True Life Manifesto
Veit Lindau
Life Trust Company, www.lifetrust.info
Editors: Cornelia Linder, Andrea Lindau
Druckerei & Verlag Steinmeier GmbH & Co. KG
Translation: Sten Linnander, Translation Handling Services
Photo: Frank Oberle
eISBN: 978-3-943478-06-8
It sometimes seems easier
to long for death
than to truly get involved in life.
Not everyone who is born
has decided to live.
It is the most radical choice
that you can and must make.
Everything and everyone around you
is waiting for your answer.
You are dying.
Begin to live.
I am strolling through your dreams.
I am walking through the streets of your city.
I am watching you through the eyes of each of the people you meet.
I leave little hidden signs of my longing in every book you read.
The snowflakes in winter melting gently on your eyelashes are one of my attempts to kiss you awake. I touch your skin gently with the first warm spring breeze. With your every breath I caress you tenderly from within.
Every second of your existence I stand trembling in front of the house of your soul and call out to you urgently. I knock on your door in a thousand different ways — loudly, like the cry of an enraged child, and quietly, like the eternity of the Universe. I pull at you, wild and demanding, only to embrace you gently the next moment.
I have no choice. I will leave no stone unturned until you open up to me, widely and unconditionally — until you give me everything you have and what you are.
Where are you?
I need you.
I want you.
Your life
During the last 15 years I have had the privilege of working very closely and honestly with thousands of people. The most surprising insight this gave me was:
Every one of them always knew (in actual fact) what was important and right for them.
What we sometimes lack is the courage to spit out the answers that others have spoon-fed us and follow the essential questions until we reach the solid ground of clarity that is our very own.
You will only find the truth of your life within yourself.
I want to share my personal perspective with you, to get your view of life to vibrate. I am not a hyper- precise theoretician. My words describe the experiences of a simple person. Some things I have consciously formulated gently and others provocatively.
You may find that some things are good but others not. If you want, neither agree with nor reject what I’m saying, but keep on going. Allow the questions to linger within you. It would help if you would speak to those who are most important to you about your reflections.
Open yourself up to this book like an intense conversation with your best friend. Then put it aside, forget about me and my words, and go out and unfold your own myth.
Read it through in one go, backwards, in no order at all, again and again. As you like it. I’m sure you will open it up to the relevant page at the right moment.
Don’t be surprised. I have written the first two parts of the book — the Wake-up Call and the Manifesto — in the “we” form, from the point of view of the Rebels of Spirit. On one hand, I want to sensitize you to the fact that you are not alone with your existential questions. There are many brave, awake people out there who, just like you, either undercover or publicly, take a stand for truth and against being asleep, for love and against fear, every day anew.
On the other hand, with the Rebels of Spirit I wish to honor and pass on the legacies of all those who have so far fired me up, inspired and challenged me. I deliberately refrain from mentioning the heroes of my life by name, for then I would not do justice to the innumerable, spontaneous, everyday encounters that kiss my soul ever more awake through a question or a gesture.
Rebels of Spirit is my synonym
for the torchbearers of human consciousness.
In the hope
that you feel spoken to at the depth of your being…
This is our uninhibited declaration of love
to the good, the true and the beautiful in people.
In a world like ours, it is easier to become skeptical or even cynical,
instead of keeping one’s heart open — even if it breaks.
Please do not confuse us with naïve optimists.
Our confidence is not based on
anxious hope or blind faith.
Our trust is a choice.
It is the boldest and most intelligent choice
we are capable of.
Our call is a declaration of love to life
and a wake-up call for the rebel
who lies dormant in every person.
It is our contribution to the unleashing of your power.
Nothing is too good to be true.
You want to know who we are?
Let our words accompany you
in your wild, silent heart.
This is where you will find us.
The Rebels of Spirit
Tax official, salesperson, millionaire, teacher, housewife, retiree, unemployed, student…
It doesn’t matter what you are doing. It doesn’t matter how old you are.
It doesn’t matter how long you have been asleep.
The Rebel of Spirit is alive in you, too. He is the envoy of your being. He is the messenger of Infinity. He is the still unborn spark of a fire that will burn everything away now standing between you and your true greatness. He is the timeless voice within you who already in your childhood knew that your life is a dream. He is the silent cry of a powerful longing — the longing to wake up more and more alive.
This rebel in you experiences an irrepressible joy at thoughts that have never been thought and territories on which one has never set foot. He is your best friend, your most persistent admonisher and most faithful guardian; and yet you sometimes hate him, for he destroys everything you cling to, again and again. But it is only because he takes away your most beloved crutches that you can recognize how great you truly are.
This book is written for the rebel in you — for the power that will never be satisfied with less than a life of freedom. We are happy that we have finally found you.
Wake up.
“Far better it is to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the grey twilight
that knows not victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Ready to wake up?
Here, first, is the bitter pill…
Have you ever read a so-called conspiracy book? About the Illuminati, evil bank managers or extraterrestrials who want to achieve world domination?
No matter how twisted or paranoid such concepts may be,
they are nothing compared to the plot we wish to expose.
There is in our society, in fact, a considerably more powerful conspiracy, and it is high time to expose it. This will not be easy, for it has adopted a friendly and benevolent face.
It is supported, financed and perpetuated by most people. With its nice and insidious packaging, it is infiltrating our nuclear families, bars, schools and politics. It influences all areas of our lives — how we think, communicate, act and feel. It is omnipresent, so that most people see it as something normal and defend it bitterly.
Once a pattern of behavior has been accepted as a collective norm, it is no longer questioned. It fuses with the background of the culture to the point where it doesn’t attract attention any more.
This conspiracy concerns us all. We must expose it! We must rebel peacefully. Otherwise, we will not get out of the mess that we have created on this planet. Do you sense what it is about?
We denounce the conspiracy of mediocrity.
Please read the following words carefully: Mediocrity should not be confused with the often quoted, healthy middle ground or natural humility. Mediocrity is the inculcated limitation of the human mind to think only within specified boundaries.
Mediocrity is the most powerful prison because it is invisible and it consists of petty-minded, fearful, limiting thoughts that have been repeated thousands of times.
Its walls, which have been built of mental fear, stop you from fathoming the possibilities of your existence. Its guardians — old, tough convictions about how things are and how they are supposed to be — demand that you be satisfied with what is known, even when the unsettled heart of your world soul almost suffocates in the putrid smell of these false limitations.
A mind that is infected by mediocrity stops your thinking from being creative, free, bold, magnificent, unusual, strange and again and again surprising, even to you.
A mind that is befallen by mediocrity works like the stomach of a cow. It swallows the thoughts that have been predigested by society, parents, teachers or gurus. It ruminates upon them, regurgitates them and passes them on to the next generation.
Do not be fooled by the packaging of the thoughts. Perhaps the grandparents have packaged them in a Catholic way, the parents in a capitalistic way and the child now esoterically. The packaging is different, but are the contents really new?
If your mind is mediocre, it will convince you to avoid adventure and instead play it safe. You only pretend to participate in life. In reality you remain in a limited comfort zone surrounded by a warm fart. You languish listlessly, for there is no supply of mental fresh air. The boundaries of your cave clearly show who you are, what you can do and what you can achieve. You disregard all other possibilities that penetrate into your ghetto from “outside,” or else you fight them or ridicule them.
As an adherent of mediocrity, you systematically avoid setting precise, exciting goals for yourself, and you only have a vague idea of your present and future.
Mediocrity conspirators are obsessively occupied with the lives of other people, for their own lives are boring and bleak. They are addicted to judging other people, for they have to project outward the parts of their own lives they are not living so as not to be suffocated by them.
They play the part of the victim passionately and look for someone to give them direction. They can then admire them, and if things go wrong, condemn them.
Their lives run in repetitive loops, for every deviation from the routine is an unnecessary risk. Therefore they have a hard time bringing things to conclusion and like to postpone their plans. Incomplete loops are an indirect trick to block one’s own further development.
Those who are infected by mediocrity use relationships to hide and mutually keep each other small. They like to play “The blind lead the lame in circles.” They support the addictions of their fellow men, either consciously or subconsciously, for that gives them control and stagnation.
They are terribly afraid of change. They do not swim in the middle of the river, but cling to the banks. Every crisis is seen as a threat.
They use words like provisions for old age, zero growth,” and “cyclical recovery” to convince themselves they live in a safe, unshakable world. They use concepts like modesty and reason to disguise their cowardice when it comes to reaching for what they want.
They are afraid of making mistakes, being visible and being rejected. They avoid making an effort and fear disappointment.
They would rather forego ecstasy if it helps them to avoid intense pain.
They suffer from low self-esteem, for they do not know who they are. They have never tasted the storm of a true challenge; they could therefore never prove they have real balls in their pants. (By the way, that is not a typical macho comment. Women have substantially more cojones than men during most of their lives.)
They fear chaos and hate paradoxes. Chaos makes them feel like they were never really in control. Every paradox in life reminds them that their heads have no admission into the mystery. No matter how much they try, the Universe does not allow them to put it in little boxes and freeze it.
Although they have never trusted themselves to strive for excellence, they judge everyone who at least tries. Colorful figures, daring visions, loud laughter, snooty Americans, chaotic Italians, lust and sex, wild and courageous acts … all these things push their buttons and rattle the cages of their smug peace.
Their envy eats away at them, but they hide it behind “competent” judgments and well-meaning advice. Secretly, they gloat if someone takes flight and then crashes.
It becomes especially disastrous when mediocrity is combined with religious or esoteric dogma, for now God or some other absolute truth is misused to justify their own fears of life.
Since the followers of mediocrity have never really tried to find out who they are, they are afraid of themselves and ultimately of everything unknown.
They do not really live; instead, they are waiting for the end. Since they carry a lot of unfulfilled life within them, they are afraid of death, for then, at the end, they will have to leave the small island of security they have cut out for themselves.
Does all this sound depressing to you? Or are you already totally pissed at us?
Perhaps you wonder why you put up with reading this, for it probably applies to you, too.
Who among us is not still cultivating
an enclave of small-mindedness in his life?
It can be painful to recognize oneself, even in part, in this description; and it can make you angry or sad. It could tempt you once again to focus on others rather than on yourself, on those who have written this or on others in whom you see so much more mediocrity than in yourself.
Concentrate on yourself.
Keep taking it personally.
Life has entrusted you with only one garden, and that is your mind. You are the gardener. Here in this garden you sow the seeds, care for the plants and daily harvest the fruits.
Narrow-minded thoughts do not produce juicy cherries, but rather small, hard, and frustratingly bland-tasting beans.
Ideas proliferate like weeds if they fall on fertile soil. Think about how a single, inconspicuous, limiting belief about yourself or your life, which was once left unattended in your garden a long time ago, was watered as time went by through repetition, grew roots, and now permeates the soil of your everyday life. Its branches reach out into all areas of your life and ultimately leave behind bitter fruits everywhere.
We have lost sight of the connection between our thinking and the circumstances of our lives. We have forgotten who the gardener is. We look at a world we do not like and we fight it. But as long as the one who conceived of the world continues to sow small-mindedness each and every day, unshaken and unrecognized, nothing will change.
So it is good to be shaken, even to the point of nausea.
To think in a small and anxious way is no trifle; it is the tragic source of a small and anxious world. As long as we do not recognize this connection, we are wasting our creative potential in a pitiful experiment.
Many people die long before they breathe their last breath.
When we stop thinking critically and reaching for the stars…
When we accept the mental orbits of today as the be all and end all of our possibilities…
When we are no longer willing to shake the walls of our own ideas…
then the spark of eternity dies within us.
Of course old habits also call for our compassion, our understanding. But to shake them in their foundations requires the protest of your inner rebel.
No, I am not prepared to accept the predetermined boundaries between “possible” and “impossible!”
No, I am not prepared to never again reach for the stars out of fear of being disappointed or making mistakes!
No, I am not prepared to relinquish my right to expand my mind into infinity!
No, I am not prepared,
to betray beauty, truth, goodness and what is possible
for cynicism, resignation and a strait-laced sense of propriety!
No, I am not prepared to let my ability
to dream of a better today fall asleep.
No, I am not prepared to give up even a single one of my magnificent, crazy, bold, delightful, thrilling, laughing ideas that blows all boundaries to smithereens.
For each of my ideas is a seed
My life is the garden and I am the gardener.
I was enslaved. I was my own prison guard.
I created the darkness of my fear myself.
Now I am awakening and rebelling.
Where and how do you still experience yourself as being asleep?
What would it mean
if you allowed yourself to wake up?
The good news…
From the beginning of time there has been an underground movement — the Rebellion of the Spirit.
We have seen through the essence of the matrix. We know the power of the dream and of rebelling. We live in the knowledge of the miracle of the awakened mind. Each and every day we see the opportunity for yet another adventure, another crossing of borders.
Some of us do this quietly, in secrecy. Others are spoken about centuries later as being visionaries, crazies and prophets. Miracles are not measured by exterior size or volume.
Our manifesto is our constantly maturing declaration of love to life. It is our active act of devotion to the mystery. It is also a wake-up call for all Rebels of Spirit out there.
If you feel as if we are speaking to you…
We love you and respect you.
We are happy that we have finally met.
Trust the calling in you.
Remember your promise.
Wake up!
It is thrilling to say it. Try it…
“I want everything from life.”
And then add…
“And I am prepared to give everything.”
TRUE LIFE MANIFESTO
This is our manifesto.
Human being, why are you alive,
if not to want everything and give everything?
We know we can go to sleep.
We know what it feels like
to betray ourselves and forget our mission.
This is our manifesto.
It is our guiding principle.
Our beacon.
Our peaceful battle cry.
Our brazen wish list.
Our quiet capitulation.
Our project plan for eternity
and our stocktaking for this moment in time.
Our declaration of love to the mystery.