Tag Archives: philosophy

by | November 9, 2026 · 6:56 am

When did you last change your mind?

When did you last change your mind about something that you felt was really important to you?

Was it because somebody persuaded you to, or because it was convenient? Or did you experience something that made you question what you had always believed?

This can be surprisingly difficult for most people. One reason is that we often confuse opinion with identity.

Throughout your life, you construct an understanding of the world. Your beliefs and opinions are shaped, often in ways you are barely conscious of, by the families, communities and cultural environments in which you grow up.

They provide you with identity, security and a sense of belonging. They help distinguish right from wrong, friend from foe, and what you consider to be truth from what you reject.

But what happens when the beliefs that have shaped your understanding of the world are themselves fundamentally flawed?

When changing your mind takes courage

I grew up in apartheid South Africa, where racial separation was government policy. The country was divided into designated areas for different racial groups, a system sanitised by the authorities under the label of ‘separate development’.

As white children, we grew up knowing remarkably little about the lives of those outside our own sheltered world. The system was built on fear, suspicion and the oppression of people simply because they were different. Even more disturbing was the way apartheid was justified through religion, using biblical interpretations to legitimise racial discrimination.

Yet one man I had the privilege of meeting on several occasions found the courage to break away from this system with extraordinary moral clarity.

Beyers Naudé was a Dutch Reformed Church minister who had initially defended apartheid and its theological justification. But as he began questioning what he had been taught, his understanding changed. He came to recognise that apartheid theology had no legitimate biblical foundation and that his loyalty to the Gospel could no longer be reconciled with his loyalty to the church and the political establishment.

When he began speaking out, he was vilified by many of his former supporters as a traitor. He lost friendships, faced hostility and paid a considerable personal price for his convictions.

In October 1977, following the government’s banning of the Christian Institute, which he had founded, Naudé himself was subjected to a banning order. He was confined to his Johannesburg home and surrounding area, prohibited from preaching, meeting more than one person at a time and being quoted in public.

His story is a powerful reminder that changing your mind can require far more than intellectual flexibility. Sometimes it demands moral courage, particularly when doing so means turning away from the beliefs and institutions that have defined your life.

History offers other examples of people who displayed similar courage. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who resisted the Nazi regime, was executed in April 1945, only weeks before the end of the Second World War. In more recent times, Russian opposition figures Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov paid with their lives for challenging the authoritarian political establishment.

These individuals could have chosen to remain silent and follow the prevailing consensus. What distinguished them was their willingness to look beyond the accepted narratives of their time, question what they had been taught and act according to a deeper sense of moral responsibility.

They remind us that sometimes the greatest act of courage is not to defend what we have always believed, but to recognise when it is wrong.

The comfort and danger of certainty

One of the greatest obstacles to personal growth is not ignorance, but the conviction that we already know.

When we become too attached to our opinions, we close ourselves off to alternative perspectives. We begin to see the world in binary terms: right or wrong, us or them, friend or enemy.

This way of thinking has deep roots in our evolutionary history. For much of human existence, belonging to a group offered protection, while strangers and outsiders could represent potential threats. Although the circumstances of our lives have changed enormously, some of these tribal instincts remain deeply embedded in our behaviour.

In today’s interconnected world, we are constantly exposed to different cultures, identities, beliefs and competing versions of the truth. Yet instead of becoming more open-minded, many people retreat into increasingly rigid positions.

Social media and digital algorithms can reinforce this tendency by surrounding us with opinions that confirm what we already believe. We become more entrenched in our own intellectual and ideological comfort zones, often interpreting disagreement as a threat rather than an opportunity to learn.

Clinging to familiar beliefs may provide a temporary sense of security in a rapidly changing world. But does it really make us happier, wiser or better equipped to understand one another?

Perhaps the opposite is true. The more rigidly we defend our convictions, the less room we leave for personal growth.

There is a profound difference between knowing about life and allowing ourselves to be transformed by living it.

The wisdom of not knowing

One of the most intriguing ideas in the writings of the 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart is that our understanding of the divine may depend less on what we know than on what we are prepared to let go of.

This is a radical idea because most of us approach life by accumulating knowledge. We develop beliefs, construct explanations and build an understanding of the world that gives us a sense of certainty.

But Eckhart recognised a paradox: sometimes the very things we believe we know become obstacles to deeper understanding.

His teaching of Gelassenheit is particularly relevant here. The German word conveys the idea of letting go, releasement and non-attachment.

Eckhart suggested that we must release not only our attachment to material things, but also our attachment to our ideas, expectations and even our concepts of God.

We create an image of God based on our upbringing, religious traditions, cultural assumptions and personal experiences. Yet we risk mistaking that image for the reality itself.

Eckhart’s mystical approach invites us to let go of these preconceived images and become receptive to something beyond our intellectual understanding.

His famous expression, often translated as ‘the eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me’, points towards an extraordinary intimacy between human consciousness and the divine.

The underlying message is that our ideas about ultimate reality should never be confused with ultimate reality itself.

This insight extends well beyond religion. We do something similar with our understanding of other people, cultures and even ourselves. We construct mental images and assumptions, then mistake them for the whole truth.

Perhaps wisdom begins when we recognise the limitations of these assumptions and become willing to look again.

From knowing to becoming

This raises an interesting question: is wisdom something we acquire, or something we become?

We tend to measure knowledge by what we have learned, how much information we possess and how well we can explain the world around us.

Wisdom, however, is rather different.

A person may know a great deal about compassion without actually being compassionate. They may understand the philosophy of forgiveness without being able to forgive. They may have studied spirituality for decades without becoming more accepting, generous or peaceful.

There is a difference between understanding something intellectually and allowing it to transform the way you live.

One of the most important qualities of a wise person may therefore be the willingness to reconsider what they believe.

Intellectual humility does not mean lacking conviction or being unable to make decisions. Nor does it mean treating every opinion as equally valid.

It means recognising that our understanding is always partial, and that our experiences, upbringing and cultural conditioning influence how we interpret reality.

It means remaining curious, listening to perspectives that challenge our assumptions and having the courage to admit when we might be wrong.

Most importantly, it means being prepared to change.

On the Camino Aragonese

The journey of becoming

We are continually shaped by relationships, encounters, disappointments, loss, travel, nature, reading and reflection. Experiences that once seemed insignificant may acquire an entirely different meaning years later.

This is something I have become increasingly aware of through my own journey, particularly after walking thousands of kilometres on the Camino de Santiago and immersing myself in the natural world.

Walking has taught me that understanding does not always come from seeking answers. Sometimes it emerges through the experience itself: the solitude, the unexpected encounters, the physical challenges and the simple act of being present.

Many of the ideas and convictions I held so firmly at 30 began to look different at 50, and different again now, in my late sixties.

I don’t necessarily regard this as evidence that everything I once believed was wrong. Rather, my understanding has deepened and, in some respects, become less rigid.

For instance, I have gradually stopped feeling the need to change other people’s opinions. I have come to accept that people see and experience the world differently, shaped by their own histories, circumstances and understanding. We do not always have to agree, nor do we need to convince one another that we are right.

There is a certain freedom in recognising that.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of the spiritual journey is that the more we learn, the more we begin to recognise how little we truly know.

For much of our lives, we search for answers. We construct belief systems, embrace philosophies and look for explanations that will make sense of the world and our place within it. There is nothing wrong with this. The search for understanding is part of what makes us human.

But there may come a time when we recognise that our beliefs, however meaningful, are only interpretations of a reality far greater than our ability to comprehend it.

The mystics understood something of this. They recognised that the journey towards deeper understanding sometimes requires us to let go of the very things we have spent a lifetime learning to hold on to.

Wisdom is not about becoming increasingly certain of what you believe, but about developing the humility to question yourself, the courage to change and the openness to embrace what remains unknown.

You may never arrive at all the answers. But perhaps that is not the point.

The journey is not simply about discovering what is true. It is about allowing what we discover to change who we become.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | November 2, 2026 · 3:03 pm

Rediscovering the Sacred in the Natural World

Can we learn from history to restore our shattered ecosystems? This is the compelling question Sophie Yeo explores in her book Nature’s Ghosts.

Humanity has been reshaping the natural world ever since the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture, some 10,000 years ago. Forests were cleared, wetlands drained and landscapes transformed to make room for crops and permanent settlements.

What began as a gradual reshaping of our surroundings has, over millennia, evolved into an unprecedented disruption of the delicate ecosystems on which all life depends. Yet history may hold valuable clues to how we can begin to repair the damage and restore a more harmonious relationship with the natural world.

Before the agricultural revolution, human communities generally lived much closer to the rhythms of nature. Their relationship with the environment was one of immediate dependence, interaction and, in many cases, reverence. Even until relatively recent times, cultures across the world regarded trees, rivers and mountains not simply as resources but as living presences, deserving of respect and sometimes even worship.

There was an understanding, deeply embedded in many traditional belief systems, that humanity was not separate from nature but belonged to a much larger web of life.

The Earth’s climate, as Yeo’s research reminds us, has always undergone dramatic changes. Species have disappeared, others have adapted, and entire ecosystems have been transformed in response to shifting conditions. But never before has human activity altered the natural world on such an extensive scale and at such speed. The burning of fossil fuels is accelerating climate change, while plastics, nuclear waste, pesticides and countless other pollutants will remain in the environment for generations, in some cases for thousands of years.

This raises a fundamental question: why are we destroying the very environment on which our survival depends?

One explanation Yeo explores is our growing estrangement from nature. Rapid urbanisation and the transformation of modern lifestyles have gradually distanced us from the natural world. For many people, nature has become something outside ourselves: a landscape to visit, a resource to exploit or an amenity to enjoy in our leisure time. We have lost something of the awareness that we are part of nature, not separate from it.

I would take this argument a step further and describe it as a spiritual disconnect.

For me, nature is an expression of the divine. Not necessarily in a religious or institutional sense, but as an experience of something greater than ourselves: the mysterious intelligence, interconnectedness, and creative force that permeates all living things. A tree growing towards the light, the intricate balance of an ecosystem, the changing seasons or the quiet persistence of life itself can all evoke a sense of wonder and belonging.

When we begin to see ourselves as part of this larger whole, our relationship with the natural world changes. It also changes our relationship with ourselves. Self-love and self-expression acquire a different meaning when we recognise that we are not isolated individuals, but expressions of the same living world. Caring for ourselves and caring for nature are no longer separate concerns. Both become ways of honouring life.

I was reminded of this during a visit to Kew Gardens in London last week. The gardens contain an extraordinary collection of endangered plants and trees from different parts of the world, many of them being carefully preserved and studied by dedicated scientists. I was particularly fascinated to learn that researchers are now using artificial intelligence to help identify and prioritise the species most at risk.

There is something deeply moving about this combination of ancient life, scientific knowledge and modern technology. It suggests that our relationship with nature need not be defined solely by exploitation and destruction. Human intelligence and ingenuity can also be placed in the service of protecting and sustaining life.

Perhaps the work at Kew Gardens points towards the kind of future Yeo envisages. One of the important lessons of ecological history is that ecosystems rarely return to precisely the state they were in before human intervention or environmental catastrophe. Once a habitat has been destroyed, the original combination of species and conditions may be impossible to recreate. But nature is remarkably resilient. It adapts, evolves and finds new ways of sustaining life.

This has important implications for how we approach environmental restoration. The challenge may not always be to recreate an idealised version of the past, but to help ecosystems adapt and flourish under changing conditions, including a warmer and increasingly unpredictable climate. History teaches us that insects, mammals and plants possess extraordinary capacities for adaptation, provided they are given the space and conditions to survive.

Perhaps the environmental movement has sometimes placed too much emphasis on apocalyptic scenarios and humanity’s role in destroying the natural world. The warnings are necessary, and the scale of the crisis should not be underestimated. But Yeo’s book also offers another perspective: human beings can be agents of restoration, not merely destruction.

We can become stewards of nature, using our knowledge, creativity and technological capabilities to protect biodiversity and help damaged ecosystems recover and transform.

Ultimately, I believe this requires more than scientific innovation, political will or changes in consumer behaviour. It calls for a shift in consciousness. We need to rediscover a sense of belonging to the natural world and recognise that its wellbeing is inseparable from our own.

Perhaps the most important lesson is also the simplest: we cannot truly care for what we perceive as separate from ourselves.

Rediscovering our spiritual connection with nature may therefore be as important to the future of our planet as the scientific and technological advances we bring to its protection.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | September 21, 2026 · 2:36 pm

When Fear Turns Good People Dark

All my life I have grappled with a question that has never allowed me much peace: How can ordinary, seemingly good people turn almost overnight against their fellow human beings and participate in acts of terrible cruelty?

History gives us countless examples. Perhaps among the most shocking are the genocidal conflicts in Rwanda, where people who had lived alongside one another for generations suddenly turned on their neighbours, friends and even family members in a frenzy of violence.

In Nazi Germany, ordinary citizens looked away as Jewish neighbours were arrested and deported. Some went further, informing the authorities where those who were hiding could be found.

These events are difficult to comprehend because they challenge one of our most comforting assumptions: that good people and evil people are fundamentally different kinds of human beings.

During my years as a journalist, I came to question that assumption.

A few months into my first job as a junior reporter, an elderly colleague took me aside one day. He had been watching me, he said, and there was something I needed to understand about the profession.

“You really need to stop being so naïve.”

At the time, I thought he was talking about journalism. Over the years, I came to understand that he was talking about something much larger: human nature.

Each of us carries within us the capacity for both compassion and cruelty, courage and cowardice, generosity and selfishness. The fact that we may currently live peaceful, decent lives does not make us immune to the darker possibilities within ourselves.

Sometimes the greatest good and the greatest evil can even exist within the same person.

This is one of the most uncomfortable truths of being human.

The great thirteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart understood suffering not simply as punishment or divine cruelty, but as something that could chisel us into beings capable of carrying light.

St. Augustine, too, understood evil not as an independent force competing with God, but as a form of absence — a turning away from the source of being and love.

These ideas have stayed with me because they suggest that darkness is not something we overcome simply by declaring ourselves to be good. It has to be seen.

And this is where the idea of the shadow becomes important.

The shadow is everything within us that we would rather not acknowledge: our fear, envy, resentment, shame, aggression, insecurity, grief and woundedness. It contains the parts of ourselves that we have pushed out of conscious awareness because they do not fit the image we have constructed of who we are.

But what we refuse to see does not necessarily disappear.

It can operate from the darkness. You can project it onto others. You can turn unresolved fear into suspicion. Or humiliation into hatred. Pain into aggression and insecurity into the need to control. The sense of powerlessness turns into the desire to find someone weaker to blame.

This may help explain one of the great paradoxes of human history: why people who have themselves suffered persecution can sometimes become persecutors.

Afrikaners who carried the historical memory of British colonial oppression later participated in a political system that subjected Black South Africans to systematic discrimination and humiliation.

I witnessed another contradiction in my own childhood.

Members of my church congregation could receive communion on a Sunday, be loving husbands and fathers, generous to their fellow parishioners and apparently sincere in their Christian faith — and yet treat their Black farmworkers with extraordinary cruelty. They could compartmentalize their lives so completely that compassion existed in one part of their world while dehumanization existed in another.

And history continues to remind us that liberation from one form of oppression does not automatically free us from the impulses that created it. Some people who once fought apartheid have themselves later been accused of corruption and abuse of power.

The lesson, for me, is not that one political group or another is inherently good or evil. It is that no human being, movement or community is automatically protected from the shadow.

We remain incomplete beings.

Nobody is immune to temptation. Nobody is entirely free from fear. And nobody can honestly claim that darkness belongs only to someone else.

This is why I have become increasingly convinced that one of the most important tasks of a human life is to transmute fear and integrate the shadow.

By transmutation, I don’t mean suppressing fear or pretending that it isn’t there. Nor do I mean excusing harmful behaviour because someone has been wounded.

You have to become conscious of what moves within you. You have to be willing to sit with your fear long enough to understand what lies beneath it. What are you protecting? What are you afraid of losing? Where did the fear begin? What old wound does it touch? What story about yourself or other people has grown around it?

When fear remains unconscious, it easily becomes a justification.

It tells us that they are the problem.

They are dangerous.

They are taking something from us.

They don’t belong.

They must be controlled.

And once another human being has been reduced to they, compassion becomes much easier to abandon. There is separation between them and us and the seeds of tribalism are sown.

It can become xenophobia. Racism. Religious hatred. Political extremism. Nationalism stripped of compassion. The search for scapegoats. Fear narrows the field of perception until the other person is no longer experienced as a human being with a story, a family, wounds and hopes of their own.

Love, by contrast, reconnects.

This does not mean that fear is always irrational. Fear has an important biological function. It protects us from genuine danger. The problem begins when old fear, inherited fear or unprocessed trauma becomes the lens through which the present is interpreted.

Trauma can travel through families and communities. Historical grievances can become part of collective identity. Stories of humiliation and victimhood can be passed from one generation to another until they become almost indistinguishable from truth itself.

Unless someone interrupts the pattern through consciousness.

It requires the courage to look inward and ask not only, What have they done to us? but also, What is happening inside me because of what has happened to us?

This, I believe, is where genuine transformation begins.

To transmute the shadow is to bring what has been unconscious into consciousness and, rather than acting it out, allow it to be understood.

Fear can become discernment.

Anger can become a recognition of injustice without becoming hatred.

Grief can become compassion.

Shame can become humility.

Pain can become wisdom.

The darkness does not necessarily have to be destroyed. It has to be brought into the light.

Perhaps this is what Eckhart meant by being chiselled into someone capable of carrying light. The work is not to become a person who has no darkness. It is to become a person who knows their darkness well enough not to be ruled by it.

This is also why I have become wary of the temptation to divide humanity into the good and the bad, the enlightened and the unenlightened, the victims and the perpetrators.

Those distinctions may sometimes be necessary when confronting injustice. Responsibility must never disappear into spiritual abstraction. People must be held accountable for what they do.

But accountability and shadow work are not opposites.

The more honestly we recognize our own capacity for darkness, the less easily we can project that darkness onto others.

Perhaps the real work of becoming human is not to prove that we are good.

It is to become conscious enough to choose goodness when fear gives us another option.

Because the shadow will always be there.

The question is whether we remain unconscious of it — allowing it to shape our thoughts, our relationships and our societies from beneath the surface — or whether we have the courage to turn towards it, understand it and gradually transform its energy into something life-giving.

That, for me, is the deeper meaning of inner work.

You cannot create a less divided world simply by changing other people. You can only begin by becoming conscious of what lies within that divides.

And perhaps the most important spiritual journey of all is the journey from fear back into connection — from separation back into wholeness, and from the unconscious shadow into the light.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | September 7, 2026 · 2:08 pm

Walking into Silence: What pilgrimage taught me about uncertainty, and trust

There are moments on a long walk when you stop thinking about where you are going and simply walk.You simply hear the rhythm of your feet. The landscape changes slowly. Your breathing settles. The noise in your head begins to diminish.I experienced something of that on a recent walk on the Pilgrims’ Way, from Winchester.

But before I took my first steps, I went into Winchester Cathedral. I sat down and was silent during a morning prayer ceremony with only a handful of people. For a few minutes I sat in that extraordinary building, surrounded by centuries of history, and thought about all the people who had come here before me.

Wonchester Cathedral

People who had stood exactly where I was standing and wondered what life meant.I set out on this walk with contemplations from the great Mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich.

Julian lived in fourteenth-century England, during one of the darkest periods of European history – the Black Death.She knew all about illness, death and uncertainty. During a serious illness in 1373, when she believed she was dying, she experienced a series of visions that became the basis of her Revelations of Divine Love. And from Julian came those extraordinary words:

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Julian said this living in a world in which almost everything was not well, and at the same time offering hope. She was saying that we may not understand what is happening in the world but we can still trust that love is deeper than suffering.

That is a very different kind of hope. We cannot plan and control the journey. Life happens in unpredictable ways while we try to protect ourselves against uncertainty.When we’re young, we often imagine that if we make the right choices, life will eventually become predictable.

People and pets we love become ill and die. Relationships change and fail. Homes and jobs change. Your body begins to remind you that you are not going to be here forever.

You begin to realize that you cannot control the journey. You can only walk and adapt to circumstances beyond your control.That thought stayed with me during the first hours of my walk during the unspoilt Itchen valley. 

The first kilometres are always slightly deceptive. You are still thinking about the destination. You look at the map. You calculate how far you have to go.

But gradually, something changes.

You stop thinking about the end.

You begin to pay attention to the next step.

And then the step after that.

That is one of the great gifts of walking.

It brings you back into the present moment. You hear the birds. You stand in awe before ancient trees. The Pilgrims’ Way takes you through landscapes that seem to exist outside ordinary time. There are stretches where ancient trees form tunnels over the path.You walk beneath them and suddenly feel very small.

The trees don’t know your worries. They simply stand there and some of them have been standing there for hundreds of years.And I found myself wondering how many people had walked beneath those same branches.

Medieval pilgrims walked these same old paths, possibly with the same questions as pulgrims today. And now they are gone.

The trees remain and there is something humbling and comforting about that. 

In the bigger order of things one lifespan is fleetingly small. The gravestones around the chapels, some dating back to the 12th century, are a stark reminder of that. You walk into a chapel after several hours on the trail and the experience can be almost startling. Outside, the modern world continues.

Inside, time seems to have stopped. The stones are old and the light is different.

And these are the moments when the boundary between the ordinary and the sacred really does feel a little thinner.A thin place isn’t necessarily a destination to an ancient sacred site but something that happens within.

St Augustine wrote about discovering God not by endlessly looking outward but by turning inward.Meister Eckhart later spoke about becoming empty — letting go of the endless accumulation of thoughts, desires and attachments that fill the mind.

And Julian of Norwich arrives at another extraordinary insight:beneath everything is love. Three different voices pointing towards the same thing. Turn inward. Become quiet and listen.

The longer you walk, the less important the things that seemed so urgent that morning can become.

You begin to notice the magic of life. The small things. The movement of leaves, the creaking of tree branches, the smell of moist earth in the forest, the taste of juicy wild blackberries and thoughts.

Not the thoughts you are trying to manufacture, but the ones that rise naturally when the noise becomes quiet.

That, too, is pilgrimage.

  • How do you deal with uncertainty?
  • How do you live when you don’t know what happens next?
  • How do you cope with the things you cannot control?

Julian’s answer is surprisingly simple. 

Certainty says:

I know how this is going to turn out.

Trust says:

I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I can take the next step anyway.

That may be one of the most important lessons of a pilgrimage walk.

You don’t need to see the entire road.

You only need to see enough of it to take the next step and keep walking, leaving everything behind you but they remain as memories.

Perhaps that is what happens on all journeys.

And perhaps the same is true of the people we meet, the experiences we endure and the questions we never will answer.

So I keep coming back to Julian.

“All shall be well.”

I don’t hear those words anymore as a promise that everything will work out exactly as I want it to.

I hear them as an invitation to trust.

To accept that some things will remain unresolved and that life contains suffering as well as joy.

Beneath all the noise, all the uncertainty and all the attempts to control life, there may be something much more subtle.

Not travelling towards a place where you hope to find the sacred. But discovering that the sacred has been travelling with you all along and that all shall be well just by taking the next step.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | July 7, 2026 · 8:05 am

The Crisis We Rarely Speak About

Across much of the world, we are witnessing a resurgence of tribalism, nationalism, and narrow ideologies. From my native South Africa to Europe and the United States, minorities are increasingly blamed for society’s frustrations.

History offers a familiar pattern here. A narrative that thrives on fear sows confusion and division, and while people are distracted by imagined enemies, fundamental freedoms are quietly eroded. The message is almost always the same: you have never been worse off, you are no longer safe, and the past was somehow better.

Materially speaking, most people today enjoy opportunities, technology, and healthcare that previous generations could scarcely have imagined. Yet trust in our major institutions—government, the media, religious organizations, and the judiciary—has seldom been lower.

Every crisis, however, carries within it the seeds of a new beginning. The illusion that our happiness depends on external institutions or circumstances is beginning to crumble.

Lasting fulfilment does not arise from the external world, but from the transformation that begins within.

So the deeper crisis lies elsewhere. It is a spiritual one—a growing loss of purpose, meaning, and connection.

Many traditional religious institutions no longer offer the answers people are looking for. More and more, people sense that the church, synagogue, temple, or mosque is not the same thing as the Divine itself. Religion teaches us what to believe and how to behave. At its best, it offers community, wisdom, and sanctuary. At its worst, it becomes an instrument of guilt, shame, or political power.

Spirituality begins somewhere deeper. It is a slow awakening.

As I write this from my home in Spain, the hypnotic chorus of Mediterranean cicadas fills the air. Their rhythmic song has become a daily reminder that creation itself is alive with mystery. Nature isn’t somewhere we escape to—it’s a living invitation to rediscover who we truly are.

When we learn to listen deeply, the subtle vibrations of life remind us that our greatest challenge isn’t political, financial, or technological. It’s the loss of our sense of purpose.

That’s precisely the insight in Romans 1:20: creation itself bears witness to the reality, power, and divine nature of God. If we open ourselves, we can perceive beauty, wonder, and mystery everywhere.

Paul writes that although God is invisible, His “eternal power and divine nature” can be clearly perceived through creation. Nature doesn’t reveal everything about God, nor does it replace spiritual revelation—it points beyond itself, toward its Source. Put simply: the universe is not just a collection of objects. It’s a living testimony, inviting us to recognise a transcendent Source expressed through both the visible and the invisible.

Seen this way, wonder becomes a doorway to faith. Beauty, order, complexity, and even our deepest longings all point beyond the material world. The real question isn’t whether there’s evidence—it’s whether we’re willing to respond to what creation is already revealing.

Paul’s larger argument is that humanity has always had access to an awareness of the Divine through creation, yet we repeatedly exchange that awareness for idols—things we choose to worship instead of the Source itself.

The Jewish mystic Rabbi Schneur Zalman put it beautifully: every soul “naturally yearns to separate itself from the body in order to unite with its origin and source…the fountainhead of all life.”

To receive these moments of awakening, we have to stay attentive—to learn how to become present. The novelist Boris Pasternak captured this with extraordinary simplicity: “When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.”

Perhaps the greatest spiritual practice of our time is simply learning to hear that quiet knock.

If these reflections resonate with you, I’d love for you to join Letters from the Threshold—my Inner Circle of readers exploring purpose, spirituality, and the deeper currents shaping our lives. Members receive exclusive essays, personal reflections, and an invitation to our monthly online gathering, where we explore the questions that matter most, together.

If you’re looking not just for information, but for transformation, I’d be delighted to welcome you.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S. Here you can find out more about my books on similar themes

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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 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 | May 17, 2026 · 6:01 am

The Lost Art of Stillness: Awakening Your Inner Self

In an age shaped by scrolling screens and shrinking attention spans, something profound is happening beneath the surface. Recent studies suggest that nearly two-thirds of young people struggle to remain engaged with content lasting longer than a minute. Yet, paradoxically, this same generation is searching intensely for meaning, transcendence, and spiritual grounding. The hunger for depth has not disappeared. If anything, it has become more urgent.

The difficulty is that our modern world is designed for speed rather than contemplation. We are conditioned to expect instant answers, simplified narratives, and constant stimulation. But the deepest truths of existence cannot be reduced to sound bites or algorithms. Mystery does not reveal itself in haste.

The ancient mystics understood this well. They approached the human soul with reverence, knowing that the divine cannot be encountered amid endless distraction and noise. The sacred unfolds quietly. Only in silence, solitude, and contemplation does the veil begin to lift, allowing fleeting glimpses of a reality greater than yourself.

As the 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart wrote:

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”

Those words may be more relevant now than ever before.

You did not arrive here by accident. Your very existence is astonishingly improbable. Consider how different your life might have been had you been born in another country, another culture, another language, another body, or another century. None of those things were within your control. And yet, within the boundaries of circumstance, you have been given the extraordinary freedom to choose how you respond to life.

Your external conditions shape you, but they do not define the deepest essence of who you are.

It is by fully entering the depth of life’s journey that you awaken to purpose, resilience, and meaning. But this awakening becomes difficult when the mind is continually fragmented by external distraction. Much of the anxiety and emotional exhaustion of modern life emerges from this loss of alignment — a growing disconnect between the soul and its deeper calling.

We lose ourselves when we settle for the illusion of safety in mediocrity, silencing the inner voice that calls toward courage, creativity, and transformation. In doing so, there is a drift away from the very source of vitality.

Nature has always offered a path back.

The silence of mountains, forests, rivers, and open skies reveals something ancient and expansive. Birdsong, wind through trees, flowing water — all of it speaks of an intricate web of interconnectedness that modern life often obscures. In nature, you are reminded that you belong to something far greater than your schedules, anxieties, and ambitions.

It is no coincidence that many of humanity’s sacred places are found in forests, caves, deserts, and mountain summits. Nature slows our breathing, quiets stress, restores attention, and gently reconnects you to the rhythm of being itself.

Perhaps this is why time spent in nature often feels less like escape and more like remembrance.

To live well is not merely to chase future goals or external validation. It is to recover the lost art of presence — to live not only to achieve, but Living to BE.

And perhaps, in the stillness that you so often avoid, you may rediscover the deeper purpose for which you were born.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article you might be interested in reading: Sages, Saints and Sinners Get it today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where all good books are sold.

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by | May 11, 2026 · 6:39 am

Finding Spiritual Connection in Modern Society

Last week, we reflected on what is lost when people leave their village, their small town, and the familiar rhythms of communal life. Across the modern world, millions have moved toward cities in search of opportunity, freedom, and economic survival. Yet in the process, something profound has often been left behind.

Life in cities can be exciting and liberating, but it is also frequently anonymous. One can live among millions and still feel unseen. Modern urban life often disconnects people from land, ancestry, ritual, and the shared memory of community. Relationships become fragmented and transactional. The old structures that once held human life together slowly weaken.

In villages and rural communities, identity was traditionally formed through belonging. A person was known not only by occupation, but by family, neighbourliness, participation, and place. There were rhythms to life: births, marriages, funerals, feast days, seasons of mourning, prayer at certain hours, bells ringing across a valley at dusk. Human beings lived within a larger story.

Research into the so-called Blue Zones — regions of the world where people consistently live longer and healthier lives — reveals something deeply important. Longevity is not simply linked to diet or exercise. It is also connected to a healthy social network, purpose, ritual, intergenerational connection, and spiritual belonging. In many of these communities, faith and communal life remain deeply intertwined.

Historically, the church stood at the center of this communal structure. Whatever its failures — and history certainly contains many — churches often provided sanctuary during times of grief, illness, uncertainty, and poverty. Sacred spaces gave language to suffering and meaning to mortality. The repetition of prayer, liturgy, candle-lighting, silence, chanting, kneeling, and ritual anchored people psychologically and spiritually.

Today, in much of the Western world, institutional religion has lost moral authority for millions of people. Financial scandals, abuse, political entanglement, shaming, and rigid dogmatism have left deep wounds. Many have walked away from organized religion altogether.

Yet the deeper human hunger has not disappeared.

People continue searching for meaning, transcendence, stillness, and connection. Even those who no longer identify as religious are often drawn toward pilgrimage routes, monasteries, ancient cathedrals, contemplative prayer, meditation, sacred music, or moments of silence in old churches. Something within the human spirit still longs for an encounter with the mystery of the divine.

The medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote:

“The soul grows by subtraction, not by addition.”

It is a remarkable insight for our age of endless stimulation and accumulation. Modern life constantly tells us to consume more information, more possessions, more experiences, more noise. Yet many people remain inwardly exhausted and spiritually empty.

Ritual and contemplative practice offer another path.

When prayer is repeated daily at a particular hour, in a sacred place, with intention and rhythm, it slowly becomes embedded in consciousness. Over time, the body itself begins to remember stillness. Ritual becomes less about performance and more about orientation. It provides structure when life feels chaotic and uncertain.

Modern neuroscience increasingly confirms what ancient spiritual traditions long understood intuitively: repetition calms the nervous system. Sacred ritual regulates emotional states. Silence and contemplative practice can reduce anxiety and restore psychological balance. The body responds to rhythm, breath, chant, and sacred attention.

But perhaps the deeper issue is existential rather than merely psychological.

A life disconnected from spiritual depth can begin to feel strangely hollow. Human beings do not live by productivity and consumption alone. Usually in moments of crisis or solitude, deeper questions emerge.

What happens when life ends?

What is the soul?

What gives suffering meaning?

What remains when certainty collapses?

These questions often arrive quietly — at three in the morning, during illness, after loss, while sitting beside a hospital bed, or in the strange silence that accompanies aging. Technology cannot answer them. Wealth cannot remove them. Distraction only postpones them.

Perhaps this is why sacred places, like walking ancient pilgrimage routes, still matter.

Even now, many people instinctively lower their voices when entering an ancient church or monastery. Something within us recognizes sacred space before the intellect has framed it. In the lighting of a candle, the sound of distant bells, or the quiet repetition of prayer, we remember something modern life easily forgets:

You are not just an economic creature.

You are also a spiritual being searching for meaning, belonging, and connection to something greater than yourself.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article you might be interested in reading: Sages, Saints and Sinners Get it today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where all good books are sold.

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by | April 6, 2026 · 2:32 pm

When the Crowd Roars: Why Independent Thinking Matters

There is a single man standing with his arms crossed in defiance while surrounded by a sea of German dockworkers raising their arms in the Nazi salute. The image was taken on 13 June 1936 in the port of Hamburg and rediscovered decades later, in 1991, when it quickly spread around the world.

The man was later identified as August Landmesser.

The occasion was the launch of a naval training vessel attended by Adolf Hitler—a ceremony designed to project unity, obedience, and ideological conformity. Against this backdrop, Landmesser’s refusal to salute stands out as an act of rare moral clarity. It was a small gesture, almost understated, yet it carried immense personal risk—and ultimately, tragic consequences.

The individual who stood against the crowd

Landmesser’s story is not one of abstract heroism but of lived contradiction. He had joined the Nazi Party in 1931, reportedly to secure employment. Yet his life took a decisive turn when he fell in love with Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman.

Under the racial laws of the regime, their relationship was forbidden. He was expelled from the party. Still, they remained together and had a daughter in 1935. Their refusal to separate led to their arrest in 1938. Landmesser was imprisoned, later conscripted into a penal military unit, and is believed to have died in action. Eckler was deported and murdered in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1942.

Seen in this light, the photograph is no longer simply symbolic—it is deeply personal. Landmesser’s defiance was not ideological theatre. It was the visible expression of a man whose life had already been shattered by the system he refused to endorse.

The individual mind versus the herd mind

The image endures because it captures a perennial tension: the individual conscience set against the force of the collective.

Crowds possess psychological gravity. Individuals who, in isolation, might act with restraint and judgment can become unrecognizable when absorbed into a mass. We have seen modern echoes of this dynamic in events such as the January 6 United States Capitol attack, where ordinary citizens were swept into a collective surge that overrode personal responsibility.

Western societies place a high value on individual freedom and self-expression. Yet beneath this, there often lies a spiritual disconnect that makes the pull of belonging all the more powerful. Identification with political movements, brands, cultural tribes, or even sports teams can take on a “religious” intensity. The need to belong can, under certain conditions, eclipse the capacity to think.

When consciousness gives way to the collective

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, who studied the psychological undercurrents of totalitarianism, drew a sharp distinction between the individuated mind and what he termed the collective unconscious.

He warned that as groups enlarge, consciousness tends to diminish. The ethical and reflective capacities of the individual are diluted, replaced by something more primitive, more reactive. In his words, the psychology of large crowds tends to descend to a more instinctual, even “animal” level. What emerges is not an elevation of shared wisdom, but often a regression into emotional contagion.

This is not merely a historical observation. It is a recurring human pattern.

The modern amplification of the herd

We are living through a period of accelerated change where vigilance and discernment are no longer optional—they are essential.

The digital ecosystem has intensified the dynamics Jung described. Large segments of mass media and social platforms no longer function primarily as vehicles of information, but as engines of emotional activation. Content is optimized not for truth, but for engagement—often by triggering fear, outrage, or tribal loyalty.

Distortion, simplification, and conspiracy narratives thrive in such environments. The line between information and manipulation has become increasingly blurred.

There are early indications that major platforms are beginning to acknowledge their role in this landscape. But structural incentives remain largely unchanged.

A practical line of resistance

Landmesser’s gesture invites a question that is as relevant now as it was then: what does it take to remain inwardly independent in the face of collective pressure?

A useful starting point is deceptively simple:

When you encounter a piece of information that provokes an immediate emotional reaction—pause.

Ask yourself:

  • What is the source of this reaction?
  • What intention might the communicator be pursuing?
  • Does this information serve clarity—or does it seek to agitate?

These questions create a small but decisive space between stimulus and response. In that space, the individual mind can reassert itself.
Sometimes it simply takes courage to refuse to roar like the crowd, to stand still, and refuse to follow.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article you might be interested in reading more in “Deep Walking for Body, Mind and Soul” published by Morgan James, New York. Get it today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where all good books are sold.

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