When things start to get complicated again. When an indefinable restlessness takes hold of me – a malaise for which I don’t seem to have any explanation at first – then it has crept in again and is trying to cast its spell over me: The great game of the material mind society.
The discomfort grew so slowly that I didn’t notice it at first. Then, when it was there, I considered it normal for a while. That’s how secretly it crept in.
It is the rules of the game that force us to act in ways that are contrary to our nature. It is the constraints resulting from these rules that each move we make creates and which again demand our renewed action defined by the rules of the game.
Man is always driven in one way or another. He never has the overview and gets from one necessity to act into the next. Profession, private life, society: all have their own rules and constraints in infinite number. He rushes through a maze, turning corner after corner, unable to stop. Let alone reach the exit and finally be able to rest. Man forgets himself and thinks that this state is normal. That it has to be that way because that is the way it is. He is so involved in the game that he thinks this state is the natural order. From birth up to his exhausted death.
And when it finally strikes me, this indefinable malaise that seems to be a deep underlying feeling in our society, I look at our dog Pia. My teacher, who came from freedom and was allowed to grow up without the influence of human disturbance. A creature full of outer shyness and inner strength.
Then I look at her as she lies on her blanket in deep rest. The breath is slow and deep. Immersion. Meditation. Being here and now in the center. Eyes closed. In complete peace deeply, oh, so deeply immersed in spheres that lie beyond our hurried world. Then I look at them and realize again the little we actually need. Yes, the little that we actually deep within us even want.
We do have food. There is no lack of it. We are also warm. That’s not the problem. – Or is it? How high is the price we have to pay for food and warmth? The game imposes a high price on us: It demands the abandonment of our nature. – – And then I know again. Then I recognize the source of the permanent discomfort: the game does not love us. The game does not give us security. It does not give us a calm harbor to which we can take refuge in the storm. The game is the storm! There are no harbors in its world to which one could flee from it!
I look at Pia. I know that she can only rest like this because food and warmth have been joined by love and security. I know that she would leave if the storm began to reign in her world. The uneasiness that would creep up on her then could never seem normal to her.