Help for the soul in daily living,

Monthly Letter
November

Dear Readers,
During the dreary days of November in the northern hemisphere this issue of “Help for
the Soul” brings you some light from within. At the same time it is the month in which
we think of our dead. Are we doing it sadly or with confidence? Some contributions
will provide hope in this regard, for us as well as for the dead. As usual, you will also
find something here that surprises you at first, and then it makes you sigh with relief. In
this sense I wish you rich gains.
Yours,

Bert Hellinger

Contents
Wisdom
Hope 3

Secrets
Man and woman 4
The order of rank 5
Meditation 6
Trusting the soul 6
Honoring the dead 8
Incomplete and complete dying 9

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We will return
The presence of the dead 9
Meditation: You and I 11
Resurrection of the Jews in Germany 11

Coming to an end
The end 14

Orders of success
Prejudices of conscience 16
Wealth 17
Guilt and innocence 19
Penance 21
My God 21
Penance as balance 22
The god of conscience 22
The other God 23
The movements of the spirit 23

Words of Wisdom 26

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Wisdom
Hope
Hope keeps us alive if we don’t let go of it. What kind of hope is it that keeps us alive?
The hope in our own strength and in a guidance that we are willing to follow and give
it all we have. We heed it with our life because we want this life with everything we
have, and we are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to rescue it.
Is this hope our hope? Is it the response to another will that wants to lead our
life far beyond all the limitations that our fears have imposed on it? Our hope draws its
strength from this power. In accord with it, our hope becomes irresistible and fulfils
itself more and more.
It disregards all objections, whether from others or especially our own.
Objections come from others who have given up hope. Above all, they have given up
the willpower to allow hope to become true through their supreme effort.
This hope is hope for life, for the full love, for the full life, for the whole life,
combined with the willingness to contribute to it with all we have, no matter what the
cost.
This hope is love for life, the whole love for the whole life.
When does this hope end? When we give this trust to others especially to so-
called harbingers of hope. Our own hope materializes for us and through us, never the
hope of the harbingers of hope. Only within ourselves do we remain at one with the
primal source of our hope.
This hope is there, especially when we are in the midst of a great emergency.
Objections do not count here ‒ action is unavoidable. Everything is geared towards the
next essential thrust.
This action becomes realized hope. This hope becomes reality in our action.

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Secrets
Man and woman
Only through man and woman does life continue for humanity. It continues because
man and woman are essentially different, so different that a man can never be a
woman, and a woman can never be a man. On the other hand they are drawn to each
other, and they are directed to each other, in the service of their highest goal,
procreation. Only in union can they pass on life that they have also received from a
man and a woman, passing it on to those who will still remain alive when their own
life is fulfilled and comes to an end.
And the same goes for their children. They, too, can only pass this life on as
man and woman, so that this life continues on beyond their own. Everything in the man
is related to the woman, and everything in the woman serves the goal of being desired
by the man so that she becomes his wife and the mother of his children.
Being man and being woman are at the beginning of a creative move that
comes to its destination when the man becomes a father and the woman becomes a
mother.
Here a law comes into focus that applies to all life in endless variations: Only
where separated life unites can it creatively develop further towards more
encompassing new forms and towards a manifold existence that it is destined to reach.
In the progress of life a multitude of different life forms must work together in a creative
web of interactions. A secret of each creative process becomes apparent and real.
There are no repetitions here, each time something new happens; there is always only
future.
Opposite-ness, as we see it here in its fundamental manifestation as man and
woman and in the corresponding drive for union, is a manifestation of the spiritual
power and the spirit that is at work in it. It forces us to acknowledge and to find the
whole in its opposite-ness. But always just for a time, like as with a child who unites
both parents in himself or herself as man and wife, and a new cycle of opposites comes
into life, again as man or woman.

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 These opposites show themselves here and elsewhere in many forms. They
emerge in the feelings of better or worse, of guilt or innocence, and of good or bad, to
name a few examples.
These opposites are also at work in many couple relationships. They intensify
the opposition of man and woman. They burden the love of man and woman and lead
to many separations that produce more opposition and bring about new creative
actions.
Ultimately, these oppositions also stem from the life-producing opposition
between man and woman. Therefore they are also overcome the same way. What
appears to be in opposition unites, without doing away with the oppositions. And thus
creation and life move on.
How above all does this occur? Through love. What kind of love? Through the
love of the creative spirit that creates oppositions in order to unite them and also to
pose them into opposition again. So it is through the love that affirms the oppositions
and that creatively unites them in agreeing to both sides in such a way that new
oppositions result from it that will be overcome in new ways.
In accord with this creative movement we also agree to these oppositions, and
we overcome them, only to experience them anew in a changed form, and then
overcoming them again. In accord with this creative movement, in agreeing to the
interplay of oppositions that keep life and cosmos in motion, we become one with the
ultimate through the oppositions.

The order of rank

In a couple’s relationship where the families of origin belong to different religions, the
woman must acknowledge that the belief and the religion of her husband are of equal
value to her own. In turn, the husband must also acknowledge his wife’s religion and
belief as being of equal standing to his religion and his belief. If they do this, however,
they have a bad conscience. Therefore, they must find a level above these differences.
Often arguments arise in the family as to which belief and which value system has

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more power. Often one of the sides takes the lead, shows itself to be stronger than the
other, and then a strange process sets in.
The children feel loyalty to both sides and to both families. When one of the
parents gets the upper hand in their worldview and faith, then the children secretly
form an allegiance with the weaker parent. They do this in order to balance the
dynamics of their loyalty and the system as a whole. Therefore, there can be no victory
for either side. The effect is rather a tendency over generations to balance the
imbalance, with the result, that the loser wins later on, in the second or third
generation.
These dynamics play a special role when one of the partners is of Jewish
origin. It shows that the Jewish roots are stronger than the Christian ones, because the
fate of the Jews is far heavier than the fate of the Christians, and because the Jews
suffered great injustice at the hands of the Christians. These influences do not remain
unnoticed. In mixed-faith families the tendency develops to create some balance. In
such cases there is no other solution but for both families of origin to acknowledge and
respect each other as independent and as of equal value.

Meditation
Close your eyes. Breathe with an open mouth. Just breathe deeply. Breathe a little
faster. Now go into the realm of the dead – and go close to them – it is a huge army –
they get up, this whole huge army – six million and more – just look how small you are
in the face of them all. You look at them – but they look into a distance, beyond you.
Breathe deeply, and the step aside, so as not to be in their way. Withdraw, very slowly.
Now they are somewhere beyond you.

Trusting the soul

I will tell you a story. I once did a family constellation with a young man in Holland.
We set up Christendom and Judaism. But we didn’t get very far. Later he came to the
United States, where we organized a range of workshops, and in one constellation he
was a representative. This constellation was about a Jewish family who lived in the

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States, and he had been chosen as the brother of the client. We also worked with the
Holocaust as the background, and I became very clear that he was identified with the
perpetrator. I found that quite strange. This was the first time it became clear to me that
the perpetrators were present in Jewish families, and that they are represented by
offspring of the Holocaust generation in the family. This happens where such a family
attempts to exclude the perpetrators.
Then I did not think about this man any more – until when some months ago
he sent me a letter, in which he told me his out of the ordinary experience. He wrote
that during the aforementioned workshop he had spoken with me, which I did not
remember. He reminded me of what I had told him to do. He was supposed to – as an
exercise ‒ descend into the realm of the dead, look for the perpetrators there, lie down
beside them and say to them: “I am one of you.”
As a second exercise he was supposed to imagine that death was not standing
in front of him, but behind him, and he was supposed to ask death daily for his
blessings. Next, he told me I had said to him: “But you must not do any of these
exercises! You must not do these exercises, but you must wait, until your soul takes on
this work.” This was also an exercise I gave to him, he said.
Three months later he had an extraordinary experience during his sleep. As he
was lying there sleeping, something like a dream overcame him, but it was more than a
dream. He was part of an execution squad that executed people – obviously Jewish
people – and he himself had also killed Jews in this way. Then he was put on trial and
had to defend himself before the judge. He said: “Yes it is true, I am a murderer. I have
killed people, but my defense consists in the fact that I am a human being, and that it
depends on the circumstances whether someone turns into a criminal – or becomes a
decent human being.” Then he was sentenced to death.
There were several months between the verdict and the day of the execution,
during which he said farewell to his family and loved ones. He was very calm and
composed, with a heightened sense of perception. On the day of his execution he was
led into a room from where he would be taken to the electric chair, but he still had to
wait for several hours. Eventually someone came with the news that his execution was
postponed, and that he would have to wait longer.

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 In spite of this he had been calm inside for the whole time, and ready to die.
Then he was told that the judge had changed the sentence, he would not be executed,
but banished. He was permitted to choose for himself a location where he would be
living far from all human contact, in exile. So he left the prison and stood outside.
While still in his dream, he spoke the words: “I have survived death and I have
become a completely new human being. For me guilt and innocence no longer exist.”
He wrote that after he woke up he felt totally changed, and he added: “The colors have
become more glowing in my perception, and my movements are slowed down,
because I follow everything with great attention.”
He simply wanted to inform me about this experience. And I recount it here,
because such things are possible when we trust our soul and hand the lead over to it.

Honoring the dead

Now I will do a little meditation with you. Just close your eyes ‒ recollect yourselves in
your center, in the empty center – and descend into the realm of the dead.
There they are, all the people from your family – Perhaps some of them still have
their eyes open and look at you pleadingly – Perhaps you say to some of them: “I see
you – I honor you – I can see what happened to you.” Or: “I see what you have done to
others – I pay you honor of not separating you from those who died in another way ‒
the honor to be the same as others – the honor that you may have peace, the same as
all others – the honor that you belong, the honor that I acknowledge, I am like you ‒
the honor that I will rectify what still has to be brought back to order for you.”
Then you look at a distant light, far away – and you bow to it deeply –
speechless – humble – and slowly you withdraw, backwards, very slowly – like
someone who entered a forbidden land – until you reach the end, and you sense, you
are back in the land of the living.
Then you recollect yourself in your center, you turn around, you feel the other
light, you open your eyes – and you look at it.

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 Incomplete and complete dying
HELLINGER to a participant: We must not forget these dead. They must be given a
chance to be seen. When this has been done, we must put them to rest there where
they belong.
This morning we did an exercise in which we went to the dead. In these
exercises we often observe that one or the other of the dead persons does not let go of
us. But these dead cling to the wrong people. They need to be taken to those whom
they really want to meet and must meet.
to the participant: This exercise may be appropriate for your father it might help
him to find his peace being with his parents. A family reunion in the realm of the dead
can happen, and all can find their peace.
Was it not remarkable that the representative of the client, who knew nothing
about the person she represented, displayed schizophrenic behavior? We are really all
in contact with each other – and that is not only among the living, but also with the
dead. From this we may deduce that the murdered uncle of the client had not
completed his dying yet. Even though it is daring to say this out loud, he needed the
help of the living to be able to complete his dying. He needed the acknowledgment
given with love, to be able to find peace with the dead that belong to him. Once this
was completed, the living could withdraw.

We will return
The presence of the dead
Now I would like to go on another level with you. This will also have an effect on
people with whom we interact and it will prove to be beneficial. Last December I was
in Poland and I travelled around giving evening talks, and Zenon Mazurczak
accompanied me as my guide. We took the train through Silesia, from Wroclaw to
Krakow. I asked him to tell me something about Krakow and about the Jews in Poland
before the war. He told me about the Jewish quarter, then about a third of the
population was Jewish. He also told me about Galicia, which was largely populated by
Jews. Nowadays there is hardly anyone left.

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 I imagined Krakow before my inner eye. Around the city I saw a circle of many
people. They wanted to come in, but they could not. The Jews who used to live there
and who are no more wanted to come into the city and could not come.
On my last day in Krakow, Zenon and other friends and I went to the former
Jewish quarters. The houses were still there with there old inscriptions, as if everything
were still the way it was. Only the people were not there any more. I looked into the
windows and I saw the inhabitants from former times. They cried so much that their
eyes ran dry. That moved me deeply.
From there we went to Kattowice, where I was to give a talk to more than 1,000
guests. I told them about my experience in Krakow. I had a very clear image. These
dead Jews – they were all Poles, not only Jews but also fellow countrymen, fellow
citizens, a part of the country - they all wanted to come back into the soul of the Poles.
Poland is a vast spiritual field. In this field all the Jews are still there. Nobody can
vanish from this field. The Jews were only pushed aside, but this is not really possible in
such a field.
Then I did a meditation with the listeners:
We look at them all, the millions of dead. We take them into our soul and we
give them the right to return in our soul, for they also still belong. We also take the
displaced Silesians into our heart, for even though what happened can’t be undone,
they shall be present in our soul again and keep their place in it. All of them, the dead
and the displaced may come home like lost sons and daughters, and they may stay.
The Polish audience took this into their soul quite openly and naturally, as if it
were a matter of course.
When I was at home again, I contacted a friend of mine in Israel, Professor Haim
Dasberg, who did much in Israel for the Holocaust survivors and their offspring. I told
him about my experiences. He wrote back to me that he had also been to Krakow and
had a similar experience. He, too, still saw the many dead in the streets, preparing for
the Sabbath. But none of them were still there. Then he asked me: “What about the
German lands? Are the Jews coming back there? Do they have a home there in the
souls?”

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 Meditation: You and I
I would like to do this with you now as a meditation. We close our eyes. We go to the
places we originate from and in which we live, and we come into resonance with those
no longer there, who are not allowed to be there any longer, not even in the soul. We
look at them. Most of them were murdered, and many fled or were displaced. We say
to them: “I see you. There is room for you in my soul. And I weep for you. You and I,
all of you and I.”
Then we let them depart, to where something greater takes them in. We look at
this that is greater, as it takes them in, and we fall silent.

Resurrection of the Jews in Germany

by Erik Bendix
We are coming back
Not for revenge
Not for your sake
Not even to prove something to God.
But because life demands it.
We do it reluctantly.
Yet we know our resistance
Will have to yield.
Our children already want to know
Why we fled our homeland,
And now try to extract justice
From Arabs who weren’t even there.
They want to know
Where we lost
This God we speak of.
We want honest children,
And must admit
We have a hole in our hearts

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Back then we had to flee or die.
But now?
Excuse us, we want to pray here,
On German soil,
Where the souls of our loved ones
Still can’t find any rest in the ground.
We know that your sleep
Is just as disturbed as ours,
And that you flee your own homeland
To healing spas around the globe,
That you aren’t sure if foreigners
Are welcome in your country,
Perhaps because you suspect
You might no longer be welcome yourself,
That you can’t answer
Your children’s questions either.
Tell us, was it out of jealousy
That our loved ones were murdered?
Was the Thousand-Year Reich
And its One People
Jealous references to us,
Since Germany struggled for mere decades
To hang together,
While we did it for millennia
Using only books?
Did you gas us because
You yourselves were gassed in trenches
And then couldn’t fight back?
Your thinkers now debate whether
Only European culture has come of age,
Ours about whether God still chooses us.

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But are any of us talking to each other?
Our Rabbis have tried for a whole generation
Never to forget.
But what stuck in memory,
Was death
Which we still stare at without breathing.
To really breathe again will require living pain.
It will require that we no longer
Die witnessing,
But live fully and long.
That is what it says in our book: choose life.
In your book it says:
Love your neighbor as yourself.
We are still your neighbors.
Imagine: After a long absence,
We, your neighbors, begin to return.
Soon we’ll move in next door,
And we'll stand around making noise in the streets.
Soon we’ll be joking with German officials.
We’ll sit at the tables for regular guests
And marry your children.
German houses and land
Will come back into our hands.
We’ll be citizens again!
The empty memorial synagogues will begin to fill.
Is this a nightmare? No.
The whole world fears a recurrence,
But it is the fear that repeats itself.
The times are new.
We Jews will return to Germany.
No, not suddenly tomorrow all of us at the border.

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 Not next year either.
It will happen more gradually,
Here and there at first,
And then with gathering strength,
Like everything that grows.
You’ll see.

This poem was written in 1989, originally in German, and then translated by the author
into this version in English. It was published in German as a frontispiece in Bert
Hellinger's Rachel weint um ihre Kinder: Familien-Stellen mit Opfern des Holocaust in
Israel (published in English as Rachel Weeping for Her Children: Family Constellations
in Israel).

Coming to an end
The end
Those who look to their end have time. They only want and plan what their end allows
them. Therefore, they remain with the near, with what needs to be done in the
moment, and a project with an end in sight. Then they look at the next moment. In this
way they keep an overview of what is still to be done and what is still possible for them
in the moment.
Right now our end isn’t there yet. It’s just that we are aware of it. We are also
aware of the time that is left for us. Above all, we are aware of the time. In view of our
end, the remaining time becomes precious and essential. We fill it; we fill it in every
regard. It becomes a fulfilled time for us.
But above all, during this time we do not make plans beyond the limitations imposed
on this time. We remain with what is close and what is next, but this we do with full
power, without wasting it on peripheral matters.
Are we also longing for our end? Are we allowed to? What happens then to the
time that is still given to us? Do we still have it? Do we still take it?

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What happens when the longed-for or dreaded end still does not come? When it
finally comes, is it a fulfilled end, does it come at the end of the full time, the fully
lived time?
So we look at the end, without going towards it. It comes by itself. But we don’t
have it. It is only coming.
It’s different with the time that remains for us. We do have it now and we have it
fully.

Recently I read a poem by Rilke. I was deeply moved. It is a poem about death.
Rilke has the idea that death is around us all our life. Death lives in us. It is part of
life. But when he speaks of death here, he also speaks of God, whatever this may
mean to you.

There’s one who takes them all into his hand

that they like sand run though his fingers.
He chooses the most beautiful amongst the queens
and has them sculpted in white marble,
lying silent in the coat’s melody;
and lays the kings next to their wives,
formed from the same stone as them.

There’s one who takes them all in his hands

that they like poor blades are and break.
He is no stranger, for he lives in the blood
that is our life, and rushes and rests.
I can’t believe that he does wrong,
But I hear many speak badly of him.

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Orders of success
Prejudices of conscience
Along with the collective prejudices that decide over success or failure of a business,
like, for instance, the internalized prejudice of masters and slaves, a range of more
personal prejudices decide over the success of our business. These prejudices come
from our conscience, and they have far-reaching consequences.
Our conscience decides under what conditions we may belong and under what
conditions we lose our right to belong. Conscience judges. All movements of
conscience are judgments. More precisely, they are prejudices. They judge in advance,
they pre-judge what I may or may not do, again, largely without any detailed
knowledge of the matter. In this sense they are also collective prejudices. They are set
by the groups we belong to without our being allowed to scrutinize them. Even
questioning them would already be an offence to this conscience, and accordingly, it
would be punished by it and by the group it serves. As long as the deeper reasons for
the existence of this conscience are not brought to light, we remain its slaves.
The basic question this conscience puts to us is: What must I think and do so
that I am allowed to belong?
Our conscience decides at any given moment whether we may belong or not.
Ultimately, it decides from moment to moment whether we live or die. Severe breaches
of its demands result in a death sentence.
Who carries out the execution? Our group, and in many regards we do it
ourselves, through our bad conscience. To be precise, we carry it out through our
feeling guilty about what we have done and through our penance for it.
Why does our bad conscience have such power over us? Behind it is a concept
of God, for there is the belief that our conscience is the voice of God inside us. Even
now this conscience is still acknowledged and feared as God’s voice, both publicly and
personally. But on a deeper level, this connection remains in the subconscious realms
for many people, as a secret.
This conscience and its prejudices largely decide over the success or failure of
various enterprises. But frequently we disregard these prejudices. We look for external

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reasons, and thus we remain all the more blindly delivered to the influences of this
conscience.
The dictates of this conscience are firstly directed to the child in us, for it is the
child above all who is at the mercy of his or her group and the group’s conscience. The
child is neither able nor permitted to resist it. Resistance would be the child’s end. As
absurd as the dictates of this conscience may appear, it is very hard for us to escape its
prejudices and dictates. We still have the idea that through them, a divine power
communicates with us, and this same power is the one in charge of our being or not
being.

Wealth
In the Bible we find the report about Jesus and the rich youth, who asked Jesus, what,
on top of keeping the commandments, he had to do to have eternal life. Jesus
answered: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man
heard this, he went away sad, for he had great wealth. And Jesus said to his disciples: “I
tell you the truth, a rich man will hardly ever enter the kingdom of heaven.” And he
continued: “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
What Jesus said to this young man did not mean that he avoided the rich. It says,
Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, and many tax collectors and other rich
people and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw
this, they asked his disciples why Jesus ate with such people. On hearing this, Jesus
answered, it is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what it
means: “Mercy pleases me, not sacrifice. I have come to call the sinners to regret their
actions, not those who show love.”
Jesus behaved like a very generous rich man on the day he fed the 5000 hungry
people. It also says in the Bible that after his resurrection he helped Peter and other
disciples with such a plentiful catch of fish that their nets nearly ripped. Afterwards, so

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it says in the Bible, he fried fish for them over a fire. Again, he showed them that divine
abundance was possible for those who believed.
He clearly did not approve of using the temple for business. In a rage, he
knocked over the tables of the money changers and shouted at them: “It is written: ‘My
house shall be called a house of prayers,’ but you turn it into a den of thieves.” This
incident became one of reasons for his execution. He disturbed their business in the
holy place.
In the conscience of the Occident, and also in Asian cultures, such outbursts
against wealth, claiming an unwholesome effect for our soul’s well being, still play a
role in our personal as well as in our public life.
Our conscience has another function still. It watches over the balance of giving
and taking. Those who take feel guilty if they take without giving. This conscience
serves the balance of giving and taking, so in the end it is in the service of prosperity for
all.
This movement of conscience, which requires balance of giving and taking,
counteracts the one that demands poverty. It also puts straight the ideas about God that
are behind it. Abundant giving and taking is an alternative.
There is yet another image at work in the conscience of the Occident,
influencing our attitude toward poverty and wealth. It was espoused by the so-called
Manicheans, going back to Mani who was crucified as Jesus, in the year 267. The
Manicheans were persecuted by organized Christianity. The doctrine of the opposition
between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, and in this sense also of the
opposition between spirit and body, continues to have effects on Christianity in many
ways. In the poverty movements in many religious orders, for instance, and also in
other attempts to overcome the laws of the body through renunciation, and, instead of
remaining human, there is the attempt to become like angels. To this day they still
show the often-postulated opposition of body and spirit, together with the opposition of
poor and rich.
This postulate goes back further than the origin of Christianity. We find it, for
instance, with the Greek philosopher Diomedes, and in the philosophical movement
that followed him, the cynics, this means, those who live like dogs. And we find it in

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Persia with Zarathustra and in his religion, Parsism. They also differentiate between
poverty and wealth as good and bad.
How do we move beyond these prejudices and limiting images? Only with a
bad conscience, with the courage to have a bad conscience. We can succeed if we find
a source of strength and support to become rich and to remain rich. This means that we
come into accord with a movement of the spirit, beyond the distinction of good and
bad as dictated by our conscience. Beyond this distinction, the movement of the spirit
is equally turned to everything as it is, because all there is has its origin in this thinking,
and therefore, it can only be the way it is.
Every distinction between good and bad ‒ between light and dark, between
angels and humans, between guilt and innocence, between better and worse, between
rich and poor ‒ proves to be arrogant, for individuals under the influence of their
conscience believe they are allowed and able to recreate the world in their own image.
The creative movement of the spirit is a movement of love for all as it is.
Because it is a creative movement, it goes towards more instead of less, towards
success instead of failure, and towards prosperity instead of poverty.
It is a movement of love though. Hence its creative movement is a movement
towards more, towards more love, to an all-encompassing love, to an abundant
movement towards prosperity and success for all. It is a movement turned to all
equally, a movement serving all equally.
Wealth in this sense is more than personal property. This wealth is in service. Its
fullness flows over.

Guilt and innocence

The essential prejudices of conscience are guilt and innocence, and whatever is
immediately connected with them, penance and justice, for instance. These prejudices
have far-reaching consequences both in our personal life and with regard to success or
failure in our professional life.
What I am saying about guilt and innocence here, and about justice and
penance, can be followed and understood by those who are able to release themselves

19
from the thrall of conscience. They experience for themselves what it means to be
taken into a spiritual movement beyond the distinction between good and bad, that
brings everything into existence with the same love, and keeps everything in existence
with the same love.
Many, understandably, perceive inner objections to what I am saying, in the
sense of: “What about those who…” They can check to what extent they feel better
than others, to what extent they reject “those who.” Then they can sense immediately
that they move within the sphere of this conscience.
I invite you to an inner observation: What goes on inside you when you hold on
to this distinction, in your heart, for instance? And what changes when you open up to
another movement, a movement of the spirit, turned to everything as it is, including
everything in you? And what changes in you and in your environment when you follow
this movement? So, for a while, leave these distinctions suspended, neither for nor
against. Now you can observe again, what changes in your workplace, and in your
inner strength.
Well, now let’s go back to conscience and its distinction between good and bad.
The good only exists when there is also a bad. The good feeds on the bad, and
even wants it, so it can define itself as its opposite, to feel superior. In this respect, the
good is also the root of the bad.
Here I am moving purely on a level of observation accessible to everyone.
What precedes our feeling of being good, and of being innocent?
We follow a movement of the conscience that demands of us the kind of
thinking and behaving that will gain for us the assurance of belonging to our most
essential group, which is above all our family of origin. For us, this movement of
conscience has a good effect. We feel safe and secure with it. One can sleep easy with
this good conscience.
At the same time, this movement forces me to dismiss and exclude others from
my kind attention. For if I were to think and feel as they do, if I were to approve of what
they approve of, I would risk my belonging to my group. I would know conscience
immediately, for I would have a bad conscience – I would feel guilty.

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 In this, it appears to me as if it guilt and innocence is in my hands, as if it were
up to me whether I feel guilty or innocent. My conscience informs me and reports to
me at any given moment about how I am doing. All I have to do is take the lead from it.

Penance
When I feel guilty, I must act so that I can feel innocent again. This means that I must
do something, no matter what the price, that returns my sense of security in belonging.
I have to decide in favor of one thing over another. In this, I remain in charge of my
decisions and in charge of my fate ‒ and in charge of the fate of those I reject. I make
my own luck, and I also make theirs; their misfortune, that is.
Before we know it, we are moving in the realm of justice. Justice wants to restore
what is good, and to call the bad to account in order to make up for what they did,
according to the rules of my conscience. If this does not work, there is still the option of
eradicating it.
In all of this I move in harmony with the god of my conscience, the god who is
in agreement with my justice. So I am allowed to impose his and my justice, and I may
be certain of his rewards and of my belonging.
Let us pause here for a moment.

My God
Does this god exist? Can there be such a god? Is there a god who is mine, and do others
have to follow my god in order to be righteous, and perhaps even follow me and my
conscience? Is he really completely my god, and must others have the same god and
follow him in order to feel righteous? Or do they have their own god, as I do, standing
behind their conscience, turning them into righteous people if they follow him in
rejecting others, including us, as we rejected them before? In obeying their god, are
they then in the right, and we in the wrong, which means they must judge and exclude
us in order to feel they are the just ones?
Here the oppressing narrowness of the movements of conscience, and of other
people’s movements of conscience, is brought home to us with all the consequences.

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 I am afraid others might object, thinking that I have moved too far away from my
central issue here, focusing on prejudices and how they get in the way of professional
success. But I am still on this track, and I have covered a good stretch of it.

Penance as balance
Another movement of conscience comes into play at this juncture. It is similar to the
section about wealth, but in another direction. Concerning wealth, it leads to success
and gain; here it leads to failure and loss.
This movement of conscience watches over the balance of giving and taking.
We have a good conscience when, after having taken, we also give, so that a balance is
restored, and further taking and giving can take place, and everyone gains through this
reciprocity equally.
A corresponding movement exists in connection to justice and guilt. But this one
works in the reverse. We know it as penance and atonement.
What do penance and atonement mean? Penance means I am harming myself or
others, causing suffering and damage.
When I do penance for a so-called wrongdoing, I now do something to myself,
something that hurts and harms me, so that I pay the price for what I did. In return for
the damage I caused, I receive reassurance from my conscience that I may belong
again.
How could my business and I be saved? Does our conscience help us here, or
does it harm us? Does penance serve our life, or does it harm it? Does it not harm our
life, and that of others?

The god of conscience

Is the god that’s imagined as lord and master behind these movements of conscience,
the creator god of all that is, the one who is therefore kindly disposed to everything?
Can he oppose what he called into bein as it is? Or was he turned into our god, so that
he is the one to justify and reward our movements of conscience, no matter how
dreadful and deadly they might be for us and others?

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 What is his reward? It is the assurance that we may belong, both to him and to
our group, even if we have to pay with our life and the life of many others.

The other God

I hope I have made it clear here how badly in need of enlightenment this conscience is
‒ on the one hand, acknowledging its importance for our relationships, and on the
other hand, bringing to light its limitations. This enlightenment exposes the absurdity of
many demands made by this conscience, and the arrogance with which it puts itself in
the place of God, daring to be lord over life and death, over welfare and disaster, and
not even just for us in this life, but far beyond it, for all eternity.
After this preparation, are you ready to go beyond the boundaries of conscience,
to go and look for a way out, to venture out into a direction that brings us into
resonance with a creative movement? I call it movement of the spirit, that which is at
work behind the scene in everything, also behind our guilt, also behind what I try to get
across here, in the service of a love that brings together what the movements of
conscience try to separate and put into opposition to each other.
On these matters I will now present some fundamental deliberations before I
move on to their practical application in our professional endeavors.

The movements of the spirit

Aristotle observed that everything in existence is moving, and he observed that this
movement couldn’t come out of what already exists, that it must come from
somewhere else. Thus he concluded there must be a first mover.
This first mover must be something spiritual, for everything that moves does so
meaningfully, in accord with many other things that move with it, in meaningful
interplay. So we have this power that moves everything. Can we imagine a second
power alongside it, or a power preceding it? We cannot imagine this because the
earlier power would be the prime mover then. Therefore, everything is moved by this
first mover. This first mover is the one cause of all existence. It has the creative power
that brings everything into being and keeps it in its movements, as it is.

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 How can we conceive this? Everything comes into being because this spiritual
power thinks it, because it thinks and wills it, as it is. It thinks and moves everything
creatively. What follows from this?

1. It is inconceivable that there could be anything to oppose this creative spirit, or

anything this spirit could reject or lose. After all, where could it go other than back into
to this spirit, back to its source?

2. Can anything rise above this creative spirit? How can anything in existence deserve
punishment or reward for something it did, given that nothing can move of its own
accord in a way that would take it either closer to this spirit or further away?

3. Can there be any guilt or any innocence before this spirit? Can anyone harm another
or take another’s life without this spirit willing it and bringing it to effect through this
person?
Hence, can there be perpetrators and victims in this sense; can one feel worse
before this creative spirit, and another better?

4. Can we assume that becoming and passing away are one-time events, given that all
life goes on? Is what has to go less in accord with this creative movement? Finally, is
what comes to an end over for good as if after its time in this world it is gone?

5. We can observe that every progression develops out of the interplay of opposing
movements. The creative spirit uses these opposing movements with their different
directions to bring them together at a later stage, so that in this oppositional interplay,
these movements will have played different roles of equal importance, serving a joint
purpose in which spirit created something new through their oppositions. A man and
woman are reflections of this. Thus the so-called good and the so-called bad are
equally wanted and equally in spirit’s service.

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7. Are we allowed then to feel sorry for some, as if it meant that in their fate they are
less in the hands of this creative power, perhaps less guided or protected by it?

Here, a question comes up for many: What about free will?

Our free will is also a movement of the spirit, whatever we decide along with it.
It can’t be for or against a movement of the spirit.
And what about those who remain in the thrall of the good and bad conscience?
Are they separated from the movements of this spirit?
Being in opposition to the movements of the spirit they necessarily belong as
something that in the end allows and enforces the new.

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