On my last trip back from JHB to the KZN south coast I remembered something my friend Wolf had said on his very first trip through our South African country side after arriving at JHB airport. Perhaps you recall, I mentioned Wolf in my journal and said we would be hearing more from him…? Well what he said was: “The cows are so small here….” I asked what he meant and after thinking for a while, he said…” oh no, it’s the landscape that is so vast!” I had done this trip so many times and not noticed that. Remembering the fields in between the many villages along any German country road, I could recall how much larger the cows seemed to be. Looking at our huge open space – especially as one drives through the Free State – the cows seemed minute. There is this vast openness with seemingly nothing in it except space, much space and here and there some cows or an equally small tree and then later the strange looking table-top-mountains – beautiful space.
What does this tell us? Well that how something appears to one is all about perspective. I used to use the concept of perspective as a therapeutic tool in my art therapy work. Sometimes a client would have painted something and not been able to relate to it. I would then say something like this: “…what if you were to close in on your image…move closer to what you have painted, would you see more details…?” And then I would encourage the client to paint from a closer perspective. Invariably the details would appear. This could be done with any part of the painting, sometimes creating a number of details which and we could proceed by puzzling the pieces of information together.
There is of course the other way around too. Sometimes the client was too close to something and it created apprehension or fear. Or it was equally unclear exactly what it meant. I would then say: “…move further away, see what is below, above and to the left and right of what you have painted….what do you see then?” And I would encourage them to paint the bigger picture, the bigger perspective.
This simple method of questioning would literally put things into perspective. Too close and too far away can be confusing and finding the “right” perspective to understand things is so important. It is the same story with the glass half filled with water – it can be either half full or half empty, depending on how you perceive it. So the minute cows in the vast landscape are not really smaller than the cows of Germany, they only appear so in this specific landscape.
This brings to mind how South Africans talk about their country. So many of us tend to focus on what is not right, not working, the problems, the terrible stories they have to tell. And yet, there is another side – the side of all the wonderful positive things we have to be grateful for. This applies to our personal lives in the very same way. Try it! Think about all that you have instead of what you don’t have and focus on that. In Germany (as in any other countries) there are many, many things that are bad, things that people do not like and this includes terrible crimes as well as things that the German government is not getting right. But one difference I notice is that they, as a people, do not focus so much on the negative aspects of their country. It does actually make a difference to the general atmosphere as well as to personal experience.
I want to tell you about an experience I had during my trip to JHB at the end of my daughter’s 2 week holiday in South Africa. I met a lovely young fellow in the Drakensberg where I stayed over with my daughter and her boyfriend. Matthias Lause, a blond 26 year old German was on the last leg of his 9 month journey of his Tractor-World-Tour for CLASS CAREs, a welfare organisation collecting funds for children in Lesotho. He had spent a few days in Durban waiting for his tractor to arrive by boat and did a scuba diving course. On the course he met 3 guys from JHB who each told him horrific stories of murders and hijackings that they had heard about or personally experienced. They painted a very bleak picture of the big city.
I had gone to bed leaving my daughter and her boyfriend chatting with Matthias in the hotel bar and the next morning I found a very changed boyfriend. He was nervous. We were on our way to JHB where we wanted to spend a couple of days before their flight back to Germany. We intended on going to the theatre as well as visiting some other interesting places in JHB. He was remarking on how terrible JHB is and was actually quite anxious. My daughter, thank goodness, was more relaxed as they both told me what Matthias had related to them about the storied he had heard. The barman at the hotel also had his share to fill in on the picture and all of a sudden there was this fear in the air about JHB. It took me quite a while to put things into the picture again – into perspective in order for them to relax about the days we would spend in the city.
Yes, there is a lot to be afraid of as bad things are happening on a large scale. But there is also a lot to love about JHB. I love JHB for many reasons. To me, it is the city of the most integration, it holds the wealth of our country, the warm-heartedness, the multi-culture not only of black and white but also of English and Afrikaans and other cultures – very similar to the large cities like Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne in Germany. It is the city with the most culture ….and much, much more.
We need to think about what kind of energy we are putting out there when we focus on bad stuff. I am not saying that it should not be mentioned and certainly not suggesting sweeping these things under the carpet. On the contrary. It needs our attention and it is the quality of energy we give to this attention that I want to address. What I am suggesting is that it is equally important to focus on the positive things to tell about our lives - and our country. We need to learn that. Why? Well not simply to paint a good picture of the place we live and earn our livings in, but for ourselves, for our personal well being, for what we expect in life, for what we expect for our country.
It is all about energy….the energy we present, the energy we expose others to, the energy we hold within our hearts.
Many of you will have seen the movie “The Secret” and heard about the universal Law of Attraction. If you are able to understand that we all boil down to energy vibrating or resonating at frequencies we ourselves create (don’t believe me, look into Quantum Physics to learn more about this) you will understand that we create what we hold within ourselves, what we are giving out. Our output becomes our input. So this is actually a really important thing – to put out more of what we want to actually experience. As I said earlier, it is all a matter of perspective. No need to pretend the badness is not there…it is much more a matter of taking into account and focusing on the goodness that is in our lives. It is about expecting the best while giving our best, knowing that we create our experience of things to come.
On this note, I would like to mention something really wonderful I discovered in JHB. It is something everyone I know in JHB complains about – the traffic and the electrical failures! The occasion was a peak hour trip to the shopping mal in the rain and the traffic lights were not working. It was total madness….BUT, it worked like a dream - no traffic flow would have functioned in any of the big cities I visited in Germany in this manner. The drivers all put into place the rule for 4-way stop streets: first come, first to leave. Yes, it was slow but ALL the traffic lights I drove through functioned in this way. Traffic was slow moving, but it moved – quite unlike the jams I had encountered in a similar situation in Hamburg, Germany. Everyone drove into the middle of the cross road until no one could move at all until the traffic police arrived - and then it took a long time to get it all sorted out. Germany does not have the 4-way stop street thing. They did not know how to deal with the situation. The drivers were equally mad, equally in a rush, and equally aggressive and it showed.
In the situation I was in, I am sure that the drivers were swearing about both the traffic and the electrical problems of the city, but the traffic still flowed. I sat in my car in wondrous appreciation of our 4-way stop street training and how our drivers were able to cope.
Why am I writing all this? It touched me deeply to see the result of the horrific stories in my daughter's boyfriend. He felt uncomfortable, I felt uncomfortable, and so did my daughter. All we wanted was to have a good time in JHB and that seemed in jeopardy. I feel strongly about the country of my birth - and I do this having lived away for so long. I remember the deep longing to be home. And I am very aware of the fact that the grass is by no means greener on the other side. As a student I had fought for the change in South Africa and as an adult well on in my life, I feel a great sadness about the unending problems we are encountering presently. I am however deeply happy to be here. I find something here that helps me feel whole - be it the sunshine, the fact that when it rains it really does rain, the vast landscapes, the huge waves of the Indian Ocean or the wonderful warm, friendly, and happy people here. There is a happiness here that I only could perceive after living overseas for so long. I did not find this there, ever - and that is an honest statement.
To all of you out there, take some time to think about perspective. Go a little closer if you need more detail and a little further away if you want the bigger picture. And remember too that you attract into your life what you think, feel, and do. If you want more of something else, then you do really need to give and at the same time expect more of that in your life. And remember to send out the message of what you want to receive. You are like a magnet attracting to your life what you hold within yourself. I have known about this phenomenon for such a long time now - not just since The Secret movie. I've lived by this for many, many years and I know that it is true, that it works.
On a personal level, I am taking some time out to catch up planning and also on writing after so many very busy months of Tantra Sacred Massage work – although, I must say, students at the coast are keeping me busy too! I am using this month of October to plan the workshops that the School of Durga Tantra will be offering next year as well as some organisational work for the National Institute of Tantra South Africa. There are new and interesting developments which you will be hearing about soon.
Until then, I wish all of you a wonderful spring season, much joy and love...and connectedness to the Greater One I love to call Existence.
Namaste
Leandra
PS if you would like to visit the website of the Tractor-World-Tour go to http://www.tractor-world-tour.com/
