In the previous seven chapters we explored a range of events that can interfere with everyday life. In this final chapter we take a closer look at the phenomenon of change itself. Some changes in life are expected, and we like to mark the occasion with a rite of passage — e.g. weddings, funerals, a ceremony at the end …
The Path of Flames
Three years after receiving the call to live and work in the slums of Calcutta Mother Teresa lost her connection with God — or so it seemed to her. She had beed drawn to a religious life since the age of 12, and followed her vocation to become a nun when she was 18. Conversations with Jesus and God …
The Path of Masks
In his autobiography Carl Gustav Jung tells the story of a woman he saw only once. One day she came into his office. She didn’t give her name, and didn’t expect any treatment. She simply needed to tell her story. More than two decades earlier this woman had poisoned her best friend because she wanted to marry the friend’s …
The Path of Talismans
The prolific correspondence of the French philosopher and playwright Voltaire made him both famous and infamous. Some of his most scandalous letters were written to a certain Marie Louise Mignot. In a different place and time those letters could have cost the lives of both writer and recipient — not because of their explicit sexual content — it was …
The Path of Crystals
What do fairy tales and the experience of trauma have in common? Both have a difficult, often dangerous, sometimes horrendous challenge at their core. In both of them the main character is the innocent victim of evil circumstances. And both lead — potentially — to a happy ending. The hero or heroine is rewarded and ‘lives happily ever after’. …
The Path of Scales
Feelings are a universal language. Anthropologists have taught us that the basic language of emotions is spoken and understood in all cultures. This means we are able to communicate — albeit rudimentarily — with people from all over the world without words through feelings and emotions. Yet this language also causes great misunderstandings between people living under the same …
The Path of Arrows
If you want to create ‘a better world’ for yourself, you can find advice in self-help books. One of the experts on the topic of ‘getting what you want and creating a good life’ is Barbara Sher, an American career counsellor and author of many books. In her bestselling book I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What …
The Path of Mirrors
In chapter 17 we looked at personal experience as a private affair. That could have been the end of this book. Yet human everyday life is also a shared experience. At first glance this seems like a paradox, but there is a simple explanation: Each individual human Consciousness is unique and independent to some degree, and at the same …
Private Property
Human experience is a baffling phenomenon. We think we know it. We even think we know it better than anything else. And yet, our private experience might be the greatest unsolved mystery of humankind. The French philosopher Maurice Merleau Ponty pointed out that “the world which is revealed to us by our senses and in everyday life, seems at …
Looking Back Part 2
“There are those who have not been able to fully carry out the detachment from their parents, or those others who didn’t manage to acquire their position in the world by their own strength, or those who have not done their work around the age of 49 and who have not learned to see beyond themselves. The first ones …