ultimately, every future is built not by what happens to you, but by the values you choose to live by.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S. Over the coming weeks, I’ll share more about the online community I am creating and what membership will look like in practice, and why I believe it can become a meaningful space for deeper reflection.

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by | June 1, 2026 · 8:54 am

Embracing Self-Love on the Camino de Santiago

While walking the Camino de Santiago, I sometimes encountered pilgrims who seemed to confuse pilgrimage with an act of self-punishment. Despite their bodies sending unmistakable signals—painful blisters, swollen joints, and deep exhaustion—that it was time to rest, they would continue pushing forward. Determined to conquer the path at all costs, they ignored their physical limits until, inevitably, they were forced to abandon their journey altogether.

There is a saying I learned from another pilgrim on the way. “If you don’t learn to approach the path with humility, it will teach you humility.”

Others approached the Camino very differently. I remember older pilgrims, some well into their eighties, who walked slowly and with intention. They moved at their own pace, stopping occasionally to admire the landscape, sitting quietly in contemplation, or choosing to walk only half a stage in a day. Rather than measuring success by distance covered, they seemed to delight in the journey itself. Remarkably, many of these pilgrims completed the entire 800-kilometre route to Santiago. Even more striking was the vitality they radiated. They appeared youthful, not because of physical strength alone, but because they had learned the wisdom of walking in harmony with themselves.

Pilgrimage offers many lessons about life, but one of its most important teachings is the often misunderstood art of self-love.

Modern psychology increasingly confirms what many spiritual traditions have taught for centuries: self-love is not a luxury but a necessity for human flourishing. Research on self-compassion, pioneered by psychologist Dr Kristin Neff, shows that people who treat themselves with kindness during times of difficulty tend to be more resilient, emotionally balanced, and motivated than those who constantly criticise themselves.

Contrary to popular belief, harsh self-judgment, especially negative self-talk, does not produce stronger or more successful people. Instead, it often leads to anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, and emotional exhaustion.

Self-love, in psychological terms, means relating to oneself with the same care and understanding that one would naturally offer a good friend. It involves recognising one’s limitations without shame and acknowledging one’s worth without needing constant external validation. Such an attitude fosters emotional well-being and enables people to respond more constructively to life’s inevitable challenges.

These findings resonate deeply with the teachings of the 13th-century mystic Meister Eckhart. Eckhart believed that what turns human beings into compulsive graspers—unable to let go of possessions, status, relationships, or beliefs—is ultimately a lack of trust. Beneath our attachments lies a profound insecurity, a fear that we are somehow incomplete or unworthy.

For Eckhart, self-love and trust in the divine are inseparable. Compassion arises from confidence in the goodness that lies at the heart of existence, while compulsive striving grows from the belief that we are fundamentally lacking or flawed. The person who learns to “let be” and at the same time allows themselves to be is expressing a deep confidence in the creative source of life.

Eckhart writes: “If you do not know how to love yourself, how is it possible that you will love God? There can be no love of neighbour without love of self.” To love oneself, in his understanding, is not an obstacle to spiritual growth but one of its essential foundations.

Such ideas were controversial in Eckhart’s time. Many theologians were preoccupied with sin, moral regulation, and the strict enforcement of doctrine. God was often portrayed as an authoritarian ruler who rewarded obedience and punished transgression. Shame and guilt became powerful tools of religious instruction—a dynamic that continues to influence some religious traditions today.

The divine potential in every person

Yet Eckhart offered a radically different vision. Rather than beginning with fear, he began with trust. Rather than emphasising human depravity, he pointed toward the divine potential present within every person.

This brings us to an important distinction: self-love is not the same as ego.

The ego seeks validation, superiority, and control. It constantly compares itself with others and measures its worth through achievement, status, or recognition. Ego asks, “How can I become more important?” Self-love asks, “How can I become more fully myself?”

The ego is rooted in insecurity and therefore always needs more. Self-love arises from a deeper acceptance and therefore has nothing to prove. The ego separates; self-love connects. The ego grasps; self-love releases. The ego seeks to protect an image; self-love nurtures a living reality.

Far from encouraging selfishness, genuine self-love often leads to greater compassion. People who are at peace with themselves generally have a greater capacity to listen, empathise, forgive, and care for others. They are not depleted by the endless struggle to earn their own worth.

The spiritual path, whether on the Camino or in everyday life, invites you to confront your fears, loosen your attachments, and ultimately learn the difficult art of letting go. This includes letting go of the false stories you tell yourself about who you should be.

At the heart of Eckhart’s teaching is a beautiful image. The essence of the divine, he says, is “birthing”—a continual process of creation and emergence. Life is not a static state to be achieved but an ongoing unfolding into what we are meant to become. We are not passive observers of this process but active participants in it.

Perhaps this is one of the Camino’s greatest lessons. The journey is not won by those who push themselves the hardest. It is completed by those who learn to walk with wisdom, humility, and kindness toward themselves. In learning to love yourself, you discover that you are not separate from the sacred journey but part of its unfolding.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S. Over the years, my own Camino journeys have inspired two books exploring the deeper inner dimension of pilgrimage and transformational walking: Deep Walking for Body, Mind and Soul and the newly revised edition of Walking on Edge. Both reflect on the Camino not merely as a physical journey, but as a path of inner change, reflection, and rediscovery.

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