Category Archives: yin and yang

by | April 21, 2020 · 6:31 am

Covid-19 and empty spaces

“Thirty spokes meet in the hub, but the empty space between them is the essence of the wheel.” – Lao Tse – 

In the hurried rat race of our modern culture, we have become so used to treading the treadmill of HAVING that we have forgotten all about the BEING. The spokes of the wheel are what is visible but what is really the essence is that which is invisible and holds everything together.

Foto

It is in those quiet moments of loneliness where we are finally separated from the drumbeat of distraction that we find connection.

Western culture is in a state of spiritual disconnect, expressing itself in the fraying of economic, social, religious and other institutions and the pandemic rise of mental illness. The Covid-19 pandemic was just the trigger. The foundations of the house we have been building has been on shaky ground for some time in the constant pull between externation gratification and inner soul yearning.

Resilience is built from a good sprint and recovery cycle 

A life in imbalance with high stress not compensated by recuperation periods of empty space inevitably leads to a breakdown of the body’s natural defence systems. A healthy sprint and recovery system makes a body resilient to the storms of life. Check out my booklet on Resilience: What makes you strong?

These changes are leaving people anxious, scared, disorientated and confused. The first thing people do in such situations is to find someone to blame: The Chinese having started it all with lack of safety measures in a laboratory in Wuhan, politicians not having reacted early enough or having responded too harshly.

Making the best out of the current situation

If you are a spiritually orientated person you will find that such a mindset won’t get you far and make you feel even more miserable. On a personal level you can start by reflecting on your own mindset:

  • What opportunity lies waiting in the current situation?
  • What friends and associations can I cultivate via zoom or skype?
  • What clutter needs cleared in my immediate surroundings?

On a global level the universe is telling humanity with a major jolt to wake up. We cannot continue with the ways of old. We have to question our mobility patterns and what it means for the environment. We have to move from an exploitative economic system to a sustainable, restorative system.

In terms of the ancient Five Element philosophy, which finds many of its roots in Lao Tse’s teachings, gigantic natural or political disruptions do not come from nowhere but are unavoidable when we fail to see the signs of the elements being in imbalance. Nature is merely trying to restore balance when we initially only see the burned grounds before us. But with time grow the first seedlings from the ashes.

In our HAVING culture we have tried too hard to feed the hungry ghosts, exploiting nature to such a degree that major ecosystems and our entire global climate is in danger of collapse.

Living a life of BEING is being open again for those empty spaces where soul evolution takes place. Before our eyes we are seeing our world changing. Transmuting the emotions of fear and anxiousness and seizing the moment with courage and hope is the challenge.
Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor, and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

Gevers-DeepWalking CVR.indd               paperback_cover_1

Order here

Leave a comment

Filed under lifestyle management, psychology, self-development, spirituality, Uncategorized, yin and yang

Tagged as , , , ,

by | January 21, 2020 · 8:13 am

The power of choice

As a young newspaper reporter in South Africa in the early 1980s, I once covered a trial of a man accused of brutally raping and murdering a young girl.  Once during the trial, our eyes met and a cold shiver ran down my spine. I had the feeling that I was looking into a dark cold abyss. The man was eventually found guilty and sentenced to death.

Eyes reveal your true nature 

Eyes are a window to the soul and we intuitively feel whether they are kind, compassionate and loving or the direct opposite. We live in a world of polarities. There is good and there is evil.  The pull between the tides, night and day, summer and winter, expansion and withdrawal is part of the yin and yang that make up our world.

patrick-brinksma-ZMxbPRIPtWE-unsplash

Photo by Patrick Brinksma on Unsplash

 

The story of Good and Evil is deeply embedded in our subconsciousness from the first story in the Bible. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was planted by God with the commandment to Adam and Eve not to eat from it. Pain and evil started in the world when Adam and Eve broke the commandment and ate from the tree. The question often asked is: “Why did God plant the tree in the first place?”

Co-creating with the power of choice 

One of the answers: By giving man the freedom of choice, God separated him from other beings, giving him the power of being a co-creator.  Choice separates us from other beings who do exactly what they have been designed for.  Choice separates us from being mindless zombies to being human with all our doubts, our pains, and emotions. By experiencing the dark night of the soul we appreciate all the more rejuvenation and happiness. It is in the dark night that we often gain the greatest spiritual insight and wisdom.

The lines between good and evil are getting blurred

By seeing and confronting evil we know what needs to be done. But in today’s world of information overload, professional deceivers have been given a massive platform for mind control.  The lines between good and evil get blurred when a lie becomes a truth through repetition in the echo chambers of social media.

Where there is spiritual disconnect, the loss of alignment between the above and the below, lack of purpose, and emotional turmoil the power of evil will manifest itself. Put in another way:  There is evil where there is a complete absence of God. It is that power that destroys the air we breathe, the waters we drink and the earth from which we are nurtured. As within so without.

In the past religion taught us that doing good was by following commandments, certain rituals, and a certain belief system.  It excluded all others who did not follow this belief system.  The preachers, themselves very often fallible human beings, were those who defined right and wrong.

The spirituality of the New Earth is internal rather than external. It is alignment with true self and soul purpose. From that grows the intuitive wisdom and power of discernment. We do the right thing and make the right choices from the base of mindful inner awareness that comes with continuous spiritual practice.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor, and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

Gevers-DeepWalking CVR.indd               paperback_cover_1                            applepodcast         

 

3 Comments

Filed under lifestyle management, psychology, raised consciousness, self-development, spirituality, Uncategorized, yin and yang

Tagged as , , , ,

by | September 28, 2016 · 8:07 am

Where is your attention?

harmony

by Reino Gevers

When you practise the martial art of “taiji push hands” you instantly become aware when your mind is wandering elsewhere. As soon as your attention slips your opponent has easy play in finding the gap and pushing you over. Its all about:

Where your attention goes your energy goes.

In our connected world the power of distraction lurks everywhere. Our mind becomes like a butterfly constantly fluttering from one short attention span to the next. We search for something on google and suddenly a pop-up diverts our attention elsewhere and before we know it, we have spent hours surfing meaninglessly on the Internet.

Mass media is brainwashing us 24-7 with drama and catastrophes. The objective is to shock and awe. The result: more clicks, more viewers, a higher circulation and more advertising revenue. Good news is no news. I know what I’m talking about because I worked in the news industry for more than 26 years. Don’t get me wrong. Its not about sticking your head in the sand and avoiding the world’s problems. Its the dosage of negativity in relation to positivity.

Human nature has a habit of looking first on what is bad than on what is wonderful and on what we can be grateful for in our lives. If your mind is filled with thoughts on wars, riots, crime, the antics of the rich and famous and all the other shadow sides of humanity your subconscious mind will begin to confirm all this as the reality of existence. The end result is often depression and a sense of hopelessness. Moreover, negativity hurts us on the physical level, weakening our immune system and causing many of our modern day plagues such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

The truth is that we live in a world of polarity – of yin and yang. For every bad event being flashed across the globe you can be sure there is another positive thing happening at the same time. Its just not receiving our attention. There is so much distraction, brainwashing and mind control from external forces that we spend less and less time in reflecting on what is happening to us. The end result is living a life behind a veil of negativity and emptyness.

You have the power! Draw your boundary on what you want inside your “room” and what needs to stay out:

  • By anchoring yourself with meditation you are extracting yourself from distraction. Meditation is a powerful tool in helping you perceive that inner voice that keeps you connected to your Soul Path.
  • As you meditate you will observe your thoughts. Are they mostly of a positive or negative nature?
  • Are the people you surround yourself with kind and compassionate? Do they exude positive vibes or are they abusing you as a refuse bucket in venting all their anger and frustration? Remember you are the sum of the people you surround yourself with.
  • How much time are you spending in nature? Are you exercising enough? Taking a walk in nature, doing yoga or taiji,  will hugely improve your mood and help you realign.
  • Are you nourishing your body and mind with healthy foods and liquids?

In training your awareness by doing the right things every day, of every week of every month and of every year you will be aligned and become immune to energy-sucking distractions.

By Reino Gevers – Health Mentor for Leaders and Achievers

http://www.reinogevers.com

Leave a comment

Filed under body arts, corporate health, exercise mental health, lifestyle management, mass media, mental-health, outdoor coaching, psychology, spirituality, Uncategorized, yin and yang

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | May 25, 2016 · 8:11 am

Who are you allowing into your home?

Business person looking at wall with light tunnel opening

There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. “Ubuntu” is an ancient African term meaning  ‘humanity to others’ because it is those “others” who have made you into that individual who you are.

It means the persons you surround yourself with make you into the person who you are. The village, the individual and the tribe are ONE. So it is worth reflecting on who those five people are who you are letting into your “house.”

Who is supporting and uplifting you?

It will determine how upbeat, optimistic, healthy and successful you are. Are you surrounded by people who are supportive of you on your soul path or do you have people around you who use every opportunity to pull you down?

It is worth reflecting every now and then on those five people who really appreciate and serve you. As you disassociate and realign yourself you will inevitably be confronted by push back.

Is your guest trampling all over your carpet?

So how do I determine who is good for me and who isn’t?  How do I know that the person I let into my home is not going to “trample over my clean white carpet with dirty feet?”

And, it’s basically quite simple:

  • Do you constantly feel drained and emotionally exhausted after spending time with a particular person or a group of people?
  • Have you had this feeling for some time that a relationship is one-sided?
  • Are your conversations with that person or persons centered mainly around negative issues?

If so, it is high time to start disassociating yourself and to move on.

Surround people who emanate kindness and good energy

Open yourself to those people, who, when entering a room, emanate an aura of good energy. I admit those people are few and far between. Most of us are so preoccupied with our own baggage and issues that we no longer notice the true nature of the people around us. True, we cannot always be upbeat. That is not what life is about. Its how we deal on a day to day basis with our ups and downs in the knowledge that nothing stays permanent.

Life is impermanent

All great teachers of Mysticism will tell you that the art of happiness is the ability and wisdom to accept life’s preciousness in the here and now. Impermanence is one of life’s great lessons. Ask anyone who has suddenly lost a loved one, gone through a traumatic divorce or been confronted with a life-changing situation, like losing all one’s savings on the stock market.

The only truth is that life is a constant flow of yin and yang, birth and death, light and shadow, good and evil, expansion and withdrawal. Sorrow, grief, and despair are as much part of life as happiness, joy and exultation or loss and abundance. The discipline of the inner mind and thought process by means of meditation, the body arts or other rituals will help us deal with this ebb and flow.

What we can control is the practice of mind-setting, the choice of the people we surround ourselves with and who we invite into “our holy chambers.”

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor, and Consultant

(Read more on this topic in my new book “Deep Walking for Body Mind and Soul” Ebook scheduled for publication by Morgan James in New York on May 5th, 2020. Printed edition scheduled for the major outlets in August 2020)

https://www.reinogevers.com

Gevers-DeepWalking CVR.indd                paperback_cover_1                            applepodcast         

 

Leave a comment

Filed under exercise mental health, life vision, lifestyle management, meditation, psychology, spirituality, Uncategorized, yin and yang

Tagged as , , , ,

by | March 10, 2015 · 6:51 pm

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with

The quote above by author Jim Rohn take a similar vein to a poem by the 16th century English poet and cleric John Donne “No Man is and Island”. We are nothing more than a summary of influences from the people around us.

We are born into this world as completely helpless beings, dependent on parental nourishment and protection. In essence nobody is self-sufficient. We all rely on each other in one way or another.

So who are you spending most of your time with? Are you surrounding yourself with people with a mainly negative and destructive outlook on life. Are you one of those people who predominantly look on the dark side of life and see the world as a bad place. Do you see only the negative aspects of people around you?

Or are you a shining light of optimism. You have an enormous ability of blocking off any negative energy that might come your way and have found a way of side-stepping people with a “vampire energy”. You find life beautiful, easy and full of joy.

We most likely have phases in life where we find ourselves in either of the two camps, depending on what challenges we face in life at a particular moment in time or whether we have just fallen in love or won in the lottery.

All great teachers of Mysticism will tell you that the art of happiness is the ability and wisdom to accept life’s preciousness in the here and now. Impermanence is one of life’s great lessons. Ask anyone who has suddenly lost a loved one or been confronted with an event that has changed everything that was thought a moment earlier to be true, safe or a permanent-given.

cloud twirl

The only truth is that life is a constant flow of yin and yang, birth and death, light and shadow, good and evil, expansion and withdrawal. Sorrow, grief and despair are as much part of life as happiness, joy and exultation or loss and abundance. Discipline of the inner mind and thought process by means of meditation, the body arts or other rituals will help us deal with this ebb and flow.

What we can control is the choice of the people we surround ourselves with and how much time we choose to spend with them. It is an interesting exercise to reflect on those five people in your life who have had the most impact,were or are your most important teachers and made you into that wonderful person who you are today.

No Man is an Island

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

John Donne

Leave a comment

Filed under body arts, energy, life vision, meditation, powerbodymind, psychology, yin and yang

Tagged as , ,