Our friends proposed to go with us to a Danish island, Rømø, an hour drive away. On the way we made a stop in a nice town called Tønder, where the son of our guest had gone to high school – and where he wanted to show us the buildings. The town is several hundred years old, with small roads and beautiful houses.
Walking into the town
In the centre there was a wooden figure, the replica of an old figure now in a museum, a “shame keeper”, to “scare off criminals and floozies”, as the Danish inscription said. It is the only figure still found in Denmark.
On the wall of an old house there was a beautiful coat of arms with symbols of fights with dragons and serpents. The crawling serpent or dragon is a symbol of the soul fallen into matter (crawling on the belly); the spear stands for the human spine, through which the energy of kundalini rises; and the man fighting or the bird eating the serpent are symbols of the soul overcoming matter. On the crest there were two dragon fighters and one stork eating a serpent.
A long dam lead to the island of Rømø. The land around was totally flat up to the horizon, where land, sea and sky met. We drove with the cars onto the beach near the sea – a huge, long beach. Next to the place where we stopped a man tried to direct a kite. Sometimes the wind pushed him away or he fell down for a moment.
Directing the kite – like the soul taming the personality – flying high in life, but keeping the contact to the inner ground.
On the far end of one side of the beach you could see a great number of kites in the air.
The kites seen through the telephoto lense
Though it had rained several times in the morning and there was a fresh wind,the husband of our friends and me jumped into the sea and enjoyed the freshness of the waves.
I felt very much energized by the salt water. Later we had a walk along the beach towards the horizon.
There were lots of shells lying around, especially long ones like little sticks. I discovered a shell which looked different from the others. It looked like a little piece of art. Our friends told me that these ones are new. Friends of them had seen similar ones in Spain, and these shells have come with boats from the south and now also live here, since the sea slowly gets warmer.
The shell immigrant, looking like a little piece of art
Soon again black clouds quickly approached from the horizon. We went back to our cars. As soon as I sat down inside to clean my feet from sand a shower splashed against the windows.
Next morning after meditation and breakfast my friend told me about the difficulties of his work. He is the head physician of the regional psychiatric hospital, and he explained the challenges they have to face in finding a good way between medical demands, finance and the regulatory system. Each system seems to produce certain forms of absurdities and possibilities of abuse, when the focus is on the economic aspect. But without the economic “counterbalancing” (the law of economics, as the wisdom teachings call it) an intelligent organisation would not come about. May different interests have to be integrated to find a good functioning – forcing the structures to adapt.