Shock

Second instalment in a series. If you haven’t read the first part yet, start with The Pond.

Finding the real estate listing for the evangelical parsonage from my dream turns my world upside down…

A high Nepalese Rinpoche had paid a surprise visit to the Spiritual Community in mid-September.

Rinpoche taught the sangha how to practice the smoke offering Sur. And he showed us how to perform offerings for Nagas — powerful water spirits.

Rinpoche left us with a promise to return the following year — for a Thröma retreat.

After Rinpoche’s departure, I was preoccupied with the question of where the sangha could put their newly acquired knowledge into practice, and where the Thröma retreat should take place.

The Spiritual Community in Prenzlauer Berg was out of the question.

So was the Tibetan Buddhist centre in Friedrichshain.

There was too little space in the city. The noise of our instruments, the smoke from the offering fires — none of that belonged here.

We need space, I thought. And quiet.

We need to get out of the city!

Ideally, I continued, somewhere near water. After all, the Nagas live in water and wetlands.

And we’d need to be able to stay overnight! Because Naga offerings — as Rinpoche had explained — are performed in the morning. Before breakfast!

Four days after Rinpoche left, I was on my way to a private teaching with another high Nepalese Rinpoche.

On the ICE train to Munich, I ran through the qualities the place would need for the sangha to practice: it had to be remote, I counted on my fingers, but still easily accessible. Apart from Suriyel, none of the sangha members had their own car. There needed to be sleeping places and catering for at least fifteen people. It had to be near water. You had to be able to make a fire there. And noise…

I was sure there was such a place somewhere outside Berlin.

But how was I supposed to find it?

On the way back from the teaching in Upper Bavaria, I was suddenly overcome by the bizarre feeling that somewhere out there, a place was calling to me. A “sacred place”, even…

I fell asleep with a wish for a dream that would show me this place. That night I dreamed of an old evangelical parsonage. With a pond in front of the door.

The next morning I found a real estate listing online for an evangelical parsonage that matched the house in my dream exactly.

At first I was astonished.

Then I doubted my own mind: This can’t possibly be real!

In a state of inner dissolution, I forwarded the listing to Israfel.

My heart was racing. I was trembling all over. Desperately I tried to calm my breath.

I retreated to my meditation cushion like a shipwrecked sailor to a desert island. “Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out.”

After about half an hour I had at least developed enough distance from my inner chaos to arrive at a self-diagnosis:

I was in shock.