We all grew up in the notion that what is necessary and what is important is US and MINE. The past century has seemingly proved, that all kinds of community are evil – because some results have been terrifying. So we have become more and more isolated and the more isolated we have become, the less hope and joy remains in our lives. Everything becomes a question of personal survival and there is no more excitement about being with others, about finding out about others. Live becomes a dull experience of mere surviving, not a joyous exploration of what is possible. 

Too much black colors ? May be, but if you open your eyes with the willingness to really see, you will probably find out, that i am not so far from reality.

M.Scott Peck says: 'There can be no vulnerability without risk, there can be no community without vulnerability, there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.'

So what does this mean ?

For me it means that we have actually no other chance to encounter who we are, that we have no other possibility to overcome the restrictions of our ego (which always feels threatened, no matter how insignificant the event is), that our life and our existence is based on and lives in community. We are just not made for being alone ! 

I witness exactly this again and again when i do facilitate seminars: in the beginning, no matter how big the space is and how many people are in that space - it feels always too small. After having worked a few days, there comes inevitably the moment when i have to count the number of participants 3 times because the group seems to have become so much smaller. But that is not true. It is just that all the false and unreal shields have fallen away, that the people do not cover themselves with strategies to overcome their fear of others. They have just turned into normal human beings who are curious about their fellows participants, who want to experience closeness and warmth together. 

We have become incredibly sophisticated in all areas of our lives but one thing we have not yet been able to do: to substitute human warmth and physical closeness. This warmth and closeness creates an opening, it creates the wish for more. In this field of mutual sharing and warmth we will not find it so terribly difficult anymore to open up and become vulnerable. And vulnerability is one of the qualities our world so desperately needs. Why ? Well if you can generate vulnerability for yourself, then you will instantaneously create an atmosphere of openness  and trust which will lead to more closeness which will lead to more trust which will lead to more joy of life and so on to infinit.

Of course being vulnerable is a risk. A risk we all know very well as we all have been hurt in this area. We all have had the experience that someone has taken advantage of us, that we have been ridiculed and laughed at, that we have lost something/someone that/who was dear to us.

So what ? Did we stop getting up when we learned to walk on our own two feet because we fell down quiet some time and it was sometimes painful ? No way, we kept pushing until we knew how to do it.

It is part of our human existence to suffer from time to time, so let's suffer and then get on with the program. The program is: let's create the form of closeness with people which enables us to live in a good and satisfying way, which helps us creating a community support system in which we feel at home and that leads us more and more towards love. Because love is 'the only engine of survival' as Leonard Cohen says in one of his songs, or like Rumi puts it:

'Come out of the circle of time

And into the circle of love.'

It is in our hands – are you on the boat ?...

- Claus Kostka