reading

Preamble

In effect, everything could be quite simple. Our Brother Jesus Christ, who walked on this planet about 2,000 years ago, demonstrated it by His way of living, speaking and acting. “Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself” or, in other words: “Don’t do to anyone else what you don’t want them to do unto you!“

This was and is basically everything in a nutshell that any human being needs for orientation in their own lives. Think about it, if everyone would live according to this, our Mother Earth would truly be in ‘heavenly order’. No-one would harm anyone else, and LOVE would point the way in every matter, great and small.

However, something must have gone ‘pear-shaped’ with LOVE, including the love for oneself.

What really IS love? And who or what is the ‘Self’? Who in our modern world has the time to contemplate these important questions? And who can give genuine answers to these questions?

Many books have been written about the prevalent ‘Zeitgeist’ (the Spirit of our age) these days, and everyone knows only too well in which world we now live. Hence, just a few words should suffice:

Media and technology bring about more and more possibilities. A lot of talking, chatting, role playing takes place, a seemingly unlimited amount of words are spoken and the attention is focussed for the most part on the superficial: where is the next sensation happening? What dramas, tragedies and disasters have happened today? Don’t miss any of it, God forbid! One must be able to talk about it, to demonstrate that one is ‘with it’, that one is ‘in the know’! Time is money, and there isn’t enough around most of the time. “Knowledge is Power” and can make me a millionaire. Share prices are of enormous importance. Children are supposed to learn already in the womb, after all our Nation is to achieve a better result in the next ‘Pisa’-study. Bodies ought to be fit and not grow old! One should take from life and enjoy as much as possible, after all we are only living once! Business, fun and cult are the hot topics! There is a pill available for almost every ailment, and fear of the future is out of place, and eventually we will be able to manage the ecological devastation … sometime … later … not just now!

This “later … not now” I have come to recognise only too well in my own life: I have put off writing this book for about two years, always talking about it, but never starting to write! However, I have to write it now: the silence has prevailed for far too long.

My Heart told me: It is the right time, NOW!

As a man who loves, from my innermost heart, life, people and our Mother Earth, I am now prepared to take on, at long last, the responsibility and express everything the Soul longs for – as I see it.

I am delighted, and it touches me deeply to know that now you are holding my book in your hands. You are to me a sister or a brother, a member of the great family of mankind, to which we all belong. That is why I take the liberty to call you ‘sister’, ‘brother’. Whatever gender, whatever the colour of your skin, which nationality you have, what kind of job you have or whether you are unemployed, whether or not you belong to a certain religion, how much money you have in your bank account, what you can do or what you can afford to buy, what you know, how old you are, what mistakes you have made in your life – all that is unimportant to me.

The only important thing that matters is: You are there!

The only important fact I know is that you are infinitely precious and a wonderful being, and that both of us are on a pilgrimage together on this planet Earth. My Soul is reaching out to you, inviting you to spend a few hours of your precious time in reading this book. And my Soul will be very grateful to you for your “Yes, I will.“

However, before we start in earnest, I would like to put this request to you: Do not believe anything that is written here, but also do not categorically dismiss any of it from the start. Just let it affect you, feel and sense, whether anything is touching you, and what it means to you and your life, for that is the essential point for you, so that you can confidently forget about the rest. Okay? Then it’s a deal?!

The great Greek philosopher Socrates stated: “I know that I do not know anything!”, and this book has been written bearing his saying in mind. I am quite aware of my insignificance within the vast, infinite space of the Universe, which in turn is only one of many. Thus, this book does not claim to speak THE truth. However, it is my heartfelt wish to convey to you, and share with you, “my” experiences, perceptions, deep feelings and sentiments and in this way to perhaps build bridges and reawaken connections. I am not an analyst by nature, nor am I a thinker, philosopher or rationalist,; rather my Soul has qualities like feelings, intuition and a higher stage of truth.

I am writing just the way I feel, in simple, sometimes almost banale, everyday formulations, which may perhaps prove to be obstacles for you thinkers; alas, it is as it is!

Hence, even though this book is clearly structured, it does not contain a comprehensive analysis of a definitive situation or a possible approach to a solution. There will be numerous impulses for women and men,; still you may perhaps miss certain incitement. It is as it is, just accept it!

Within a few minutes, being in a state of deeply relaxed inner clarity, I got the inspiration to write down 27 sentences and to divide them into 3 by 3 by 3 chapters. At some moments there were thoughts asking me what it was all about and that I should be aware that all of this was not entirely everything there was to it. To all of this I can confidently say: Yes, I am fully aware of it! In the past years of my life I have learned to listen more and more to my inner voice and to trust in what it is saying to me, and so out of all of that emerged this book, which you are now holding in your hands: a small, modest 3 by 3 by 3 of woman and man living together on Earth, in the past, the present and the future, and in their mutual way home. There are 3 parts, each comprising 3 sub-sections having 3 chapters each. 3 x 3 x 3 = 27.

The first three chapters in part I are addressed to the Man, to the masculine, for here, in my opinion, the greater part has to be done, respectively undone. The Woman, the feminine, is dealt with in the next three chapters in part II, placed here, for once, in second place. Part III, again comprising three chapters, is dedicated to the mutual approach between Man and Woman. This section deals collectively with reviewing the past with all its separations, injuries and fights. In the middle section we are treating the new togetherness of Woman and Man and the qualities of a new relationship emerging between the genders. The (mutual) inner gathering of oneself focused on the Power that created all of us is elaborated on towards the end of the second chapter.

In the third part, we are analysing what great powers can be set free through our mutual devotion to the Source of all life, and what it can mean for our earthly life. Images of a New Era and a new, basically good feeling of life, possible for everyone, rounds off this 3 x 3 x 3.

On the one hand, each of the 27 chapters are building on each other, following a recurrent theme (leitmotif), however, on the other hand please feel free to open the book at any page and read what you find there. This chapter may at that particular moment be just relevant for you and your life.

Please, don’t forget that you have not just a mere storybook in your hands, but you will be invited from time to time to put the book aside and to turn to your own Self. After all, it is YOU who is the most important entity, the “Self” in this book, the Woman you are, the Man you are, the Being you are. If you like to play games, you may cut some 27 slips of paper, write the numbers 1 to 27 on them and put them in a hat. Then you can pull out one of them and read the corresponding chapter in the book, e.g. the number 11 would be “It is time to decide - Now.”

And even if some chapters are directed explicitly towards one particular gender, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the other gender should not read this section at all.

“Two-by-two makes four widde-widde-witt,

And three-by-three makes nine.

I make the world widde-widde-witt as I like it!”,

sings Pippi Longstocking in her song.

Having said this, I firmly believe that we can together, and with the help of the Power of the Creator, recreate a world in which only peace will prevail.

Ottobrunn, 30.03.2011

André Hermann Höfer

The fundamental stuff

A) The Soul

Have you ever contemplated the question: What being is mankind? Or, what would your answer be if someone would ask you: Who are you? Probably, you would give a concise synopsis of your life so far, e.g.:

My name is John Miller, I was born in 1964. My parents own a small shop, and I have two younger sisters. I entered school in 1971, started an apprenticeship in 1980 and subsequently worked in my profession. In 1988, I met Petra, my wife, and we married in 1990, built a house and have two children, Sabine and Thomas, who grew up and left our home a while ago …

Our self-conception correlates almost exclusively to our own Biography.

However, putting the same question to psychologists, the answer will most definitely vary, depending on their field of specialities. In the extreme case, the reply may be that mankind is born into this world as an unknown entity, and will, at any given moment in time, be a product of her/his life experiences.

Now and then, we may hear the word “Soul” being mentioned, especially when someone is in a near death situation.

And then, quite often religion “comes into play” and the question is asked: “What really will happen after death? Is there life after death?” Some do believe that there is, others categorically deny it.

And again, there are others who are getting red-faced in a heated debate about whether or not there is something like reincarnation. This may be as it is. Some time ago my father told me that even one of the greatest German football players, Franz Beckenbauer, is convinced that he himself has already been living in an earlier century.

I have come to realise quite clearly, both as a human and as a psychologist, that we, you and I, are “Soul-beings”. As human beings we are not just having a Soul but that we are that Soul. In order to discern that, it is merely a question of ones own conscience and is not very difficult. Much of it has to do with the right hand side of the brain, the pacification of thoughts and an open-minded heart, and one can experience it, and through its perception get to know it, if one wants to. My sentiment tells me that now is the time to convey to you my experienced knowledge, the “know-how”.

You may at first find it somehow strange or far-fetched, when I say to you: You are not just your biographic history, or the child of your parents; You are much more than that! Inside of you there slumber magnificent, unique potentials that you, and only you, have in this form. Your Soul intends to find its way into your life.

It is quite possible that no-one has ever told it to you like this, neither your parents, nor your teachers, nor your parish priest. However, it has to be told, even alone for the fact that we can pass it on to our own children. To recognise one’s Self and others as “Soul-beings” will lead to an “ensouled” life, in the real sense of the word; and that is why we are here or what we are here for.

Even at this very moment, we all are in contact with our own Soul, though some more so than others. We are just not expressing it explicitly, because most of us have not been trained enough to notice certain signals. Our Soul communicates with us using three channels:

1. Body:	Expressions like “Someone is breathing down my neck”, “My legs are turning to jelly”, “I have an unpleasant feeling in my stomach”, “I have had my bellyful of this”, etc. are well known to us. In all of this our Soul speaks to us via our body, sending signals to alert us about something in our life.
2. Emotions:	The whole gamut of emotions like sadness, angst or anxiety, anger, rage, envy, pride, love, joy are also forms of expressions of our Soul, just their meanings need to be understood.
3. Images:	Especially at night, when we sleep, our Soul is trying to process all our experiences in a dream, thus trying to give us new impulses for our development, sometimes even for all mankind, e.g. in the dreams of some scientists. Even being fully awake, many people experience something like: “Suddenly there was this image in my head!”, or “All of a sudden I got this idea!”.

For most people, one of these three channels is most pronounced, however, there is no “better” or “worse”, just accept it as it is. Most important is whether we notice or perceive these signals of our Soul at all and how much attention we are giving it.

The Releasing-method, which I will introduce next, and which we will refer to in this book time and time again, is a very effective and marvellous opportunity to get in contact with our own Soul.

B) Releasing

The word “release” can mean “let loose”, “let go” or also “redeem”. The Releasing-method is the lifetime work of Dr. Elmer Edward & Ruth Lindwall, a simple and humble American couple, who are promoting it since the 1970s in 40 countries across the globe.

Both grew up in Christian homes, and both were prayerful from their early childhood days. One of his brothers was an epileptic and her father was an alcoholic. Thus, they were both already confronted early in life with human affliction and felt a great wish in their hearts in wanting to help such people and, if possible, to even heal them of their affliction. They hoped their heartfelt wish would be fulfilled, and in time it should be fulfilled.

He became a medical doctor and, in addition, practised chiropractic and kinesiology. She began her career as a teacher. After their wedding they both worked together in his successful doctor’s surgery for many years.

As the years rolled by, their understanding of psychological causes for physical ailments grew and they discovered the interesting fact that one and the same therapy was successful for one patient, but ineffective for a different patient. Both really wanted, naturally, to know the reason for this, and so they prayed time and time again to arrive at an explanation for this phenomenon. Through various books and meeting with people they were encouraged and furthered their development in working with patients which helped in inspiring their own experiences, and that, in turn made the demand for their practice increase even more.

Despite all the euphoria about being able to help patients in such a way, a purely pragmatic time-dilemma emerged, coupled with the question, whether it was possible to help several people at the same time. And so they both prayed again.

At that time, Dr. Lindwall was already using a method called “positive affirmation”, and so it happened that he repeated sentences like “I love myself, I love myself, I love myself…” while jogging; and one day he had a dramatic and far-reaching experience.

He noticed thoughts emerging inside himself, suggesting: “You cannot be so naïve to believe that you love yourself, surely?!” And while he kept on jogging, he contemplated on it and then, you may perhaps guess what he did – exactly, he prayed…!

And then, the following happened: he heard inside himself “I let go of my old self-hatred”. While he kept on jogging, he said this sentence several times aloud. Afterwards, he tried out his positive thought: “I love myself” again. And this time he discovered that he could really feel this self-love somewhat, and that at least the conflicting thoughts had faded into the background. This was the hour of birth of the Releasing, the “letting go”.

Dr. Lindwall and his wife were guided by their inner forces to offer Releasing-seminars, initially in small groups. The activities were arranged as follows:

All participants, female and male, form couples and one of each couple begins with her/his releasing, while the other partner takes on the role of the tutor.

For the releasing partner it means that s/he lies relaxed on the back, eyes closed, and concentrates on the breathing only, letting her/his thoughts come to a quiet state (step 1).

Next, in this relaxed state, the releasing partner requests her/his inner Self to make known earnestly the causes for a certain problem, physical symptom or actual life topic at this very moment (step 2).

After step 2, and after the request has been made, the direction was simply to just perceive whatever happenes inside oneself: were there physical sensations, emotions or inner images? These were then conveyed to the tutor, and thus a dialogue emerged from the one heart to the other, in between which there was always time for space and time for silence, conscientious breathing and self-perception (step 3).

Whenever certain topics crystallized during the course of this dialogue, the participants were asked to begin with their own Releasing and to formulate so-called Releasing-sentences. For example, if certain emotions of sadness, grief or anger were uncovered, one could say: “I let go (release) of my old resentment towards A. N. Other, because he/she said or did this to me”, or “I let go (release) of my sadness about my father having had so little time for me, and I am breathing this out, NOW”. By doing this, the participants were able to rid themselves of (old) emotional and psychological ballast/dead weight (step 4).

After this, the participants, consciously concentrating on something positive they wished for, proved very effective as a concluding exercise, e.g. to decide for, to open themselves for or to ask for something new, like “I have decided to approach a certain person again”, “I open myself for joy” or “I am asking that my life becomes easier to live” (step 5).

The entire Releasing-process usually lasted between 60 and 120 minutes, and after a break the roles were reversed. Whoever had been the accompanying party was now the one to release, and whoever had already released played now the accompanying role. In this way it was possible to enable twenty or more people within the span of a few hours to get to know fundamental experiences about themselves, and to discern, name and release psychological causes and reasons for their current personal living condition like sickness, conflicts or stagnation.

The first and foremost aim of Releasing is to restore an inner equilibrium. The beauty of it is that it can be used at any given time any day. Whenever you have the feeling that something funny is going on inside yourself, all you have to do is to say aloud: “I release (or let go) of ….” and fill in whatever is ‘nagging’ you, e.g. “I release my hatred towards my boss, and I also release my feeling inferior to him. All of this I let go, and I breathe it out, NOW”. And, as a positive affirmation, you could add: “I am the boss of my life, and I will not tolerate and allow him any longer to treat me in this way!” The possible applications and phrasings of such Releasing-sentences are sheer inexhaustible and they have the power to change an entire life.

In actual fact, Releasing is not a method at all; it is rather an attitude towards life. It is a decision to discern directly, describe appropriately and release accordingly, everything that may cause an imbalance of my inner equilibrium or to induce stress. I can say with conviction that, after using the simple principles of the Releasing-method for more than ten years, the quality of my life was enhanced immensely. Calmness, (self)-love and (self)-confidence appear more and more, and, as a positive consequence, the equilibrium of the outer environment increases as well.

The way we perceive ourselves and the world around us depends directly on our awareness. And that is why it is time, NOW, that we appreciate and value highly the life’s work of a “great” scientist:

C) The levels of Consciousness

Dr. Dr. David Hawkins has been a practising Psychiatrist since 1952. He wrote numerous books, inter alia, in collaboration with the Nobel-Prize winner Linus Pauling, the pioneering work: “Orthomolecular Psychiatry”. Hawkins, in his capacity as researcher and college lecturer, received numerous invitations to lecture at High Schools, Universities and Monasteries across the globe. As a consultant he aided foreign governments and international diplomats in extreme critical conflict situations.

Already as a three-year-old boy, and later as a juvenile during an ice-cold snow storm, which almost cost him his life, he had so-called “experiences of enlightenment”. He describes it as “an entire awareness of being” and “as a state of indescribable sereneness, accompanied by light and the presence of an unlimited love, which had neither beginning nor end and was not so different from the core of my own being.” He relates in detail his experiences in his books.

He, like the Lindwalls, had a prosperous practice and was almost unable to cope with the growing stream of patients. He began to study kinesiology, where he learned that the human body contains an inner wisdom, and that this wisdom can be used for the highest benefit of (one’s own) life. During a kinesiological test the reaction of a particular muscle to a specified applied stimulus is checked.

Normally, the test person stretches out her/his arm sideways, and the testing person pushes the arm down, applying a slight pressure to the arm some finger-width from the wrist. The result reveals whether or not a certain food product subserves ones health. The testing person‘s statement may run: “It subserves the health of the tested person to consume sugar”. After such a statement, the testing person asks the test person again to stretch out her/his arm and hold it up, after which a slight pressure is applied again by the testing person, trying to push the arm down. Numerous stimuli or statements can, thus, be tested by using this method. Whenever the stimulus was positive, true and subservent to life, the answer is “Yes” and the muscle remains strong, i.e. the arm of the person tested remains straight. Whenever the stimulus was negative, untrue and not conducive to life, the answer is “No” and the muscle reacts weakly, i.e. the arm of the person tested can be pushed down by the testing person with ease.

By means of these tests Dr. Hawkins developed over decades a numbered scale/chart of the consciousness comprising the entire states of human awareness, correlating with corresponding numbers on the scale. On this scale, the bottom value is 0, representing the absence of any life, i.e. physical death. The top value is 1,000, representing the state of enlightenment or united consciousness, which has been attained by only a select number of Souls, e.g. Jesus Christ, during our entire human history.

The levels of consciousness according to Dr. Dr. Hawkins are shown on the next page:

Reading	Level
700 – 1.000	Enlightenment
	↑
600	Peace
	↑
540	Joy, Unconditional Love
	↑
500	Love
	↑
400	Rationality, Reason
	↑
350	Acceptance
	↑
310	Willingness
	↑
250	Neutrality
	↑
200	Courage, Truth, Integrity
	↓
175	Ego, Arrogance, Pride
	↓
150	Anger, Enragement
	↓
125	Concupiscence, Greed, Avarice
	↓
100	Anxiety
	↓
75	Affliction, Grief
	↓
50	Apathy, Hatred, Depression
	↓
30	Guilt
	↓
20	Shame
	↓
0	Physical Death

This scale is very interesting. Dr. Hawkins discovered that certain emotional conditions yielded negative test results; so for example, ‘shame’ as an emotional condition resulted in the least energy, followed by feelings of guilt, apathy, depression, hatred and grief. The next value on the scale (100) correlates with angst (or anxiety). This is then followed by greed, anger and enragement and, in the last (negative) place stands the Ego, arrogance and pride (175).

The value 200 commands a key position on the scale, for only after exceeding this value real power exists, which will yield a positive test result: the value 200 stands for courage, truth and integrity. Any wo(man) who is truthful, courageous, and believes in integrity, her/his virtue radiates power, and she/he has decided not to be influenced by negative feelings like guilt or anger.

Increasing energy contains inner attitudes of neutrality, willingness, acceptance and a clear consciousness or rationality (up to the value of 499). Lastly, we have reached the levels where life is being revered and its real value is revealed, namely love, joy and peace (500 … 600). Within this range, the primary point is not mere thinking or doing: no, just “being” is everything. The miaowing of a cat, the babbling of a baby or grandad in the rocking chair; everything is simple, complete and wholesome. Thereafter, what follows is pure awareness (700 … 1,000), which cannot be described in words.

The knowledge of these interrelations is very valuable, and we will be using it time and again in the course of this book

Alright then, we can now begin.

My Brothers, we should talk together…