THOUGHTS OF GOD

By Bert Hellinger,
Talk given in Dornbirn
Help for the soul in everyday living, 2012

When we expose ourselves to life, to everything that lives and goes on in us, then we can feel, this life comes from elsewhere. It does not come from us. And neither does it come from our parents, it only comes through them.

When I look at life as a whole, and when I look into the cosmos, all the way to the farthest galaxies, where can we experience the spiritual, the creative, more tangibly, more condensed, than in our life? When we open up to life here and now, we experience God.

If I take this seriously, God meets me in all of life. When I meet someone, then God meets this person, through me, in my life. When other people meet me in their life, no matter who they are, then through the simple fact of their existence, God meets me. And God does not only meet me in human lives, but in all of life, for we live and move and have our being in Him.
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When we sense inside ourselves, into everything that is alive in us, we look at this movement as a divine movement, with reverence, with awe, with humility. When we surrender to it until we are in unison with it in our innermost depth, then God takes hold of us. We let go so that God can lead us His way, according to His will in every regard. This recollection, this committing ourselves into the hands of another power, this is really praying. Without asking. It is a prayer answered.

Suddenly we are in another dimension, in a wide open dimension. We feel at one in our soul and connected with everything in the deepest way. Whatever is different than how we want it to be, even so different that we experience it as the opposite of our desire, or even as hostile to us, the same creative primal power is at work in all of life. And now we change. In this moment we can and must let go of our judgments. Suddenly we experience that we do not have God to ourselves, but that God takes us into His service in everything He decrees for us, wherever He directs and guides us. Whatever happens to us, even illness, or misfortune or injustice, in God’s will it is of service to some greater matter, to a greater goal, and yet it also happens in a way that we are most deeply in accord with ourselves. In our soul we experience the direct opposite of losing ourselves.

How can I express this experience? Shall I say “worshipping” or “surrendering to God” or “being pious”? Is any of this appropriate here? Is not life as such, as it is, in all its aspects, just simple “being with God”? But even this is too much, for we do not know whether we are allowed to call this deep movement “God.” Regardless, even if the divine as such remains a mystery to us, we experience a creative power from beyond, simply through living.
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As you know, I spent many years in Africa, as a missionary with the Zulus. Their way of greeting one another was remarkable. When one Zulu meets another, the greeting is “Sakubona.” This means: “I have seen you.” The other replies in the same way: “Sakubona.” “I have seen you, too.”
Now if we continue the conversation at this point, we usually ask: “How are you?”
Zulus ask something completely different. They ask: “Usaphila? (Are you still alive?)”
And the other replies: “Ngyakhona (I am still here).”
What awe before life! What an experience of God, constantly being mindful of life as something so precious and living it in this spirit!

Sometimes the Zulus just sit, for hours. They are simply there and looking around, without doing anything. Then I might pass by and ask: “Are you not bored?”
The reply would come: “But I am alive!” They are fulfilled by their life, and – we can say this – they are filled with God.
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Bert Hellinger,
Talk given in Dornbirn
Help for the soul in everyday living, 2012