Yes, I've arrived at the middle of the week, and I managed to get through the office week without damage... my personal good vibes recipes are working well, including gathering and sharing positive thoughts and feelings, doing a little good karma work and even something seemingly weird and simple like walking barefoot.
Today, my bare feet produced two positive reactions on public transport on my way home after home. The first was on the quite crowded commuter bus, when at a stop a young mother with her two kids - one walking, the other in a buggy - got on at a stop near a large supermarket in the industrial area. As some passengers got out several stops before the terminus, she moved her buggy a little, then noticed my shoeless state, and wide-eyed, then smiling she exclaimed: "Hey!! You're barefoot! Wow. Cool. Why are you doing this? And for how long?" I explained my usual wellness and health reasons and told her that I have been doing this all year round for more than fifteen years now... and from spring to fall for more than 25. She was impressed and genuinely positive about it, then lifted a foot clad in a high-heeled shoe and said "Oh, you know, wearing these, I sometimes long to walk barefoot, too... but I can't..." Before we could elaborate on that, the bus reached its terminus, and we had to get off. I then went to the underground platform to board the subway/tram to get home. Two young men boarded the tram a bit later, sitting near me and one of them was quite transfixed by my bare feet, especially by the OM tattoo on my left instep. I was reading, listening to some music, so he waved one of his hands near my face to get my attention and when I removed my earphones, he asked "Are you a Hindu? For, you know, I am..." So, here was someone who actually knew the sign and meaning of it, too. He then told me that he regularly prays at the Shankarar Sri Kamadchi Ampal Hindu temple in Hamm (the largest Hindu temple in Europe, with a large annual temple festival each May... this year, it's going to be on Sunday, May 26).
I explained my mixed spirituality to him, saying that whenever I'm barefoot on Earth or grass, I am in direct spiritual contact with all creation, Nature being my temple. Of course, I also stated my wellness and health reasons, but here was someone who could and did comprehend and approve of my spiritual motives for barefooting, too.
One sad piece of news he had for me was that recently some idiot burglars broke into the temple to steal golden idols...
Nevertheless, those were very positive moments, when unwinding and relaxing after the office day...
So far, I am moving easily through the artificial world of facts and figures, like my namesake dances happily through his world.
When wanting to take a break from the spreadsheets and reports, I sometimes think about places I'd rather like to be - like sitting in a living room made for real living, being at a festival with "weird" people, feeling cool grass beneath my bare feet or being part of something this world really needs: a Free Hugs Army...
OK, that may seem like idle dreaming, but already having been in such places and with such people, it's more like taking a short trip to the past, remembering that there are places and people, where and with whom real living is indeed done, apart from what mainstream calls reality.
After all, this so-called reality is merely the product of communication about and mutual agreement on humans' perceptions. In this way of thinking, the ground I walk on is only real, since I and other human beings have perceived that ground beneath our feet, communicated about our experience and agreed upon it being there. Sounds crazy? Well, that's what sociologists think - in this special case, Niklas Luhman did. In "The Matrix!", the little buddha boy, sitting in a perfect lotus on the oracle's living room floor, explained it way simpler to Neo, when saying "There is no spoon...!"
So, with scaling the peak of the week, it's now an easy, mostly barefoot stroll downhill towards the weekend with only two more days at the office, spending my time in "reality".
Oh, one side note about that "reality"... the ugly side of it reared its head last Sunday, when a mall in the town where I live had to be evacuated due to an bomb threat, telling that two suitcases with explosives were to be deposited and set off during an antiques and flea market there... about 10,000 visitors had to be shown out of the place. To prevent mass panic, it was officially stated, that the evacuation had "technical reasons".
Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm, but it was again a reminder that there are indeed mad people in the world, claiming to have a higher reason or mission. The threat was issued via a telephone hotline installed by the German interior federal intelligence service "Bundesverfassungsschutz". Similar to a hotline, where smokers can call in to get help quitting, they have installed a telephone number for potential islamist terrorists who want to quit...
Once again, it turned out, that spreading terror is not about setting off a bomb - it's about causing fear. When people are afraid to run their normal errands or visit regular places due to a threat, the terrorist plan has worked. It interrupts and disturbs regular living, increasing fear (be it founded or not).
I, personally, am not afraid, for my having to use public transport, going shopping in supermarkets and sometimes crowded places has made me as everyone else doing this a potential target of accidents, attacks, even possible bombings... if I were afraid of that, I couldn't step out of the door every morning.
After having lived through threats like nuclear holocaust, imminent during the cold war, several major disasters in nuclear power plants and their effects on the environment as well as on people in the world, the so-called "radical left terrorism threat" boiled up by the government (which mostly targeted high-ranking political and financial officials), the uprising of a new Nazi generation in Germany (where our glorious German interior intelligence service was blind and incompetent), with racist thugs attacking anyone not befitting their so-called mindset ("so-called" beacuse I can't imagine such shit coming from brains), the islamist terrorism threat is merely just another drop of bile in the large bitter bowl of stew that our so-called "civilization" has been brewing for centuries...
No wonder, that I often think, that what "civilized" people call "primitive life" is a better choice than living the way most of us do. Instead of seeing them as poor and uncivilized, indigeous people should be left alone. And anyone who wants to go back to the roots of living, being in tune with Nature, should be able to do so (as long as there still is some Nature left!) instead of being drawn into the competitive treadmill of "modern society" at the cost of having no real world to live in anymore.
After all, living and happiness aren't about winning competitions or the thickness of our purse... there once was a Prophet (in whose name some idiots claim to act when killing others) who put it just the right way:
"Happiness does not lie in wealth but in the hearts of men." - Mohammed
I'm still hoping, that someday people will realize what is really important in life. And that hope enables me to get up in the morning, go out there and not be afraid.
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