(PORTUGUÊS) (NEDERLANDS)
The pool terrace is so wet in the morning that it looks as if it rained last night. And it hasn’t. Now the sun is up, shining brightly in the blue sky and warming everything. The fields are steaming. When I am warming up in the sun and taking in my surroundings, I almost always think of Lilian Ducelle’s words, which she could utter with a reproachful undertone.
“Holland and its tin sun!”
On the editorial board of Moesson, the magazine she co-founded and where I worked at the time, we were all happy that finally the sun was shining in the middle of winter and then Lilian who was born in the former Dutch-Indies, now Indonesia, would say that. And yes, it is absolutely true. The sun in Holland doesn’t warm up in winter as it does here in Portugal.
I keep hoping that the terrace will be dry in the afternoon because I want to teach outside so badly. The whole group is yearning to be together and to train our consciousness. But the humidity is so high that the opposite is the case. It is soaking wet, even in the hottest part of the day. So I just exercise my consciousness all day long. When I think of it. And usually I think about it when I feel something. Discomfort, sadness, pleasure, surprise. In short, when I experience an emotion, I am suddenly aware of something.
This also happened when I walked to the bunker under the pool to put a load of laundry in the washing machine. No, the bunker is not a hiding place for war, it is the machine house of the swimming pool, under the ground and spacious enough to serve as a bunker. To get there I walk past some centenarian olive trees. Fortunately, I always look where I’m walking, otherwise I might have stepped on it. This mushroom. Later, I see that further on in the olive grove, many more of these natural cleaners have sprouted from the ground.
By now I have learned that in nature nothing is left to chance and that everything, from minerals and flora to fauna, plays a role in maintaining the earthly paradise. No human is needed for this. If there were no mushrooms, for example, there would be no nature. Mushrooms have thread-like bodies underground with which they communicate with each other and with the trees and plants. They work with each other. They feed each other. They maintain each other. They strengthen each other. They keep each other healthy and allow each other to flourish. How do we humans do that? Because we too are nature. We have all the properties of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms within us.
According to Rudolf Steiner, the human race is the sum of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. He then adds that we humans have achieved our evolution at the expense of or thanks to these realms. Noblesse oblige! Therefore, in my opinion, mankind is indebted to the animals, the flora and the whole of Mother Earth. This indebtedness automatically becomes a desire. For he who has attained consciousness – which, by the way, unconsciously always occurs at the expense of or thanks to something else – automatically has this desire to contribute to the development of others, to do good and to maintain the other realms.
Thus, the conscious human being develops compassion for everything that lives in the cosmos. And with compassion, the invisible connection between us humans arises too. Thus we nourish each other, sustain each other and strengthen each other. We keep each other healthy and let each other flourish.
Yoga & More 