by | October 24, 2018 · 7:29 am

Who are you?

Emotional and physical exhaustion is one of the scourges of the modern era. Depression is reaching almost epidemic proportions. You could very well say that the Western mind has lost its soul that has been entrapped by the temptations of immediate gratification.

We are bombarded constantly with subliminal messages that tell you: Buy this and you will be happy. Do this and you will get rich. Do this to live like a super star. Dress like this and act like that to be loved and validated by the crowd.

Along the way one of our most valuable assets – the time to be fully aware of the  moment – is getting lost. The mind is constantly occupied with either the past or the fears of the future.  In the process you forget soul purpose and who you are!

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I have found that walking alone in nature is a magnificent way of detoxing and training the mind by re-calibrating the senses to the world around us.  I truly believe that nature is a manifestation of God. The whisper of creation can be sensed by a bird song, the rustling of leaves in an ancient tree, or the clouds enveloping a mountain top.

Most people in today’s world however are forced to live in crowded cities that are dehumanizing in their detachment from nature. They cloud the senses with a high level of noise, pollution and bombardment of the senses. The modern human being has become so detached from his natural environment, that its causing havoc to emotional stability.

I think this is one of the reasons for the great attraction of the ancient pilgrimage route in Spain.  More and more people are becoming spiritually conscious and seeking answers. Spending weeks alone by simply walking in nature without distraction is like a detox in peeling away the layers to the heart of the true self. But it doesn’t only have to be walking.  New retreats and centers of meditation are opening everywhere as human consciousness is rising to a new level.

Old school religion has taught us to believe and to follow a certain doctrine and behavior. The new consciousness is very much an experiental spirituality in a “becoming” of the real self.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

 

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by | October 3, 2018 · 10:32 am

Reconnecting with ancestral roots

Our ancestors from centuries ago might be influencing our lives in more ways than we might be aware of.

Cultures steeped in tradition and ritual, place great value on their history and ancestral roots. Much of this has been lost in the modern materialist world−which then finds an unhealthy avenue in extreme nationalism.

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There is a long tradition on the Camino in Spain that reminded me a lot of the Zulu culture in South Africa.

The Zulu greeting “sawbona” means “I see you” to which the fellow being greeted responds with “yebo”, or yes and I see you too.

In the rural Zululand of my childhood the conversation would then continue with strangers exchanging their names and asking each other the names of their parents and grandparents and from what village they came from so that the ancestral tree to the tribe or clan could be recognized.

The Zulus journeyed mostly on foot, and would pile stone cairns at key junctions as a mark of respect to the ancestors and asking them for a safe journey. In the Umfolozi Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal there is a massive stone cairn that dates back to the stone ages.

I was surprised to find this tradition also on the Camino and learned that similar rituals also exist in other cultures such as the Inuit, American Indians and Celts from which the practice probably came in Spain.

In medieval times it was common for one member of a family to walk the Camino to atone for the sins of the entire clan. The family would in return collect funds to finance the pilgrimage.

The pilgrimage began after crossing the threshold of his front door, and after being granted permission to leave by his local religious authorities. Before leaving he had attended mass where his staff and scrip were blessed by the priest.

It would be months, sometimes more than a year before he returned−if he was lucky. Many pilgrims did not survive the journey, making the ultimate sacrifice.

Along the Camino, the pilgrim would add a rock to the cairns at the wayside, saying a prayer for a member of the family going down the line of the family tree, starting with the parents, siblings, grandparents, great-grandparents, and all the other members of the clan.

Today the tradition continues and many of the cairns have rocks with prayer inscriptions for a deceased loved one, someone going through a serious illness or a special wish.

Genetic research is still a young science but some scientists believe that some of our habits, traumas, memories and survival instincts are imprinted in our genes from our ancestors. An ancestor born centuries ago could still be impacting your life. Ancestral memories could be passed on for 14 generations, according to one body of research.

We are who we are not only because of the influences from our immediate friends and the environment in which we live but it also appears, that some of our habits, fears and talents are inherited from our ancestors.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

 

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by | September 12, 2018 · 8:40 am

Gratitude

There is a saying that if you aren’t grateful for the things you have now, you will never be grateful for the things you are wishing for.

Being grateful for what you already have is a key aspect of happiness.

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It is not about mumbling off five daily gratitudes like a “must-do-happiness-ritual” but really feeling into that which you are truly grateful for.

“I’m so grateful that I have been given this opportunity, that I’m healthy, and that I have been given the time and the financial means.”

You feel that gratitude energy flow like a wave through every cell of your body in one big exhaling breath, while you move your lips into a gentle smile.

The advanced spiritual teachers even give thanks for the unfortunate events that come into their lives, because they view this is an opportunity for the soul to grow.

Most prayer emphasizes the wanting of something: better health, finding a job, a marriage partner, getting out of debt, having more money, or a new home.

It often comes out of a feeling of privation and deficiency.

Expressing in a prayer gratitude comes with an entirely different mindset of abundance, empowerment, and the wisdom that all is grace and interwoven within the bigger matrix of higher meaning.

Gratitude comes from within and it is entirely different from the consumer-orientated mindset, that is insatiable and never satisfied.

Being grateful puts things into perspective, and gives true meaning to being grateful for every day where we are healthy, breathing and alive.

I met several people on my Camino walks who really put my own difficulties, rather than problems into perspective and gave me a new sense of meaning when they told me of their own battles.

On my first Camino, I met a cheerful, lanky guy from Scotland in his early 60s. Only later did I find out that he had walked all the way through England, France and Spain. It was his way of dealing with the grief of losing his beloved wife of many years to cancer.

There are always things to be grateful for, especially those things we just take for granted. Nothing is permanent.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

 

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by | September 4, 2018 · 8:45 am

Go Slow To Go Far

One of the  many lessons learned walking the Camino in Spain is that you have to go slow to get far.  I must admit that I too get infected at times by the “bug” that bites many hikers on the Camino: Getting up in the early hours of the morning and racing ahead to the next town to avoid the hassle of finding no accommodation.

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In some of the remote towns albergues or hostels for pilgrims are rare. But on all my ten walks on the Camino, I have always found a place to stay for the night. The Spanish people are incredibly hospitable and friendly toward pilgrims walking the Camino. If worse comes to worse a sports hall or school classrooms is opened with mattresses on the floor. Villagers in the towns have even been seen offering their private bedrooms to tired pilgrims.

But the Camino is in many ways an analogy of life and you inevitably take yourself with you on a journey.  Many pilgrims take a time out from their stressed-out lives at home, and have difficulty switching to a calm, slowed-down rhythm.

And, under stress or in a hurry, you make mistakes. You go into tunnel vision and start missing way markers, making your walk that much longer than planned. You miss out seeing many of the small miracles or the messages sent by the universe on your way. You fail to pace your energy, ending up with blisters on your feet, hurt knees and back problems.

Sometimes a small talk with a villager or a word from a fellow pilgrim along the way can be an immense eye opener and blessing. I have walked several of the Camino routes more than twice and have been amazed at how much I didn’t see the first time around, and how different each Camino walk was.

Staying in the moment is one of the most difficult exercises in the hurried life of the Western mind which is preoccupied with all the fears of tomorrow and the events of the past. Will I have to sleep under the bridge? Will I be safe?  I have seen pilgrims literally fall into panic upon hearing that there was no accommodation left in the town. It is an innate fear to be in a foreign place and having no place to stay.  Others stay completely calm, trusting in the universe that a solution will always be found, laughing it off as part of the Camino experience.

I have taken this Camino experience to heart. A day can be ruined by a stressed-out, hurried mindset where one little catastrophe follows the next.  Or, you can just take one step back, concentrating on the breathing, deliberately slowing your walk by a pace or two, and then just taking it as it comes.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

 

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by | August 24, 2018 · 9:36 am

Finding soul purpose on the Camino

I’ve just completed my walk on the Camino Portugues from Porto to Santiago, my mind still occupied with the many lasting impressions and chance meetings along the way.

The Camino Portugues is one of the less well-known medieval pilgrimage routes that all end in the north-western Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela where the remains of St. James – an apostle of Jesus lie interred in a silver casket.

In ancient times some pilgrims travelled by ship to the Portuguese city of Porto from where they walked the 280 km along the scenic Atlantic coastline to Santiago.

Every Camino I have walked has been different. This one was by far less of a physical challenge and I would recommend the route to anyone wanting to walk the Camino the first time. I did the walk in 11 days. At this time of year the main Camino Frances is very busy because August is the main vacation time for France and Italy. There can be a problem finding accommodation.

Since I walked my first Camino in 2007 there has been a steady increase in the number of people taking time-out in reviving this ancient tradition. Some 300000 were registered by the Pilgrims Office last year – a record number.

I was impressed this year at the high number of millenium generation pilgrims and I had some wonderful, insightful conversations with some of them. There is a deep yearning for soul purpose and finding an inner spirituality beyond the confinements of organized religion. They have seen their parents living exhausting lives in the breathless rat-race of modern capitalism and don’t want the same.

We are seeing many signs of the raising of human consciousness on a high road that is non-divisive, holistic and more tolerant. This is happening at a time of appalling leadership failure, xenophobia and divisive nationalism. Extremes are a hallmark of transition.

Yet, I am optimistic that we are seeing the signs of upcoming young leaders, who are self-reflecting, creative and thinking out of the box.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

http://www.reinogevers.com

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by | August 7, 2018 · 6:15 am

Embrace Your Self

When I watch an animal, like my dog Klara, I cannot but help think that we humans are just about the most disconnected species around.

Animals are totally connected to their immediate environment, sniffing, smelling and using all their senses to imbibe the immediate moment with no past or future.

I mentioned in a previous blog that it seems that much of the Western mind seems to have lost its soul in the mad rush for immediate gratification, and the addiction to external approval  in its many variations.

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Photo by William Farlow

It has become very difficult to discern who we really are on a soul-purpose level when we are bombarded by countless distractions from the moment we get up in the morning, and take that stretch toward the smart phone.  Most of these forces want to make us believe in self-images, or “false Gods”, with a manipulative purpose. Many of the rich and famous “role models” on glitzy magazine covers show exceedingly dysfunctional behavior. Some are obviously very unhappy people.

A growing number of neuroscientists even believe that we are a species with no free will, and can be manipulated in any direction if the communicator knows how to play the reptilian part of the brain – the oldest part of the brain – with strong emotions such as anger and fear.

The historian and author of  the book “Sapiens – A brief history of humankind”, Yuval Noah Harari, said recently that he is most concerned that “we are close to the point when an external system can understand your feelings better than you. We’ve already seen a glimpse of it in the last epidemic of fake news.”

Knowing and embracing your true self can thus become a matter of survival. If we don’t live our true self, we can become very unhappy, and fall ill because the body is always reflecting what is happening in the mind.

Finding and embracing yourself is pretty easy by taking time out for introspection. This can be anything from time for prayer, meditation, pilgrimage walks, body-mind retreats and other methods that bring us back into alignment with the higher or true self. We need to learn again who we really are.

Liberating yourself from the powers of distraction, that alienate you from your true self, is the real challenge of our time. 

Each one of us alive today has a spark of the divine, has desire and purpose, unique abilities and something precious to give back.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

 

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by | July 24, 2018 · 8:25 am

Truth recognizes Truth

We all fall for the same trap. You are conversing with someone when you realize that you might as well be talking to a wall. The other person and you are locked in separate belief systems. Communication is impossible when one person believes he is talking about a teapot while the other person tells you it’s a spoon.

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Photo by Kawtar CHERKAOUI 

Much of this phenomenon is currently visible in today’s polarized political world. We are incapable and unwilling to listen to each other.  You make up your mind that the moon landing was a fake and a Google search will inevitably validate that opinion. You don’t even bother to check the sourcing or the scientific facts.

I very much do believe that humanity is on the brink of a raised consciousness. As more and more people follow the stream of this new holistic energy, a lot of people are also being left behind and will even fall back into the old traps of rabid xenophobia and narrow-minded nationalism – fed by reptilian-mind toxic emotions such as fear and hate.

The holistic minded person sees diversity as a principle of creation, creativity and constant transition.  Having an open-minded free spirit requires grounding and self-awareness. What is my self-identity?  What is personality, and what is my true higher self?

That is when truth recognizes truth in the meeting of minds.

You will sense instinctively what is true and what is false. You will sense the nuances behind what someone is trying to say and find out a new perspective. In deep listening when soul meets soul there is recognition of the common thread in humanity and creation.

The new and the old energies currently very much manifest themselves in the events of the external world. For those on the path it sometimes needs much steadfastness and courage to remain true to the higher purpose and destiny. It is a time where we need to conserve energy and avoid the web of negative distraction.

An example in point is the heated debate on whether the French national football team is really French because of the many black players in the team. A national football star of Turkish descent in Germany, Mesut Ozil, resigns from the team  amid an emotional discourse on whether he is Turkish or German. So what! Those black players in the French team are both African and French. Mesut Ozil is both Turkish and German. Why force someone who comes from different background to choose just one identity.  And if it comes down to it we are all a mixture of many cultures and influences – what a blessing!

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

http://www.reinogevers.com

     

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by | July 19, 2018 · 8:54 am

Your very authentic body mind

Imagine your body as a recorder of all the events in your life. It is the most authentic barometer of your emotional state of being and the reason why we still dream of when we stole cookies from grandma’s closet as a seven-year-old.

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Photo by Andrei Lazarev 

What hasn’t been dealt with emotionally will be stored away in your body consciousness.  Its the difference between head-mind and heart-mind. The mind is capable of construing all sorts of reasons why taking those cookies was in order while your sub-conscious heart mind knows very well that what you did was stealing.

Training you “heart-mind” to be emotionally mature is one of the reasons why we are here  on earth. We humans are imperfect beings and we have incarnated as souls to use our bodies as instruments of learning.

The heart is not merely an organ of the cardiovascular system that transports nutrients, oxygen and hormones throughout the body and removes metabolic waste.  In the spiritual sense the heart is described as the “seat of the soul.”  It is the first organ that develops in the fetus and the connection between our physical and non-physical (soul) self.

First impulses or thoughts flow first from the heart and then to the brain. The brain dissects, rationalizes and analyzes. The “heart-mind” is authentic and closest to the true-self or soul purpose. Knowing the difference between “head-mind” and “heart-mind” is the spiritual learning part.

Our body is constantly sending us signals of what we need to hear and work on. The problem is that we are so caught up in the world of distraction that we mostly fail to listen until the body gets really angry and calls a time-out with some illness or malady. It is no surprise that cardio-vascular diseases top the list in most western countries. We have in a way lost our soul and lost direction.

Regaining that connection to the “heart-mind” comes mostly during times of solitude, during meditation, prayer and mindful walking. That is when we become aware of our emotional state of being. Some of the “emotional memories” stored in the body could lie back many years or even decades.

These energies can be transmuted very well with the ancient body arts of tai chi, qi gong and yoga that were all developed and refined by spiritual masters over generations. It is why also more and more people are experiencing a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago as very healing.

Animals, especially dogs, are very much in alignment with their true self. They have an amazing way of dealing with stress by just running it off.  See for yourself by watching this video.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

http://www.reinogevers.com

     

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by | July 13, 2018 · 9:26 am

States of transition

The public discourse in much of social media currently seems to alternate between two extremes with a fall-back to the nationalist hysteria of the 1930s to views expounding a free-for all liberalism. It is typical of a collective consciousness in transition and lacking direction and grounding.

Much of the western world appears to have lost its soul to the hungry ghosts seeking immediate gratification. At the same time we are seeing the outlines of an emerging Renaissance in human consciousness. Every crisis carries within it the seeds of transition and change to a new order.

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A growing number of people are unhappy with the current state of things, and seekers of a new truth transmuting the dogmatism that has been imposed by rigid philosophies and religion during past generations.

Theologian and writer Richard Rohr pointedly describes religion has having brought forth the worst and the best in mankind.  Organised religion has the power of fueling the flames of fanaticism, hate and war or it can open hearts in collective prayer and ritual for the betterment of humankind.

When extreme opposites face each other off, as we are currently seeing along party political lines in the United States, each side becomes blind to the shades of grey and the humanness in the other. We stamp off people along party lines and belief systems preventing a real discourse. In a way it has become “a religious war” between opposites.

In the heated exchange between the opposites the voices of the silent masses go unheard. I do believe that most people are by nature tolerant and can intuitively distinguish between the lie and the truth – a reason  why a growing number of people are refusing to vote and are becoming alienated from organized politics and religion.

Some of the outlines of change can be seen in the fast-growing self-development industry with individual change gradually becoming collective change on a global scale.

In recent years I have met hundreds of people from all walks of life and many different countries on the Camino pilgrimage route in Spain.  About 200,000 people are now walking this ancient medieval pilgrimage route each year. I would describe many of them as spiritual seekers asking the age-old questions: Where do I come from and where am I going?

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

http://www.reinogevers.com

    

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by | July 6, 2018 · 6:46 am

Taking care of your body is spiritual work

It is a real tragedy that Christian religion has taught us for generations that it is better to live outside the body than within. Eastern religion has taken a different route with the body arts of yoga and tai chi deeply embedded in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Early mankind did not see the soul as separate from the body. Nature was part of the “oneness” – that feeling of being intertwined within the matrix of the universe.

As within so without. How we treat ourselves is how we treat our environment. We need to rediscover our body as a temple and an instrument harboring the soul that needs to be nurtured and loved like a good friend.

Our lifestyle choices in what we eat, how we exercise and how we deal with our stress level determines how healthy we are and who we are.

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Now there are some folks out there who might argue that health is like a deck of cards: You have a bad hand or a good hand. The truth is that we do have control. Only a small percentage of people in fact have bad health that can be attributed to accidents or  hereditary factors.

Health is a choice we control. We do have a choice when it comes to eating healthy or processed foods. We can control our recuperation by getting enough sleep and reduce our stress levels. Exercise has an enormous beneficial effect on the body metabolism, immune system and our mood.

Body work is spiritual work because our body gives us a signal in many ways whether we are on track or not.  The Chinese teaching of the five elements is a real eye opener when it comes to typical health issues:

  • Digestive problems for example could mean an issue with letting go of old things.
  • Fear could manifest itself in kidney and bladder problems
  • Liver and gall bladder, anger and frustration
  • Heart, unresolved emotional issues
  • Lung, setting boundaries or crossing the boundaries of others.

We are imperfect beings. Life is an ongoing learning process. But its quite possible to live a long and healthy life when we become more aware and mindful of our physical and spiritual needs.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant 

http://www.reinogevers.com

    

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