Dynamo

Self-realization is the knowing in all parts of body, mind, and soul that you are now in possession of the kingdom of God; that you do not have to pray that it come to you; that God’s omnipresence is your omnipresence; and that all that you need to do is improve your knowing.
Paramahansa Yogananda

Religion is for those who wish to get into heaven,
Spirituality for those who have already been through hell.
Anonymous

Your mind fuels the state of your soul, spirit, and body.
Lailah Gifty Akita

In the grip of the medical-industrial complex, relational medicine is rapidly being eclipsed by the `medicine of spare parts´.
Patrick Little

Last Friday, I drove out to the wild Eifel Nature Reserve, a rugged, hilly area about ninety minutes west of Cologne, to visit a friend and business associate who lives within a stone’s throw of the Belgian border. His warm Finnish block house, a good fire burning in the hearth, provided ample protection from the blustering wind and intermittent heavy drizzle that had marked my drive out there.

Over freshly brewed coffee we got our business done in a warm-hearted conversation which lasted about two hours. We summarised the action items and agreed to meet again later in the month for a further review.

It was with a sense of accomplishment that I left his warm abode and started up my car which stood in the now driving rain. Homeward bound, I looked forward to yet another friendly visit en route before finally reaching home at the end of a long day.

My car has 300,000 km under its belt. After years of driving state-of-the-art new cars provided by employers, I had defaulted to a less expensive option when making the transition last year to the cohort of the self-employed. It didn’t make sense to spend a large chunk of my prudent reserve on acquiring the latest and greatest in automotive technology, so my purchasing decision was, instead, informed by the countless conversations I had had over the years with German taxi drivers, on the way to airports, train stations, business meetings, and the like.

Despite disruptive innovations in human transportation over the past twenty years, the taxi remains an icon in the German culture. Firstly, they are all cream coloured with identical signage, so they stand out in traffic. Many are still Mercedes, especially the C200 Diesel models.

On the back of my frequent conversations with often otherwise disgruntled taxi drivers, initiated with my question: `How pleased are you with this current model?´, I decided that one day this would be my model of choice. The taxi drivers often waxed lyrical about this miracle of German engineering, the pleasure of the driving experience, its low fuel consumption, and useful life of 500,000 km or more, if serviced regularly and driven with care.

So, it came about that, after forty years of Volkswagens, Audis, Opels, and most recently, a Volvo hybrid, I finally purchased my first Mercedes Benz (`Follow Your Star!´), a fifteen-year-old used model in tip-top condition. It is indeed very economical in terms of diesel consumption and has taken me from my home here in the Rheinland to places as far afield as Sicily, Sardinia, Prague, and Warsaw. Inspired by taxi driver lore, I sought out an auto workshop which specialises in servicing taxis, and mine has been expertly serviced there twice a year since my lucky purchase.

It had never given me trouble; until Friday, that is. The first sign that all was not well was when `Battery Alternator´ flashed up in red letters on my dashboard. This caused me to wonder whether the journey home could be accomplished, perhaps by adopting a more gentle driving style.

Having modified my speed, things seemed to be going just fine until the power steering lost its power, requiring of me a lot more elbow grease to successfully negotiate the twisting and turning curves and hairpin bends which mark the way from the higher hilly territory down onto the expanse of the Rheinland plane. All of this in the darkness and driving rain.

I was beginning to feel even more nervous as a further series of alarms appeared on the dashboard, the final one referring to the temperature of the engine. Obviously, the cooling system was now no longer operational, and it was time to capitulate. This was indeed my first breakdown. Good fortune presented me with an emergency parking slot directly beside the National Route road, which would normally have taken me on to the Autobahn twenty kilometres later.

This was to be the final resting place until the subsequently summoned tow truck took me to a nearby repairs garage where work began today, Monday, on getting the machine operational again. The tow truck driver turned out to be the first of two angels, the second being my loving partner who disrupted her schedule and came to fetch me there and drove me home, where we arrived shortly before midnight. What should have been a short hop to the Eifel turned out to be an odyssey after all.

The experience brought me several gifts. The first was an appreciation for the kindness I had experienced in the situation. The second arrived on waking the next morning. It was the very palpable presence of my dear departed father, Ted, who, with ten children to feed, could never afford a new car. As a result, there were many situations like that described above, only with a horde of children and their irritated mother stranded with the driver.

These scenes included the day the suspension broke, five minutes into a five-hour journey, within a mile of leaving our holiday home, with the entire family on board and a fully laden roof rack, and, on a rare frosty winter morning in Limerick, with the sight of my Dad, wrapped in a sheep-skin coat, trying to crank start an ancient Sunbeam Rapier Series II in front of our house.

This was an era in which I learned about the weakest points of older cars; starter motors, carburettors, suspension systems, battery alternators, gear boxes, and so on. Memories came flooding in. The resilience of my parents and their dogged perseverance in the face of the steady stream of logistical challenges they encountered while raising their ten children filled me with wonder and gratitude. There was something heroic about Mum and Dad, both of whom shuffled off this mortal coil all too early.

The third gift comprised my contemplations on the various forms of energy and how the conversion is made from one to the next. The thrust of a car is generated by the kinetic energy of the fuel combusting in the engine, with both heat and light produced as by-products. This kinetic energy is, in itself, not sufficient to operate the machine. Electric energy is required to power the electronics, which in turn, control the steering, lights, dashboard, cooling systems, etc. In the case in point, the conversion from kinetic to electric was disabled due to the defect in the dynamo itself and/or supporting mechanics.

This prompted ideas about the various forms of energy, and the smooth conversion from one to the other, we humans require to operate well at full potential. Physical, emotional, and spiritual are three that come to mind. In everyday life, if at all, emphasis is placed on the physical, in terms of physical health, and that generally only after something has gone wrong. The approach taken by the culture now shaped by the medical-industrial complex is similar to how we approach the mechanics of a car. We break down, find the broken element, replace it, and hope for the best.

Indigenous cultures have long known that the physical realm does not exist in isolation. It is intricately connected to our emotional and spiritual state. Remnants of this wisdom are to be found even in our modern language (´uncomfortable in one’s own skin´, `laughter is the best medicine´, `a shiver ran down my spine´, etc.). Psychosomatic medicine and neuroscience now demonstrate, beyond doubt, that physical ailments are simply manifestations of mental, emotional, and spiritual maladies.

The spiritual aspect had been all but exorcised from our culture thanks to the religious abuse visited upon countless generations by institutions and concepts that continue to miss the point and misrepresent the message of the true prophets.

Thankfully, we are witnessing a renaissance of holistic wisdom, which, fuelled by the great innovations of depth psychology, neuroscience, and addiction recovery approaches, combined with the ancient wisdom of the mystics, is now elevating human consciousness far beyond the mechanistic approach which has brought us to the point of ever more frequent individual and collective breakdown. Out times are truly a golden dawn.