Meditation on Ukraine

written by Heinz Grill on 8^th April 2022

As a way of contributing to the world, someone who is practising spirituality and involved in a spiritual training can implement thoughts and actions directly or, by contrast, indirectly.

The work of meditation, which has its goal not only on the level of personal relaxation and in calming ones own nerves, which is not accompanied by meditation music or guided affirmations, which, in a nutshell, does not strive for personal but rather for an overarching, greater achievement, as a rule leads to a growth in the quality of human relationships. If individuals were only to meditate for themselves, for their well-being and their own harmony, they would remain in their personal, known perceptions, and although they may perhaps notice some bodily feelings of an as yet undiscovered nature, their consciousness would still not open itself for an expanded dimension that goes towards a whole. Meditation therefore needs us to transcend our limits and go beyond that which is known and beyond our own personal bodily world of feelings, and directs itself to a next possible idea, or to an ideal that is to be thought and shaped. Through the addition of an object of observation, or of a content that can be mentally grasped, it becomes graphic meditation.¹⁾ A number of forms of meditation, like for example vipasana or also Zen meditation, seek a kind of inner emptying, and because of this they tend not to be graphic forms of meditation. When a specific object moves into the centre of concentration, the meditation acquires a graphic character. A certain receding of emotions and unrest of the mind, in the sense of a growing calm, is likewise significant for graphic meditation. Basically, the body and ones own well-being must not take on any great, and above all any distracting or even inhibiting, significance.

Many people ask what or what kind of help they can give in the conflict with Ukraine. Now a direct kind of help could be offered by supporting people in need of help in a material or social way, or – and this is a state which corresponds more to meditation – in a focused way thoughts can be thought, and nurtured as a meditation, for the future into which the country could find itself.

The Foreign Minster of China, Wang Yi, said “Ukraine should be a bridge linking East and West and should not be a Frontline for major power competition.”²⁾ See the speech of the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference on 19.2.2022 This vision, so nobly expressed, lies in the future. Who is thinking it? Who is creating it? Who is promoting it from outside, indirectly, through their wisdom filled wishes for peace? Is it not a task of meditation to rethink a country that finds itself in a state of crisis, and to promote it indirectly from outside with etheric forces of thought, so that a globally integrated and peaceful position comes towards it?

The task of thinking this country practically and pictorially as a mediating country requires first of all that we imagine the value and significance of independence as a human and ideal social necessity. The independence of a state is essential for peace and for its appropriate position within a global whole. For these reasons, even if this country displays a certain division of interest – naturally without walls – we must think of it as two nations which nevertheless live in peaceful agreement.

Just as every individual citizen wishes for the greatest possible freedom and independence, mature self-responsibility, self-determination and an individual position in life, in the same sense someone practising meditation can learn to picture the country as an independent one. By elevating and pictorially imagining this first thought in the sense of a graphic meditation, an idea for the future awakens, indirectly representing a first orientation and help for the country.

Nevertheless, for this meditation task we must drastically and strictly cease all polemics, superior attitudes, polarising judgements and moralising accusations. The effects of these so impassioned and furious, spontaneous emotions prevent peace, and create an atmosphere in which only very unfavourable constellations can result. A meditation is free from polarisations, it raises up a possible idea to become a mental picture, tests it out, and if it is right it is taken into our visualisation for long enough until it acquires an attractive force for many people on a wider plane.

It is therefore a very meaningful meditation task in a graphic form when those striving for spirituality can think and indirectly enliven this country according to a best independent picture, free from polarities. They create through their thinking new and forward-looking etheric forces.

A person who is practised in meditation can ideally develop this task right down to detail, with many differentiated mental pictures, and take it into concentration. Yet somebody who has little practice in a sound meditation training can also overcome their angered emotions, and with their best powers of imagination think that vision of independence and of the resulting, peaceful, mediating state.

In comparison to this meditation task with concrete mental pictures and content, “prayer” forms a very inadequate starting point for real help. Each individual person can themselves generate thoughts, create pictures and carry out active work of peace for the world, not by praying to an unknown and invisible God for something, but by committing themselves to the power of the thought and learning to think, imagine and feel the vision in the best clarity possible. This active work, done out of honourable wishes and mature mental pictures, is like a gift to the world and produces a prospect which is indirect and yet usually becomes real.