The week before Christmas I attended a seminar in Germany called “Transformation Week”. It is run by Robert Betz who is the German equivalent of Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle with booked-out seminars throughout the year and bestselling books on how to transform your life and regain your birthright to happiness. My boyfriend – who has never attended one of the seminars – likes to call it the “headbangers seminar” but I can ensure you that nothing is further away from the truth. It is my second time that I attended the Transformation Week and I have to admit that the first time I went there, approaching a hotel in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, I considered turning around and fleeing. Too afraid was I of having to face a bunch of unshaven hippies in flowery dresses, floating a meter above the earth with scented candles and a blissful smile on their faces. Luckily this was far from the truth. Robert Betz seminars are frequently attended by professionals who are in the middle of their working lives but feel that something might be missing. You meet anyone there from the corporate lawyer to the surgeon to the entrepreneur. And everyone – without a doubt everyone – is changed after such a week.
Why? Now it gets a bit complicated, trying to explain in few words what many sages of the past have said that one should not endeavour to explain as it is the unexplainable. If it was explainable it wouldn’t be the pure, the first cause of all that is. However, let me still give it a try: Be it Tolle, Chopra, Betz or the ancient Chinese or Indian sages, all of them basically said the same (you can count Jesus in as well): that we are carrying the eternal within us, that we are spiritual beings making a human experience. Some call it the soul, some call it the Godly within us or Kingdom of Heaven. Being firmly rooted in this essential being, allows every human to approach life with a healthy distance that will prevent us from being swung around like flags in the wind. It is very simple and very powerful, yet, we are so caught up in our thinking and perceptions, that this simplicity is difficult for most of us to grasp.
And that is where the different teachers divert: everyone has a different approach on how to teach us the way to get there – to lasting happiness and freedom and also success. Tolle speaks about the renunciation of thought and encourages people to live in the here and now, Chopra jumps straight in and speaks about the field of pure potentiality or unlimited consciousness as our real nature and Betz is probably the most practical one when it comes to helping rational people find their inner being: his teaching is based on the premise that we are all still carrying the hurts of childhood with us. And while we don’t need these wounds anymore, they are still there and unconsciously we allow them to dominate our lives. That’s why we encounter the same problems again and again and until these wounds are healed, we will keep encountering them. Betz now offers many meditations that bring you back to your childhood and allow you to look at these wounds and heal them. The powerful aspect about his teaching is that he has the courage to base any real healing on the transforming power of love. Yes, love. Most teachers avoid words such as love and God as they are so loaded with distorted meaning in today’s times. I also cringe whenever I use the word “spiritual” here, although the word in itself is very beautiful. So is love. We watch movies about love, listen to songs about love, spend money and time to get what we think is love and yet – somehow it gives us an uneasy feeling to think about sitting in a room with a bunch of strangers and speaking about love as if it was something “real”, as real and tangible as money, sex or our careers. Speaking about love somehow embarrasses us. Yet, let me tell you – there is nothing more beautiful than doing exactly this and it is the one moment where you start to truly believe that we are all brothers and sisters – the moment when the masks fall away and we find that we are all essentially the same.
But now comes the really astonishing thing: Betz has just started offering his services to companies, encouraging them to transform their employees from a fear-driven, stressed-out workforce to happy, healthy and loving people. And while his offering is brand-new, some of Germany’s biggest companies are already on board, including one big car manufacturer, a pharmaceutical company and one of the leading construction companies. The transformation will start on the board and leadership level. Very masculine industries in a very ratio –driven country: soon you will see their board members sitting there with their eyes closed, talking about love and gradually transforming themselves and their companies….we can look forward to it….
Artikel von Anna Kupka, veröffentlicht im Forbes Magazine
