My Holy Week

Two weeks ago, during Holy week I took a break from school (I only skipped two days) and went to the Don Bosco farm in Makilala where I will be working the next ten months. It was really great to be away from the city for a while and be in nature. I was invited by my “boss”, Betsy, to join a seminar about anthroposophic healing and alternative harmonization techniques. To be honest, I really did not know what that was going to be all about. The seminar was given by two anthroposophic doctors and a nurse. Antroposophy is basically the teachings of Rudolf Steiner during the first half of the 20^th century. It is, as far as I know now, the scientific teachings of the spirit and spiritual world, that is based on our current modern world. It compromises philosophy/theosophy, health care, education and agriculture (bio-dynamics). This anthroposophy is about initiation in the higher worlds, thinking-willing-feeling, our physical body, astral body, spiritual body and the I. During those three day seminar we learned about healthy lifestyle, meditation, we gave foot baths to each other, we made a healthy salad with wild plants, fruits and flowers, we did art therapy (making paintings with self made paint out of earth and flowers), I was been harmonized etc.. All these things are quite new to me and at first I felt a bit uncomfortable about this subjects, but Betsy promised me that I will be given time to study anthroposophe/esoteric/occult teachings so I can understand what it is all about. Currently I have no judgements about all these “higher” subjects/truth because understanding have to come before judgement.

There was another guest at Don Bosco, Troy, from Manilla. Togheter with him we did yoga every morning for one hour. In the end, I will have to learn more or less how to teach yoga, because I will give some initiation classes to the local farmers. Exciting!! Troy also introduced me to inner dance, a kind of traditional shamanistic “dance” which allows you to ground with yourself and, after practice, can be able to express blocs/traumas stored inside of you. It was a strange experience, Troy, who is able to connect consciously with the cosmos/chi/prana/life-force starts to press some points on your body and, if you think about nothing, your arms and legs, head start to move spontaneously, expressing emotions deep inside us. They told me that in this way it is possible for us to find out how we were connected in with each other in our past lives. I did not reach any catharsis or past life experiences, but I was surprised how spontaneously I started to move. I am, again, very excited to learn more about these practices, because I think it could be of good use in our materialistic western world to bring in a bit more spirituality.

Aside from all these “weird” practices we also did some sightseeing. We went to Lake Ako, which is a, rather big, boiling lake. Really quite bizarre to see a lake that is literally filled with boiling water coming from a hot spring. Next to is they installed a natural sauna and a hot pool. We also went up the mountain, through the rainforest to see two waterfalls, one of them a sacred place according to one of the indigenous tribes living up the mountain. Close to the Don Bosco farm there is also a hot spring with a pool installed where you can bath in the natural hot water, how nice!

For the rest of my time I helped a bit with Mattias, a german volunteer, in his garden, next to the river, in front of Don Bosco. And Betsy gave me a short orientation into the different projects in Don Bosco so I can figure out in which of them I would like to cooperate. Right now I still do not know exactly what I want to do, I think I would like to work in all of them so I can learn a bit about all their different projects. The have a seed program, a extension service for farmers, the do laboratory work, they help woman to develop off-farm employment, they have a micro-credit service, they have give seminars to farmers how to convert to bio-dynamics and also seminars for other ngo's who like to know more, they have a dairy farm where the make mile and yoghurt, they have, i believe, 4 shops spread over the island Mindanao so marketing is also one of their occupations... Lot's of things to learn, many of them I used to know some things about in theory form during university.

I went there on Sunday and the next Sunday I left again to go to Davao, because my language school is not over.