As a child I looked at the stars one night, my father was standing next to me and spoke to me about the universe as being endless, something you cannot phantom, and I said the thoughts that came to mind: I think the universe is like the body of god and the stars like the atoms just like in our body. He laughed and said: you have such imagination, he later called it fantasy and often got upset saying I should stop imagining things and pay more attention to the real world and how important it is to be seen by others as a success story, to get a respected job and be able to show you made it.
I have tried to live up to this materialistic view in the hope that I would get his love and respect. I wanted to please him, I wanted him to be proud, he looked up to those who had made it in his world, and for him to have a sense of having it made meant that you have to look down on those who did not.
God knows I have tried, I became someone who wanted to please everyone, while he had become so materialistic because of the war experiences [the 2nd world war] where they had often nothing or very little. I wanted to be loved but no matter how much I tried to please everyone it never gave me what was missing in my heart, or at least what I thought was missing, my giving was conditional. I was seeking something in return,
I was neglecting myself in order to satisfy ego. Money was what I was after because that was the tool through which I could give and show I had made it and would give me what I was looking for in return, I thought. I worked day and night, took on all I could handle and more, while it gave me the material wealth many dream of, it never fulfilled my heart’s desire.

Then like in a chain reaction everything collapsed. I lost all that I thought was dear to me, I lost sight of a future, my relationship, my business, and all material possessions. I was left with the cloths that I wore and a deep depression set in. One night the pain became unbearable and I burst out in tears. Tears I kept in for so many years because I was told, man do not cry. I thought if this is what life is all about, to ensure you take a bigger piece of the pie than others to feel good about yourself, and then through giving you will have love and respect in return, then there was something seriously wrong with my world view.
I had met so many who did not want to share and wished to keep it all to themselves, but were they any happier for it? Their relationships broke up , they too got sick and had people who hated them and friends who loved them as long as they had what they wanted. If that was what life was about, this looking out for number one, then I did not want this life any more. You gather possessions and a false sense of wealth that sooner or later you will lose, at least when you die.  Even for the richest of the rich there is that one sure thing, in life they would all one day die, something that was equal for everyone.
This, while often hidden deep inside peoples mind, gave them the attitude, take what you can while it lasts, at least you had a good time while it lasted. No, I did not want to live like that anymore. Looking back with the material wealth or not it was now as it was then, still a desert in my heart, a dry barren place where sometimes at the break of dawn a flower would rise to wither away again in the midday blaze of a fiery sun, and for the first time I prayed, God please if you really exist then please do not let my life wither away like this in an overwhelming sense of uselessness . If you really exist then I offer my life to you, use my hands, my life so it would not be wasted and your will be done.

Because my little mind could not figure it out any more, but there was no reply, no answer, that night I wanted to die, I had enough. I did not attempt to kill myself, but could feel the life-force ebbing away into a tunnel, felt a kind of dizziness the kind you feel when you get up too quick that became stronger and stronger to a point I had a near blackout and panic set in, a deep hidden fear of death. I got up, needed help, I did not want to die after all, because I called for god from the deepest despair right from my heart and there was no one there.
As I got up with some difficulty, walked to the door, I turned round to look at the room and I saw myself lying in bed, and in an instant I was looking from my bed to the door again, and passed out to wake up with doctors around me, one holding an oxidant mask and another measuring blood pressure. I tried to get up but had no control over any of my muscles no matter how hard I tried. Over the next few days I somewhat regained some control before I could walk again, be it with a cane. What had happened to me? Some might say I had a very vivid dream, others might say I had an outer body experience, but to me it was as real as you sitting, reading this now without a single doubt in my mind. So was there life after life after all? I could still see, could still feel separate from my physical body, so I did not need to fear death any more, and nothing had changed in this world, they were still chasing this false sense of happiness, perhaps now I could die, let go fully.
During the next couple of days I tried to find this feeling I had just before it happened.
I remembered a sensation that started at my feet and worked its way up to my head and slowly going back and forth, building up speed until it felt like being engulfed in a cocoon from which I got up. Finally I could. A door opened to my escape and entered through it what you would call another dimension.
After a while I discovered its limitations as well as its possibilities. I could move in this world but this world could not see me while I could see them. I started to feel guilt for prying on them as I could hear their thoughts, they lived secretive lives saying one thing while thinking others, so I sat out to explore the universe, seeking its boundaries.

As I was looking at the stars zooming in like a telescope and zooming out, the reality of my childhood vision dawned on me, atoms, suns, cycles, planets, large and small, in a way they were all equal, sometimes only in different combinations as if they were all on a path, a sort of wave pattern on which they were moving much like that of a magnetic field from atoms to galaxies.
All that space of nothingness was like a web upon which matter had its course, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large. In fact the locations of the cross points of the cycles themselves that kept matter in check, was what made matter possible. This web was consciousness itself at all different levels. The web itself was at the same time the shell that gave us the illusion of matter. This empty space was not empty at all but full of potential of development, all interwoven, just an illusion of separateness. Just like human beings who feel and act as if being separated from each other and all things. Materialized points on that same web called space.

There are about 103 different elements according to science that makes up all matter but every atom is made out of 3 parts (electrons , protons and neutrons). At first I saw it as your lawn, each individual bit of grass rooted in the same earth, then I saw this space as that of a seed, a seed that has not yet got leaves, a flower or the smell of a rose. It has the potential to be, and on top of it, the seeds it could provide. Such is the light of God.

Just like matter, these 3 in different combinations bonded together, make up the 103 elements, on a much grander scale, the mental/consciousness, physical and spiritual/space. But mankind does not see it, it might see his arm being connected to his hand, he might see the likeliness in his child, the attachment to his spouse, friendship to those close to his liking, but often that is as deep as it goes.

When an artist models his clay into different persons we recognize the faces, and when the artist is tired of the models he made and puts them back into one block of clay again we might still see bits and pieces of the models he had made, but that is as far as it goes.
We might see the many in one, but never see the one in many.

We are all made in the image of the heavenly man.
So what about woman? She was closest to God, she represents the womb, the Unmanifest that gives birth, the seed with potential.
The light of God.

03-08-2008

Moshiya van den Broek