Last week I attended a five day course called Inner Humanity Camp http://innerhumanitycamp.com/tietoja/ created by six young people, who had been inspired by their own experience of sharing the whole of their humanity in deep trust and acceptance. In that state they had experienced a profound change of consciousness, which they intended to share with other people by organizing the Inner Humanity Camp. They succeeded in a miraculous way!

Jeremy Qvick, Topias Aalto, Jasmin Vattulainen, Maarit Eskola, Olli Lukkari and Aura Koskela had been mentored by Dr. Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon from Israel, who was also meant to be the main speaker of the course. But fortunately during the last weeks before the Camp there arose some personal reasons, which prevented Yeshayahu from attending the Camp. This allowed and forced the organizing team to take full charge of the whole Camp; they truly arose together to meet the challenge and they did it in a spectacular way!

The three full days of the course each had a particular theme: The first I – KNOW YOURSELF, the second WE – CO-EXIST and the third WORLD – CONTRIBUTE. The aim was to first through self-knowledge to find a true communality of deep sharing and acceptance and then a way of contributing to the whole of our world and to create a new future. And they hit the bull’s eye!

Each day was begun with optional shared movement and meditation before the day was launched by one of the team members sharing their views of the day’s theme in a deep, open and trusting manner. They opened their hearts and their honest search for new ways of communication and sharing with all the about 30 participants. They truly did it!

After that we shared our thoughts and emotions about the issue in three groups, which we each expertly lead by two of the Team members. These groups where like human laboratories in which the ideas and visions expressed where tested and explored further in an atmosphere of deep trust and openness. Each one of us was given time and space to be and to show the fullness of our humanity, both the strengths and the weaknesses.

I belonged to a group called ”The Stones”, which actually had something similar to the famous rock-group. Many of us where men of my generation, who had been used to follow leaders and also to act as them. We had been born while the world had been physically divided in two, the Communist East and the Capitalist West. This division was physically most acutely manifested in the city of Berlin divided by The Wall. This same wall had also been part of our human spirituality, when we had divided our minds and our humanity into two opposing parts, the Good and the Bad. We the older Stones had learned to fight for the Good while trying to keep away the Bad, we had been divided.

The members of the organizing team had grown up after the collapse of the physical division of the world, the fall of Sovjet Union and the Berlin Wall. They had grown up in a world where the Good and Bad could not be divided nor kept away from each other any more. They both existed intertwined in each and every one of them, in each of us. This was also made visible in the world around them by the creation of a new enemy, the Terrorist who was not anymore ”out there”, but could in principle be found everywhere, also within each and everyone of us. The threat or the Bad had moved nearer to ourselves, but so had the Good as well. This new reality where the team leaders had grown up explained to me their ability to handle both the Good and the Bad in a creative and accepting manner, which was new for us older Stones that had already gathered some moss upon us…

I’ll try to explain what happened to me in this creative and allowing atmosphere. First of all I have never before experienced such belonging, such sense of being a meaningful part of a human society, where all of what I am was and is accepted and seen, allowed to bloom fully. Secondly this community was also able to handle and accept my grief of ”not being loved and accepted”, which you, my dear reader, have certainly observed in many of my writings. This my most profound wound was awakened at the height of my feeling of being for once fully accepted, when I felt one of the Stones attack me with deeply critical words. I was deeply wounded, I was about to withdraw from communication with my fellows, I was about to crawl back into my dark cave.

For a couple of hours I walked in my own darkness, listening and pondering the words of wisdom that earlier had flown both through me and through the other participants. I was fully in my own male cave, but I also knew that there was a way out of it. I knew by now that Communication = Love so I needed to find a way of communicating my pain to my community. This change was finally given by 21 yrs old Jasmin, the leader of our workshop with the theme Evil. She felt a deep grief of disappointment with the results of the workshop, she felt that she had been unable to lead the group to a fruitful view of the heavy theme. From her own deep grief she was able to face mine, to take it into her physically tiny bosom hiding a vast space of spirit. She accepted my wound, and thus allowed it to heal. She was able to face the Evil, or the darkness within me, and thus lead the workshop to an amazing fulfillment of relief. Thank you Jasmin for being such a great soul!

The six persons responsible for the Camp are all great and daring souls, who gave from their deeply felt honesty and openness their individual gifts to all of us participants, and to themselves. There was not a soul that did not benefit from this shared experience; we were all blessed in our individual ways by the amazing atmosphere created by these young and mature human beings. We were all One. We are still all One. We are One forever!

A proof of the truth expressed through and during the Camp is the fact that it lives further within me and in my everyday life. This Inner Humanity Camp did not just create a ”course high” in us participants, something to get hooked at, but created a space of profound change that can be carried further into the everyday life of each and every participant. It works, it continues to change my inner world of humanity and thus also the world around me, our world. That is Love! That’s what we are here for! Thank you for opening a door…