One day we wake up and we will understand that we cannot prevent water from flowing to the sea…
Policy
If we make their life as difficult as possible, they will stay away. That was and is the policy in the Greek detention camps. You stand in line for hours for food that you only eat because you have to fill your stomach or you choose to do that from your monthly contribution even though the Greek government gets around 6 Euro a day to feed you…
Spirit to survive
Here in Samos there is very little support. The result is an enormous spirit to survive. The refugees have to buy their own tents so they prefer mostly to built something better for almost the same amount of money and they cook their own food if possible. “Well, that’s not how it should be,” the mayor says. “It is not a holiday village here…”
Appointment
Every asylum seeker needs a medical certificate. Your procedure will not start without having one. In the past, every refugee get an appointment for the hospital by the only doctor in the camp. That policy changed drastically with the arrival of the new government. The entire translation team got fired and people had to stand in line before their appointment. So they spend their nights in front of the hospital in the bitter cold, hoping to be among the lucky ones that day.
This too has been stopped. Now the newcomers get priority and the people who have been staying here for months or even years are no longer visible…
Registration
Previously you had to renew your registration card every month. Your name was on the board if it was your turn. No discussion.
Now this has to be done every 14 days. If you are delayed for 5 days, because the system cannot handle it, you are simply thrown out of the system…
Fortunate
At two o’clock in the morning, Toure stands in line with 95 others to renew his registration card. Toure is fortunate. He managed within twelve hours. Just before they are closing.
Bassirou and many others are less lucky. He did not make it and is back in line from 1 o’clock pm. He hides his frustration behind his eternal smile. My heart is crying and not only that. I’m furious. How inhuman can we be.
Deportation
If you are 5 days overtime, even if it is not your fault, you will be thrown out of the asyl system. Then you have to look for a lawyer who has to make things right again. You have to pay for it of course. The lawyer gets ten days for appeal. Usually this is impossible.
If it fails, the boys go to prison in Mytelini on Samos island.
Here all – mainly single black men – from the different islands are brought together and get deported to Turkey. At the moment this are around 30 a day…
Illegal
In Turkey they usually go straight to jail and if they escape, they can’t go anywhere. If you find a job illegally, they will be heavily underpaid. As an African you certainly do not get asylum in Turkey. And without a passport you cannot go back to your home country IF you would be able to.
Opinion
After the demonstration on 24th of January, where the Samonees demand that the asylum seekers only should be registered on the island and being sent back or being brought to the mainland, shocking opinions about refugees appear under Samos24 on the internet…
Angel
He is called Melak. In Africa that means Angel but here it means that you are crazy. “How does that feel,” I ask. He looks at me with his eternal smile and shrugs. No longer it affects him…
Sweetheart
And YES, it may be said that also the blacks are not all sweeties. Mostly they fight more sympathetically than the Arabs, but they are stealing also.
When Bassirou sees that an African is stealing in the KiloShop, he warns him: “Hey, Brother, I wouldn’t do that. You not only give yourself a bad name, but all Africans…”
Mistake
It’s here just like everywhere else. Most residents know every mistake from the boys. They do not see that the majority, let me say 95 percent, behaves exemplary under circumstances in which the average European would destroy the whole environment or get mad.
Speechless
A friend here who has seen something of the world tells me that those people are lazy and nasty. “They only come for the money, are not civilized and have little or no education…”
I am speechless. I invite her to meet our friends in our house. She refuses. Imagine she discoveres how they really are.
Unfortunately, the majority think like this and the rest wisely keep their mouth, out of fear being banished from the island…
Dark side
Of course I also understand the Greeks. This situation is not healthy. But let’s be honest. The Greeks are not only darlings and the asylum seekers are not all criminals. For many Greeks, the forced residence of refugees on the islands reveals their carefully concealed dark side, which they, like most of us, immediately project outside themselves. Our behavior is always the fault of others…
Money
Let us send money to Africa so they can stay there, is the thought of many and also the policy of the European Union.
Sending money to Africa is not a solution. Policymakers might know this if they should have the courage to go there themselves and have the guts to live among people for a while. Then they would discover that government leaders usually nod yes and amen but put the money in their own pockets to enrich themselves, their family and their tribesmembers. And that’s not just because they are more corrupt than we are. Africans think and live completely differently. The family is central. Even if they come for economic reasons, it is not to enrich themselves, but to give their families in their home country the opportunity to build a better life and send their younger brothers and sisters to school.
Horizon
Many do not come for economic reasons but because they have to flee their country for political or ethnic reasons. And in the end money is not the most important issue.
In 2020, people must be given the opportunity to spread their wings and broaden their horizons. Just as we Europeans are doing for decades with impunity. To become a real Human Being, all of us have to follow our soul desire…
To get to know yourself you must be able to compare. To appreciate your home situation, you must first experience how other tribes and countries are living. You can’t learn this by watching TV or through social media.
And let’s be honest. We have exploited Africa long enough. Long enough we wanted to play the leading role in this theater called creation. It is high time that others can take over…
Smugglers
Do not think that we can stop this emigration flow by erecting high walls or by building closed camps. It is just business. There are millions of people who enrich themselves with this. Not only the smugglers and the NGOs.
Apart from all of this, how on earth can we avert water from following its true nature and flow into the sea…
Adversity
Traumas usually arise after they arrive here. You cannot compare these peoples with us Europeans. They usually do not have the conviction that it is our right to be happy. Life, death and adversity are matters they are confronted with every day and they usually process this in a natural way.
Renewed
Once I joined in South Africa a group session. No therapist was involved. It was damn powerful. At the end of the evening everyone went home refreshed and renewed.
We Europeans and Americans have built an entire industry. We have raised normal live situations into problems so we can put everyone who deviates from what we think is normal into boxes and earn our money from it. After all the deviant, in the meantime almost the majority, need us to feel themselves ‘normal’ so they can safely return to the herd. The herd covers al that stands in the way of progress and transformation.
Terrors
Inspite all the horrors those people have gone through, the moment they arrive on the islands, people feel grateful and happy. They achieved their goal and are convinced they are free. From now on it can only get better. From that moment, slowly and surely reality begins to penetrate. The prison in which they ended up here, no longer has open doors. Dreams are falling apart. Men in particular are not seen and welcomed. They feel unloved and and being failed in their role as protectors of the funerable: women and children. Every initiative to undertake something gets suppressed. Slowly but surely even the strongest are losing their spirit. They no longer sleep and fall prey to depression and terrible dreams.
The horrors they have experienced cannot be processed in a natural way and start to undermine them.
Women, children and families can go to the mainland. Single men are left behind. That they often had to leave a wife and children behind, which they miss immensely, is conveniently forgotten…
Approved
Do you really think that the black boys do not realize that they have fewer options than their Arab friends. They are not recognized and embraced and in advance they are seen as a problem. They are not even allowed inside many places.
Circumstances
In short, most people are not traumatized when they arrive. They become traumatized because they have to live in inhumane conditions. And if they knew there was a way out, they could even accept this too. But the blacks who are here for a long time, know in the meantime what is above their heads. They see it happen daily before their eyes…
To shape
How different the situation could be if we had the guts to step into unpaved paths. We would undoubtedly discover new possibilities. New enriching forms of living together…
God
The Greek demonstrators seemed unable to stop it. The construction of the closed camp at Samos is in full swing. What this will mean for the people and the island, I don’t know. Only God knows…
Innocence
In the meantime, Turkey is sending their people to control the Greek refugee policy and Europe is washing their hands in innocence…
Om Shanti,
Yasmin
– 1th of February 2020
THE LATEST NEWS
GREECE wants to build floating walls in the sea so the boats no longer have the possibility to reach the coast…
KURDS are stateless. Unlike the Palestinians, single men are generally not granted asylum. With the new government, Greece will deport them to Turkey. Europe when do you wake up…
The joy about the release from our friend Isaac from Nigeria out of prison is short-lived. His release was partly due to our help. Without lawyer they should have deported him straight without seeing back his lovely wife and son…
Still I see him arriving into camp Moria. He was a real optimist. Unbeatable…
We kept in touch by whatsapp. Regularly we visited our family in Athens. They got a hotel room in City Plaza, run by a German Ngo. We helped Isaac *Onyekachi in my book ‘One Love – One Tribe’, with his first job on an island. After that he always found something to support his family.
They did not have a residence permit yet. But the police never asked for papers.
Outlaw
This changed last summer, when the most inhumane legislation ever entered into force, drafted by the conservative Greek government as a reaction to the EU policy. Camps on the islands will become closed detention centers. Procedures gets accelerated. People are being deported on masse to unsafe situations. They don’t get lawyers. Appeal is no longer possible…
Clearing
We were in Athens when all squats and hotels got cleared. People were raided during the night and put on the street without possessions. Or brought to camps in the middle of nowhere on the mainland.
A small Ngo took care of a number of families. Shortly after this Isaac was arrested by the police on the way home from his job and, like many others, thrown into prison…
The lawyer needed €600 to set him free. Again Isaac could apply for asylum. Immediatly they told him to leave Greece within 14 days. Charity and his son have no papers. He has no money for the trip. He does not know where to go and has no African passport. So he will be thrown into prison on arrival until this problem is settled…
According to the EU, Africans are mostly economical refugees. In fact, we only have Syrians and Eritreans on our list and currently people from Jemen and Gaza. The others can be safely send back…
The new arrivals receive an accelerated procedure. After being rejected immediately they go to prison. They get deported without being allowed to say goodbye to friends and family.
Rebellion
Similarly it happened to a friend of our Ugandan Ssentamu. Like Sentamu he had to run from his country two years ago because he rebelled against the government.
He was leading a peaceful life and worked hard to meet his own needs. He got picked from the street after working hours. The lawyer puts the money, collected by his friends, in his pocket and could not do anything. After months of stress the guy gets deported. At the airport in Uganda he got arrested and disappeared into prison on charges of being a state enemy…
Blood money
And we European Community wash our hands in innocence. Turkey, Italy and Greece are burdened with the dirty work. We pay billions of blood money as long our night’s rest is not disturbed.
High time to wake up. No longer we can close our eyes and look away. History repeats itself. It is genocide that takes place on a large scale…
Unwanted
In advance men are already undesirable because in our ignorance we take the ‘truth’ of news and social media for granted without to investigate what really truth is…
Many Africans, also from the so-called ‘safe countries’, can not teturn to their homelands. People who read my book ‘One Love – One Tribe’ can understand this somehow…
I would never have get so much insight into situations if I hadn’t started listening to people and sharing their stories. Stories that on request have turned into a book. Impressive and touching for people who read it but denied by those who choose to look away and prefer to proclaim the safe opinion of the masses than to investigate ourselves…
Paternity
I meet Eric from Cameroon. If you want to know what’s going on there, read the story of *Ruselle from Cameroon in my book ‘One Love – One Tribe’.
Eric was 28 years when he had to flee. He left his wife and 3 children behind. His son was 2 months. He promised them that they would be safely together within one year. His son is now two…
Eric lives in the jungle in Samos. A place comparing to the notorious Moria camp on Lesvos is paradise. That tall strong guy who, in this cold, is walking on slippers and in shorts, because here, unlike Lesbos, there is hardly any primary help, is crying silent tears.
We are a day out with the four of us. We’re eating lunch. I wrap my arms around him. What else can I do…
Heartless
Do you have any idea how many of these beautiful guys had to leave their families behind, some already years ago. Not because they are heartless, somebody claimed on my lecture, but simply because they have no choice.
Have you ever thought about how they live every day with this pain knowing by now that they will probably never see their loved ones again…
And do you have any idea how many Erics there are among the refugees…
Criminals
Or do we still prefer to believe that most men are criminals, rapists and terrorists…
It are those guys who risk their lives to free their country from dictatorship. The same species who fight for us in wars and return as wrecks because what they have seen cannot get a place…
The change will start in the upbringing. We all stay up immediately for children. Believe me, children in camp Moria still play like children. Mud, sand and rubbish is a paradise for kids. Safer and more creative than all computer games and violent mess they see on telivision and smartphone.
Women are still seen as the weak sex who must be protected. But those guys have to do the dirty work for us. We deny their vulnerability. After all, they must be strong and tough…
Brainwashing
So much talent is being lost because we are being flooded by the media with disaster news, which perhaps covers two percent of reality because we do not want to give up our safe harbor and our ideas and continue to cherish ourselves inside our safe ivory tower…
To divert attention, we worry about things like Santa Claus and black Piet, who was originally black. So were we are talking about. We adopt cats from Greece who are still living a real cat life. We do everything as long as we don’t have to worry about people who might bring us into contact with our hidden dark side…
Exemplary
Like here in Samos, where before the arrival of the refugees was no visible form of crime. Well I guarantee you that they still behave in an exemplary way, those refugees. If we lock up Westerners in this way, in notime they will kill each other…
Fiercely
We are back on Samos. Not because we didn’t like Lesbos. On the contrary, it is wonderful on Lesvos. There we could rent a house much cheaper and enjoy ourselves in many ways.
Well we are in Samos where we are supposed to be right now.
Not that we can change much about the situation. The only thing we can do is just to be present.
My posts about the light and dark sight are being red less and less. People find it too confronting…
Survive
Life IS confronting and intense. You can sprinkle all kinds of escapades on it, but that leads to a kind of survival that shows on the outside how good we are doing together while the inside slowly languish away…
Desperation
I meet Atta from Ghana on the street. I am shocked by his desperation. Pull him off the sidewalk. I have to take care of him. Atta is half of a twin. His brother died at birth. He is now twenty. Four years ago his father was murdered in front of his elder brother Solomon. Solomon did not escape damage-free. He is missing three fingertips, his front teeth and has a shattered shoulder. Two years later Mother died of grief. The police locked up the murderer, a brother of their father. They advised the boys to flee. If uncle is released he will not rest until he has killed them…
* Ghana: Top 1 of the safe countries…
Love
We take the boys into the mountains. They feel like an extension of my being. They are our first guests at the table of our new house, receive a shower and a Reiki treatment. Joyful we play games. But above all we support them in their being. We teach them to be proud of their origin, even though Solomon cannot read and write.
And furthermore it is very simple. Love is the medicine on which they grow and thrive…
And I have plenty of that. It always surprises me that I need my ‘own’ space in the Netherlands. In Africa and here this is of no importance…
When I take a picture of Atta I can’t imagine that this is the same guy I met three weeks ago…
Family
We came to Samos in January. I was shocked. Even after all these years and all the places we have already visited. We decided to cancel our flight and rented a house in Pythagorio to accommodate our six-person rainbow family. Muslim, Christian, Jehova, black and white were living peacefully together. Five of our family members are now on the mainland or have we seen back in Athens. One guy from Togo is still here. All are waiting…
We have been able to give them something that is more important than all money of the world. We love them, unconditional. They feel seen and loved…
Forbidden
And now we have been here again since two months. The first week we were arrested by the police after the camp was on fire, because I was talking with people who lived on the street at that time. That seems to be forbidden…
We lived in Agio Konstatinos for six weeks because we couldn’t rent a house here. We traveled by bus or let our boys come over and took them into the mountains.
Now that it is getting colder we have rent a very expensive house in Vaithy itself. We can cook for people and give them the feeling of warmth. And if the weather permits, we still take them into the mountains. Unbelievably energetic and healing, also for ourselves…
On the run
Although I write about refugees because I think it touches the core of our humanity, ultimately I write about you and me. We are all on the run. We are all been wrapped in the illusion of social engineering and prosperity, by media and other giants. We confuse prosperity with well-being.
It is up to us whether we want to continue with business as usual as we do. I wonder if we really choose to leave behind to our children a world where we violate human rights and worship money as our new God…
Our world
Our research starts with the question what life on earth really is about. Do we have the guts to think independently and do we dare to investigate whether the world is really as bad as the media is showing us. To be honest I don’t like to believe it…
The world as we experience it is a projection of our thinking. That which we see and experience is that which we are in our deepest essence. I approach people the way I want to be treated myself. With confidence and respect. I am seldom or never mistaken. When it happens, it keeps me awake…
Stagnation is deathly. Movement brings renewal and that is real Life. As far as I’m concerned, let them come. We need them. The doctors, the nurses, the dentists, the bus drivers and especially the people with their optimistic and refreshing ideas.
I start to prepare the crib. My hands are empty, my heart is open. I wish you a transforming Christmas…
What happened to us people that we beat each other up on the street. That we treat people like animals who desparetely leave their homeland and force them to live in circumstances even unworthy to animals…
Inhuman
Not only we lost the road, we have lost ourselves. It is a tough time, also for the refugee. They are virtually outlawed now Greece has tightened up the rules so inhumanely.
After all the squads and hotels are cleared, our Isaac from Nigeria, father of Conrad, was picked from the street while coming from his job and thrown into prison. Like hundreds with him. They just want to deport around 20.000 people…
Fear
There was a heavy fight in Samos town the week we arrived. Then the camp went on fire. Hundreds of people lost their tent and lived in fear on the street. We were amongst the people. I touched, listened to their stories and spread them via Facebook. The police arrested us. An Ngo accused us that we brought their policies in danger. I decided that listening and touching could not be punishable…
Training
As always we are surrounded by beautiful people. Couples from the Arab world with sometimes a fierce history. But mainly by men. Usually blacks. I decided to give training to men together with Giri. Thank God that I had an intens Africa training in Kenya! No matter how much I love those guys, making appointments is almost impossible…
Patience
We started in a huge mess. After almost two weeks I dare to say: It starts to look like something. I learned a lot. Especially patience. And they learned also something they say…
Caring
Anthony from Ghana: ‘Mom, before I met you I was just thinking to end my life. But now I want to live. Even if they deport me, I know that it is God’s will and I am going to make something good out of it…’
Toure from Togo has been terribly abused. He was a shy animal when we met him. He is flowering and has a beautiful inner world. He is sweet and caring and sings like a nightingale…
Singing
We live outside of Samos town and travel by bus. And by doing this we meet the true heart of the real Greek. We bring them into contact with our friends. Many appreciate that. They do not dare to show their sympathy openly because they are afraid of punishment.
One day a week we take a number of these lads into the mountains. We pay their travel expenses, their food etc. It is a party for all of us.
I feel at home among these beautiful guys. We dance spontaneously in the restaurant of Katharina at the summit. We sing their traditional songs. And then after hours of climbing and descending we come home and suddenly they are in the badroom where there is no door and all three are praying in our little place as if it always has been that way.
Shining with gratitude, we put them on the bus. I realize that I have become a better person thanks to them…
Education
I am confronting. Also in the course. We talk about vengeance, about homophilia, about traditions. About what is different and what connects us…
I feed them and let myself be fed. In the evening when we walk to the bus we chat with people. I embrace men and women and hug children. Those who are ignored by the locals enjoy this. Faces break open and a radiant smile is our reward…
Hero’s
Although I sympathize with them, I don’t see anyone as a victim. Wherever we are in life, no matter how bad it may be, and it cannot be much worse than here: You cannot always influence the outside world. But your inner world is your own making.
I feel a deep respect for those boys who manage to live their lives in these bizarre circumstances and still set an example for the outside world.
To say it in all simplicity: we can use a bunch of them in Europe and in the Netherlands…
Although Europe thought the refugee problem was under control and closed their eyes for pain and suffering, the situation is currently getting out of hand. A fire in Moria brought Lesbos in the news again. In the meantime, it became clear that the situation on Samos, where there is hardly any Ngo or support, more dire than anywhere else on the islands. You hardly hear anything about Athens and the mainland. For many who have less resilience than our friend Larabou they lose hope…
Brescia – Italy
We met him in July 2016 in Moria, this beauty from Egypt. It was love at first sight. He flew to Italy on a look-like passport and worked day and night in his brother’s shawarma tent in Turin. We visit him 4 times on route.
This time he is extra happy. He got his status. That means that after almost four years his family can come over soon. This week he starts a new job where he will earn a reasonable salary.
We spend a wonderful day together in and around the water of the beautiful lake of Iseo and fly the next day to Athens.
Athens
Our start in Athens is not a flying one. In the metro from airport to Omonia, Giri his wallet is stolen with driver’s license and debit card. To solve that, he has to go to the Netherlands…
Oasis
Our apartment in Omonia is an oasis in the middle of all the noise.
Larabou from Togo is our first guest. We met him last Christmas in the pouring rain for camp Moria and took him and two others home for diner. Like many Africans, he rebelled against the government. He was tortured and had to flee his country. Despite the fact that his heart is crying for his wife and children and he has to wait at least another year for his first interview, this optimist is a living example of how you shape your life under every circumstance. Now this landowner has a job as a cleaner in a hotel. He is a Nelson Mandela for the black community in Athens and since today he rents his own apartment from his own money…
Sharing
We cook for him, for Kondor, a member of our rainbow family from Samos and other friends. Like many single men, Kondor lives in a house with eleven others. They get 90 Euro a month from which they have to do everything themselves. They hang around waiting or fleeing into Europe in the hope that it will be better elsewhere. Most of them disappear in iligality or are deported.
Rainbow family
We have our first friend overnight from Kos. Our couple from Togo, now in an old military camp near Larisa, do not dare to travel the nearly 400 kilometers. This week Zura gave birth with a caesarean section of a son conceived in our rainbow house in Samos. If it had been a daughter they would have called her Yasmin.
Two of our other rainbow kids are now in Kos and Thessaloniki. They will come over for a few days next week…
Mormon
The whole world comes together in Athens. We meet many cultures on the street and in the shops. Being black is no longer a problem here…
We met Reza from Iran three years ago in Moria. Now he has his status. He is in love with a girl from Moldova and has become a Mormon. He earns his own money with small jobs and art and takes us to a refugee project.
I am not yet used to the amount of Turkish refugees who are currently crossing the sea. Really bizarre.
Oblivion
Hotel City Plaza in the Victoria district, where our Nigeria family lived for 2.5 years, has suddenly been cleared and locked.
It reminds us of the Old Hospital project in Ano Patisia where we brought the first Syrian families in 2016 when the camp in the port of Pireaus was evacuated. The dirty building was quickly transformed into a Syrian community. After three months, everything was cleared and locked.
That is now happening in several places in Athens during violent night raids, we hear. The residents have to leave their belongings behind. They are taken to remote camps, scattered here and there over the mainland of Greece and slowly but surely they disappear into oblivion…
Nigeria
Our family from Nigeria would love to see us, but they fear that this is impossible. They are temporarily housed in a village 1.5 hour drive from Athens.
Well the islands are one thing. But once in Athens all control is lost…
Poverty
Our extra clothing does not go to the refugees but to the Greeks who live here on the street…
It is always true art not to take action based on emotions but to stay centered in the boundless space of the heart…
Today they are on the run, tomorrow we may be the one…
Years ago, the registration officer in Lesbos asked me to speak for the European Parliament. I told him: ‘Listen, I am a peacemaker, not an activist.’ By writing on request my book: ‘One Love – One Tribe – Face behind the refugee’, I had to go through enormous depths. Now I do not have an excuse anymore, the time is ready to speak.
I lived for many years in Africa between the poor. Even if their lifestyle is different, they have something we lost: the power of trust in the unseen. Classifying them all as fortune hunters, we will only do if we never stood in their shoes.
Since four years, my partner and I spend lots of time between the refugees. We meet them, embrace them and let them know that they are welcome. Believe me: if we really take the time to look them into their eyes, we immediately start to realize that there is no difference between them and us. Never again, we will take the same decisions as we are taking now.
Because everybody is focusing on women and children, we focus particular on man. Those people we like to classify as terrorists, criminals and rapists. When they arrive, most of them are pure and innocent, no different from us. After treating them as we are doing, many of those beautiful souls get stuck somewhere in Europe and lose their hope.
A shame for Europe
The refuge-crisis is a shame for Europe. The Turkey deal, the way we push refugees back and let them drown before our eyes without even acting, is a shame for Europe, a shame for humanity. All the money we spend on Frontex, we can better spend to give our brothers and sisters a better life.
How can we speak about human rights and turn our back to all those suffering. How can we accept that thousands of those young beautiful souls are dying, while we mourn for years when it is one of our family members?
How can we sleep, while they are fighting for their lives? From behind our desks, we have already divided them in refugees and migrants and classified as real or unreal. How can we live with this?
The real slaves, the real losers are we, the privileged ones. We are not only closing our borders, we are even closing our hearts and by doing this we have degraded ourselves from human beings to human doings.
Our policy is as much divided as we are
Believe me, the refugee is not the problem, we are the problem. As long as we nourish the illusion that we are better than others, because of our religion, our position or our skin, we think we have the right to explore the world and to feed our boundless greediness, while we exclude others by building high walls and detention centers.
After 11th of September 2001, willingly or unwillingly, we have spread fear all over the planet. When we are fearful, we lose our power. We also lose our integrity and we are taking decisions we never should take.
I do not make a difference between migrants or refugees. All people who leave their homeland and take the risk to lose their lives, have a reason to come here.
Let us open our eyes and see how mother earth is reacting on our manipulation. Ultimately, we are destroying our selves. One day we will wake up realizing we cannot exclude anyone. We are One World – One family. We breathe the same air.
If we realize it or not, we are all moving in the same direction. Even if we think we are more privileged than others, we will all end up in the grave. Be honest, if we look back at the end of our lives, can we be proud on the way we have exploited our earth and its inhabitants, on the legacy we leave for our children and grandchildren? I do not believe this!
Life on earth is beautiful because of her differentiation. If we like it or not, the world has to mingle. When we are living our true nature, without fear and with an open heart, we will honor all life and never destroy anything or kill anybody. Then we unfold our full potential and do not take more then we really need. Then we know there is abundance for all of us.
I challenge you to read my book. It is a touching but beautiful book about beautiful people…
Before we send them back, let us go there and life with them for a while. Then we start to realize that no solutions invented by westerners behind their desks will work there, because they are not living and controlling their life the way we are doing. If we like it or not we need each other. How more we like to control others, the more we will lose control and nature will take over. Deep inside of our heart, we know this…
I wish you and every living being on this beautiful planet, a long and an abundant life,
Yasmin Verschure – The Netherlands
Our appointment for this week was cancelled because of renovation. Today I got permission to sent a box of 20 books and letters to Sophie in ‘t Veld and her secetary Sylvia Heerbaart. They will divide them…
To give ourselves an identity in this physical world, we must first completely forget who we are…
To be better
We try to distinguish ourselves by raising ourselves above others. This can be material: by having a better position, a bigger house, or we consider ourselves ‘better’ or more spiritual.
All reasons to distinct ourselves from others who in our eyes are ‘less’. These can be the ‘rich’, the ‘terrorists’, the ‘immoral priests’, the ‘black people’. In short, everything we project on the outside world, because we do not dare to face it inside ourselves…
Identification with and attachment to matter is the cause of all suffering…
One day our inner eyes will open and we realize that there is no one better or less than we are. Our inner journey has begun. We are on the way to real peace, freedom and authenticity. We embrace our pain as well as our joy. No longer we are attached to pain or joy and we judge less. We become aware of unity. Our little self disappears and makes way for ‘we’.
I let go – I let God, I said after the big release…
As a rock in the surf
Much against the will of my practitioners I went, after my divorce and a period of serious illness, to India and Nepal for a seven-month initiation journey. I was looking for a teacher, and found him in the person of Father Bedegriffiths: his simplicity. I did my first 10-day Vipassana in Bodhnath. I stood like a rock in the surf and I survived…
Every time we push our limits, we become more whole in all dimensions…
The land of the living
Long ago, Giri and I came back from our world trip. Again, I was seriously ill and underwent various operations. On top off it, I got Lyme disease. I was no more and no less than a wreck. At that time I stepped into a four-dimensional consciousness for 14 days, flew to Egypt on my own, and while I before barely could walk, effortlessly I climbed the Pyramids…
That same year I did the Living on Light process without any supervision. It brought me not only back into the land of the living; it also brought me a wholeness and lightness that no one could imagine…
In the end, it is not about eating or not eating. It is our thoughts and what we bring into the world through our actions, our words, and through the social media…
During my long illness, nature became my most important teacher. Together with the silence, it became a source of inner wisdom, a coming home, a gateway that pointed to heaven…
Traveling again
After working many times in the Antilles, where I met and initiated beautiful people, I went on a journey around the world again. This time Giri wanted to come with me. We left all our certainties behind and started our journey empty-handed and without a fixed program. Everywhere people recognized my energy. It became a blessed journey full of miracles and unprecedented possibilities. Unplanned we earned enough to live on; we could even support various projects.
From the moment I let go my control and surrendered myself to the source of all creation, life became a miracle…
Retreat
Again, I lock myself in my small house and celebrate Easter by being in silence and fasting. I walk barefoot and let the sun warm up my naked body. As the days are getting on, I become increasingly quiet inside and all physical pains disappear. I see and feel myself reflected in everything that grows and blooms in my beautiful garden…
The ultimate truth lays always in the middle. To find your true nature, you must let go completely your searching…
Although there is sometimes a desire for a different environment where my vision can be heard and embraced, there is nothing wrong with this place. It is been transformed into an oasis of wholeness where many weary travelers can indulge on the Source…
In a far past
‘I was not aware. I identified myself with my little separate ‘me’ and did not realize that all pain, all suffering, all loneliness was nothing more and nothing less than a blessing from the Supreme to polish myself and bring me back to my true nature, so I could surrender to the flow of true life to be of service to the world…’
Every person must fulfill his own duty and walk his own path. Too much support keeps the other person away from finding his own unique path…
Who am I
I am less tempted to answer questions that I do not know the answer of – for you. Answers block the inquiring mind. Questions keep us alive and creative. The innocent child is not concerned with yesterday or tomorrow, but is always present in the eternal now. How wonderful it would be if all of us, including science and politicians, dared to say, ‘I do not know’. When we dared to be vulnerable and sincere without being afraid of losing our face, the universe would immediately open itself to a never-ending stream of creative possibilities…
My knowledge and my wisdom flows in a clear, relentless stream and feeds everyone who is thirsty…
Awareness
You will not find any security in matter, religion, caste, tradition or anywhere else. Every way, every method is nothing more and nothing less as a steppingstone, but not the true thing. Enjoy all that is and know that there is nothing what can be achieved. Every flower, every animal, every person comes to full bloom at the right time…
Our assignment
We have come to earth to polish our Self so we can serve others. Everyone has his or her own mission in life that reveals itself at the time we no longer are concerned about the goal, but focus on the road. My common thread was and is the person on the sideline; the sick person, the prisoner, the sentenced to death, the beach boys in Kenya and last but not least the refugee…
Do not ask me why. I have no answer. I am only the witness of my own actions. My mission became more or less clear by being on the road without expectations and without a predetermined goal. I was allowed to bring consciousness on places where people are open to it and to give the refugee a face, literally against all oppression.
For the refugee who wakes up, his journey is just as much an initiation journey as mine…
Human being
By connecting, like in Samos where we lived together with our rainbow children with their traumatic backgrounds, from different religions, nationalities and cultures, not only something happened to me, also their inner horizons broadened. The power and light that they emit has an effect on their environment. Every drop will become an ocean…
‘I met an angel. She taught me who I Am…’
And so we build a new world in which ultimately every pearl will have its own place. Of course, we give them food, drinks, a hot shower and all the material things they need at that moment: a football, new shoes, a phone, money for the ‘employment agency’ so they can work on an island. We even pay school fees for their children in their home country…
By seeing refugees as victims, we make them with the best intentions dependent and greedy. What they really ask for is what every person is asking for: to be seen and be embraced as a fellow human being.
Ramadan
Just before Ramadan, we visited three of our first refugee families who, after all those years, are allowed to build a new life in Germany. They went through deep processes of pain and suffering. The old is no longer there, the new life begins to unfold…
Should they know how privileged they are, while thousands of refugees never get the possibility to build a new life because they are not from Syria or Eritrea. Therefore, they are not welcome anywhere in Europe…
Gateway to heaven
You are an innovator and people simply do not like innovation…
My ‘being’ in Kenya served no other purpose than my ‘being’ with the refugee or with you. Every encounter and every action from the heart opens a gateway to heaven.
I do not feel sorry but compassion. Not just for the refugee but also for all who bring this flow into the world by supplying weapons, trading people like slaves, building walls and closing borders. In my opinion, they are the true refugees, the true victims…
Chickens without head
The refugee disrupts the illusion of a manageable society and, in my opinion, is a symbol for the process of a total revolution in which the entire world finds itself. This raises hidden fears. Fears, which are gratefully nourished by the media…
Heaven and Hell exist exclusively in the imagination and the world is a perfect projection of it…
My book ‘One Love – One tribe’ is a testimony of love and wholeness and no more and no less than a tool with which I may touch people. My ‘being’ opens inner doors beyond pain and suffering, beyond fear of the unknown…
‘Wow what a spirit! You are an example to each of us. Not only that, you also show us how we can look at a refugee on a different way…’
Without connection to the Source, we act like chickens without head. We miss the divine sparkle on the inside that allows us to create and live as gods in harmony and connection with our true nature. We do not only live in a time that requires a revolution; more than ever we have the opportunity to go into a transition. I choose for the last…
Adversity and challenges polish us to find our true nature…
The feeding mother
Every form in creation is focused on service and knows instinctively that it must give its life in order to sustain another…
Everything that feeds our life comes from Mother Earth. Although she gives unconditionally of her abundance, in our ignorance/greed we have forgotten who we are and who she is.
By fully connecting with her, I no longer have to hide my dark side or to project it onto others. This is my strength. In any way, I do not feel better than anyone else. Also I am in no way less than anyone else.
The poor girl has become a princess. She is kissed awake by a prince named love and she shines like the sun…
True nature
Awareness is the basis. Everything is energy and everything is connected to everything. Every human being who is aware of his true nature, can no longer see himself as being separated from others. After our awakening, we automatically take care of ourselves and our environment.
Fanaticism and spreading our opinion and emotions through social media, is the true poison and the curse of our time…
From victim to creator
Every person is responsible for her own well-being. We cannot change the circumstances, but we can decide how we want to deal with those circumstances…
More or less forced by the circumstances, I have walked my wayward way all my life. If I had listened to my therapist in the past, I certainly would not have gone to India and my life would have taken a completely different turn.
By pushing my boundaries and crossing the boundaries between life and death several times, I became more complete at every level.
I really dare to say that we are the creators of our own reality…
Om Shanti, Yasmin
My books
My first seven books are also available in English as E-book. My latest book ‘One Love – One Tribe’ – is a testimony of true life in which suffering and love are inevitable ingredients to polish ourselves to wholeness. It is in print and as E-book.
Since we banished God from our lives, matter has become the new God. Everything, really everything, is expressed in practical use and money. By focusing on the material need of the refugee and immediately turning this into action, we do not have to feel what the real problem is: that we closed our hearts and our borders because we are afraid to face our own fears…
What I keep trying to show is that everything has two sides. That there is no light without darkness and that the one is by definition not better than the other…
Transformation
No longer I see myself as a victim and I do not want to see any person as such. Nobody knows the blueprint of the other…
There is a certain reason why people are on the run. I have seen people undergoing tremendous transformations here in Greece and in similar situations. These are usually the few who distanced themselves from the group and stayed with their own lesson. The mass lingers in herd-behavior. They slowly but surely sink deeper into matter or into the world of the unconscious. You can also see that in ‘normal life’. Whatever that may be…
Although it is nothing more than human to want to help people, it is of great importance to face our motivation behind it…
Rescue
I am not here in Lesbos to save people. On the contrary. I am convinced that nothing or nobody needs to be saved…
We are all here on earth to find the way back to our true Self…
Pain is a part of breaking the scale that unlocks our insights, according to Kahlil Gibran. I fully agree with that…
Suffering
It does not testify from love for our children to take away their learning processes by kneading them to the success image that we would like to see in them. Even if it means that they will suffer less…
Compassion
It is human and testifies of compassion that we want to help people in need. However, it shows a lack of insight when we see refugees only as victims. In this way we place ourselves above them and make them dependent from us. Unconsciously we may be afraid that we will lose our job, paid or unpaid. Perhaps our feeling of security, safety or our need to be indispensable is at stake…
In my opinion, true love means that we do not cling to anything and do not hold on anything or anyone, but make us superfluous as soon as possible…
Support
According to me, we may transfer a place as Kara Tepe so soon as possible to the refugees themselves. Of course there is minimal support during the transfer. Devote people to the deviant European rules and let them, by trial and error, build up their own lives as long as they have to life here…
We too learn only through the mistakes we make and in this way at least we give the refugee their dignity back...
Borders
That is my message. If I have already one. I do not feel like playing the game that everything is wrong here in camp Moria. By now we know those images and we repeat them again and again. I prefer to see how we can improve the situation. How we can eliminate our own borders so that there will be a time that no borders are needed…
Embrace
I am here because I want to open my heart even more so that I can embrace the whole world. In short, I am here because I want to be here. Because the real life takes place here without all the external frills where many of us hide behind, just not having to feel how much we have lost ourselves in a world of externalities…
Base
When you have to leave everything behind, even for certain men their wife and children, you fall back on your naked base. There is no longer something to hide yourself behind and your true face is showing up…
And that true face is so beautiful and authentic that again and again I am in extasy. Like a child…
Breath
And that is why I am here and tomorrow maybe somewhere else. Because I do not belong anywhere and therefore I have nothing to gain or to lose. I connect with pain and joy, with love and sorrow. I breathe in and breathe out and let go again. I am like a child and I am blown away by the wind…
I wish every living being a year in which pain and joy both will be in a natural rhythm…
At the end, everything is about Love. How we point that Love is not important as long we realize that separation does not exist in God’s dictionary…
Miracle
There are times when everything effortlessly flows through us. There are also times we cannot be move ahead. We get sick, we feel abandoned from God and everything. In short, nothing flows out our hands and our hearts. I think we all recognize this. When we can embrace also those periods in our life without judgment, life becomes a miracle. We become one with our true nature…
Center
Connected with All That Is, without belonging to anything, without possessing or being possesed, I walk my path. The Heart of the Universe lives, moves and beats inside of me. We create our world of beauty and decay from this center. Each of us is part of ALL.
Means
The book ‘One Love – One Tribe’ seems more and more a Love book. It is like a seed that will bear fruit at the right time. True change never occurs at the top, but always at the base. When the field has modified, miracles will happen. Someone is touched, something is opening up and suddenly there is a network of loving souls who carry the book into the flow.
The refugee is only a means to a goal. At the end it is not about Muslims or Christians. It is about you and me. Are we willing – am I willing to break through my own borders, to give up my privileged position and to share my abundance with All…
The word
Growth only occurs through headwinds and demands the utmost confidence. You do not see it when you are in the middle of the storm. Looking back at this period, I feel a deep gratitude. My horizon has broadened; my freedom and space even more limitless. My feet are firmly rooted in Mother Earth. In short, the word has become incarnate.
Love is not sweet
Commiseration is patronizing and humiliating. Compassion comes out of is mutual respect, daring to feel, standing next to someone and connecting yourself from heart to heart.
Wake up
In essence, I love everyone. When others pollute my world, I will lovingly request them to leave my home. Whether that is my simple rental home or my country.
In this world of forms, we need them: the Trump’s, the terrorists, the politicians, the pharmaceutical industry, the refugees, our partners, parents, caretakers and above all our children. They keep us awake and show us the way inside. Do we dare to let go our old conditioning and to stay for our own truth, even if the whole world is against us. In short, do we choose the safety of the herd, the temporary material path of fear and manufacturability, or dare we to distinguish ourselves and do we choose the path of authenticity, soul connection and unconditional love…
Apparently, the book ‘One Love – One Tribe’ is about refugees. However, on the first place it is about borders. We westerners, we think we can draw borders to exclude others. Borders by which many criminal and non-criminal organizations earn lots of money. Borders that make those smugglers recruit people by promising them golden mountains when they leave their homeland and go to the Promised Land. Smugglers who do not flinch by asking people huge amounts of money. Money raised by family and sales of family property. Borders that make that innocent people drown in the sea. That people, out of pure despair, sell their organs for almost nothing, which are been resold for big money to rich clients by doctors who do not take it so seriously with ethics. That people like you and me are sold as slaves to rich landlords or ending up in prostitution. Deported, murdered or slowly but surely disappearing into oblivion.
Greed creates separateness and raises borders
In short, all of this is about borders. We still think we can possess the earth. We still think we have the right to explore and to plunder the world. To travel unlimited while we force others to stay inside their borders.
We have forgotten that in the past we were all migrants. In times of scarcity, we would try our luck elsewhere to build up a new life, a new home for ourselves and for our children…
The Turkey deal
We want the world to believe that we have succeeded. That we can exchange lives for money. That the Turkey deal is working. We do not dare to feel. We do not understand that as long we draw borders, others will discover the loopholes. Those criminal organizations will continue to earn money on this and smugglers will not stop recruiting. That the routes become more and more dangerous and more and more people will die. That nor only Athens but also Europe is getting full of illegal refugees. In short, closing the borders will disrupt Europe. We can continue to close our eyes. We can blame our politicians. Or we can choose to wake up and to face our fear. By opening our hearts, we eliminate our inner borders. That is the beginning of real change. The world belongs to everyone…
Everything is connected with everything
Whether we take the exploitation and poisoning of the earth, the fight against age-old natural healing, the pharmaceutical industry, compulsory vaccination, human trafficking, child pornography, sex industry, drug industry, food industry, radiation, the Monsanto scandal or the shelves in stores bought on forehand by wholesalers. It is all about the same thing: it is all about misusing power.
Wake-up call
Real change always starts at the bottom. Do we dare to let go the role of victim. Do we dare to stand up and to take the responsibility for our own life, our own well-being? Do we dare to look honestly in the mirror where we have our share and where we are fooling ourselves, while we continue to point our finger at others? Do we dare to see were we elevate ourselves above others because we have more property, a better status, or we believe that we are the enlightened one?
Our Mother
In my opinion, enlightenment does not mean that we live with our heads in the clouds without caring for the earth. Enlightenment means to stay in the middle. To put our feet on our earthly mother and being connected with All that Lives. To love and to cherish the earth, our mother, as we usually do with our own mothers. Where it is in our power not to pollute or to exploit her. Neither her residents. In short, do we have the courage to descend in our inner world? To look ourselves in the eyes, honestly and sincerely. To decide where we want to stay in life, regardless the opinion of others.
Do not worry
Life is trial and error. That is the only way we learn our lessons. He who makes no mistakes does not live. Be like a child. Fall and get up again. Continue your journey happily, without judgment. In spiritual sense, this world may be an illusion. As long as we live in it, we better stop complaining and contribute our bit. The earth is our nurturing mother. Surrender to her brings heaven to the earth: we are coming home. Deep inside we wish every living being a loving, evolutionary and educational existence. Not only ourselves and our children, but all children and all adults. Right?
‘Love is All that Is’ I love myself – so I love you Yasmin
I meet Atta from Ghana on the street. I am shocked by his desperation. Pull him off the sidewalk. I have to take care of him. Atta is half of a twin. His brother died at birth. He is now twenty. Four years ago his father was murdered in front of his elder brother Solomon. Solomon did not escape damage-free. He is missing three fingertips, his front teeth and has a shattered shoulder. Two years later Mother died of grief. The police locked up the murderer, a brother of their father. They advised the boys to flee. If uncle is released he will not rest until he has killed them…
We take the boys into the mountains. They feel like an extension of my being. They are our first guests at the table of our new house, receive a shower and a Reiki treatment. Joyful we play games. But above all we support them in their being. We teach them to be proud of their origin, even though Solomon cannot read and write.
I approach people the way I want to be treated myself. With confidence and respect. I am seldom or never mistaken. When it happens, it keeps me awake…
Anthony from Ghana: ‘Mom, before I met you I was just thinking to end my life. But now I want to live. Even if they deport me, I know that it is God’s will and I am going to make something good out of it…’
Although I sympathize with them, I don’t see anyone as a victim. Wherever we are in life, no matter how bad it may be, and it cannot be much worse than here: You cannot always influence the outside world. But your inner world is your own making.
