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Welcome to RTalk, the place where we agree to disagree if we disagree at all.
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Today, my guest is Ruth Karina Kjølner, originally from Norway.
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Now she is in South Carolina.
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Our topic is 'awe'.
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'Awe' as in awe-inspired.
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Welcome, Ruth Karina, how are you?
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Hi, René.
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I am doing great this morning.
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Good.
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It's morning time where you are.
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It's evening time here.
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The sun is setting behind the snowy mountains here in Switzerland.
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And it's Christmas time soon.
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Even though we may show this to the viewers, I don't know in January, February
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but we are filming it around Christmas.
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So merry Christmas to you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, René.
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Merry Christmas to you and Mischa.
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Thank you.
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And that shows already our viewers we've known each other for a while.
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Not very closely, I must say, because our careers sort of overlapped.
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Ruth Karina today is the president of the Reiki Network,
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an international Reiki association.
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We will come back to that in a moment.
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But my wife and I, Mischa and I, we've been a member of the same association and therefore we have known each other.
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So I'm very pleased to speak about 'awe'.
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And I'm curious to learn from you, Ruth Karina,
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what do you believe that awe is?
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Before I do so, let me quickly introduce you a little bit to my viewers.
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As I said, Ruth Karina is originally from Norway.
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Today she is in South Carolina and together
with her partner, Swami Gyankirti,
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she is running a center for health growth and transformation.
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She started out as a schoolteacher,
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later volunteered at Krishnamurti's Oak Grove School in California while writing her thesis.
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She eventually became a Reiki practitioner in 1995,
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and in the meantime a Reiki Master Teacher
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and has been president of the Reiki network as I mentioned since 2016.
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Is that about it, Ruth Karina or have I forgotten something vital?
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Would you like to add something?
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No, I think this this sums up pretty good.
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Well, I have also been running the Medissage Center in Norway for 20 years.
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That has been a big part of my life.
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And this is now closed or what's the status of the center in Norway?
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Well, no, the center in Norway is still open. There's another person being there running it now.
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Oh, I see.
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I wasn't sure because of the changes Covid has put upon so many of us.
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That's the background of my question.
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Well, you know, I was wondering how we got to the name 'awe' for us today.
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And I remember last time when we spoke, a week ago, we had a number of topics.
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Basically, dear viewers, when I speak to a person,
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I listen to them and I basically listen to the words they're using.
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And Ruth Karina has used the word 'awe' as used in saying "awe-inspired".
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And I thought, I suggest, and you immediately jumped on it.
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What's your fascination about awe and what exactly do you mean by awe?
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Well, my fascination by awe is the experience that awe gives us.
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I think for me, awe is without words.
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You can watch a beautiful, beautiful sunset and you can say, wow!
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And to me, while this may be an expression of awe,
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but I think the feeling of awe is even deeper.
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It has no words.
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It's just a knowing that ...
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An experience that is so grand, so to speak, that we can't really put words to it.
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Yeah, I agree with you, I think ...
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But we are often - we humanity - are often when we are experiencing love, when we're experiencing many things,
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we are often tend to say, Oh, it's difficult to put words behind it.
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And that's true.
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And words will never truly reflect the complexity and the entirety of what we mean.
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And yet here we are in a talk-show, so we will talk about it.
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You know, I looked up
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- and actually, you have already used some of these expressions -
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in the dictionary what awe means.
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And here are some samples.
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"I've always held the musicians in awe."
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So here awe stands for admiration.
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"As children, we were in awe of our grandfather."
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And surely there is probably the element of admiration,
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but also already the element of almost fear of the authority of the grandfather.
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Or here: "We were awed by the beauty of the mountains."
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And that's very much where what you just said that, we cannot put words behind
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this stunning, all encompassing experience when we are awed by nature, by the mountains.
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So would you associate with these three sentences I've picked out?
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Yes, absolutely.
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And you know, after we decided on the topic,
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I've been thinking about what kind of awe experiences have I had in my life?
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that I can really, you know ...
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Tell us!
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... connect with that.
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And, you know, a baby that's being born.
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I remember my friend. She had just become a grandmother.
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It was her first grandchild.
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And she was - when we were babysitting this little boy -
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and she was so afraid of doing anything wrong, you know?
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And I was like, I was used to kids, so I wasn't afraid.
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But I respected her way of approaching the baby.
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So what we ended up doing was just looking into the eyes of this little baby that was just a few weeks old.
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And looking into the eyes of a newborn baby.
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To me, is awe.
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It's so much wisdom.
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It there's so much depth and it's no words.
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It's just communication on a deeper level.
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You know, they're saying when you do that, you can see straight into the soul of the being which is incarnated.
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Which makes me sometimes wonder what happens
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when I look into the eyes of a grown-up today and I can see how they're masked,
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how they're shielded, how they're holding on to maybe an image they want to project.
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But when you spoke, it reminded me of that saying that actually the eyes are the gate to the soul.
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And particularly when you look through the eyes of ...
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Do you see - in this experience - do you see the depth of soul, in my words now,
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also of yourself in a moment like that which you just described?
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Was that experience also not just looking out into the eyes of the baby on the outside,
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but what you experienced that this was a reflection on what you experience, or who you are in the inside?
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Well, I think ... in that moment, I didn't thinking of me, but I think the feeling was from the heart.
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I think the heart is communicating.
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The love, the wonder, the yeah, communicating with a soul is quite special.
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It's a bond that is so pure as with a little baby.
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You know, that is just so beautiful, beautiful and to have the awareness of that moment.
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I think that's why I think this topic is so great,
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because we kind of forget about this moment in the daily business of life
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and could see so many awe moments during the day if you open up for it.
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I agree with you and I'm sure we'll come to that, but I want to stay for a moment longer with that experience
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because it reminded me some of something.
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You and I, we are both parents.
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And you describe the situation where you looked into the eyes
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of a baby of another parent of another mother.
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Right?
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I recently spoke to a woman about motherhood.
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And one of the eternal questions when you are a parent yourself
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and when you meet people who don't have children
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very often is: do they really understand what it means to have children?
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So, my question to you Ruth Karina is:
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do you believe that you would have been able to have that experience of awe
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when you looked into that child's - who wasn't your child's eyes
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the same way, if you hadn't been a mother yourself, if you had been a childless woman?
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Do you understand my question?
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Yeah, and that's very funny that you are asking me this question because I don't have any biological children.
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I didn't know that.
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But I have ...
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you know, my partner's children and my sister's and brother's children and I have a little boy that I have.
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I'm his mama, Karina.
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And I have two other African young beings, people that are my children.
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I'm their mom.
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So ...
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But they have their other biological mom as well.
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So I know in my heart that you can love as deeply.
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I mean, I don't know if it would be even more if it was my own, but that little boy that called me mommy,
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to me, he could have been born out of my body. It didn't matter.
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You know, the love doesn't differentiate.
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When you have the connection,
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it's pure,
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I understand, and my heart, as you spoke, said, of course, it doesn't make a difference.
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No, it doesn't.
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But yet I do understand the question, and I think we shouldn't take the question per se lightly.
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But that's not the topic of our discussion today.
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Yet, I think you mentioned it correctly, it is in everyday life, it is in situations like we discussed:
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a conversation with a person about motherhood or parenthood or something else out there every day
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where we have an opportunity to ...
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I was in nature all day yesterday in the mountains. It was just awe inspiring in in a sense of ...
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it also showed me not only the beauty and the love,
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but it also showed me to some extent how insignificant I am, how small I am in the universe,
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and that the forces of nature are so, so much more bigger.
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So I think in the word 'awe' there is also this element of fear,
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of ... not just respect, but, you know, respect implies that you know.
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But when we are in awe that feeling implies also that there is something beyond what we know.
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And if I look at actually the dictionary again and if I bring it up:
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Awe an emotion or a power to inspire dread, fear, veneration equivalent to admiration, and wonder.
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So this child, which is just so curious and open that is inspired by authority or the sacred or the sublime.
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So in a context with spirituality, of course, this experience of awe is a very important one.
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We spoke about every day, we spoke about children.
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Can you pick up a little bit awe in context with your take, your personal take,
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of spirituality and the importance of awe in context with spirituality?
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Yeah, you want me to talk about that.
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Please.
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Yeah.
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Well, I was ... thinking about a moment.
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You know, we talked about birth and newborn child, but also about death.
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When the body is leaving the body.
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And I experienced sitting with my mother
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when she was just about to take her last breath
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and I told her: go towards the light.
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Go towards the light,
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because she was very OK with leaving the body.
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She was ... very aware that that was what she was doing.
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And suddenly I saw her lift her arm up.
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And lift her head up.
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Like the veil between this world and ...
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the other side was opened.
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And it was a very special moment to see
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that she was really seeing that she was being met by the other side.
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And ...
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that was not the death moment, so to speak,
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because after that she has a seizure and then everything was still.
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But I felt so in awe
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having witnessed that moment
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of leaving this earthly ... place and going to the other dimension.
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And when I came home, I was dancing.
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I put on some nice music and I was dancing kind of sending her off to the other side,
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because it was no grief in this at that time, it was just supporting her in her journey to the other side.
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And
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yeah, so that was the spirit leaving the body,
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Thank you so much, and I think if somebody is watching this video
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wondering what the hell we are talking about when we say 'awe',
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I think, you with your recounting that situation offered an opportunity
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to sit here and watch the video and be in awe of what you said.
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And of you! Of telling the story.
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So thank you very much.
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This is really wonderful.
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Yeah, thank you.
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And I have one other moment that I would like to share with awe.
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I have meditated a lot and done a lot of workshops and, you know, a lot of spiritual experiences.
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And this time I was in the channeling group and we were in an angel store (chuckles)
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where they sell crystals and angels and cards and all that kind of things.
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And it was the 11th, 11:11 at 11 o'clock and we were sitting in a circle there.
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We were just maybe eight people.
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We were meditating and suddenly I felt my body or my ... whole body rising up.
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It was very ... I cannot forget this experience.
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I was just going up, up.
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And it was energy.
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It wasn't my physical body, but I was all the way up at the ceiling.
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The feeling of being that big.
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And then suddenly, you know, the awareness goes: "Oh, I'm here in this room." And I was down again.
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But that does tell us that that's how big we are.
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You know, the body is just the physical body is not who we are.
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The spirit is so much bigger
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And our potential for what we can do is also amazing.
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That is awe. We can be awestruck by that.
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Also in the sense of scared out of my wits, of my own potentiality.
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I heard you.
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I smiled a little bit because I saw this esoteric shop.
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I could smell the incense.
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I could hear the chimes in the background.
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And I saw this semi enlightened circle.
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And I making only a little bit fun of this situation, because ...
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as much as I appreciate what you said ...
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a neurologist would look at what you just said with very different eyes.
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And I'd like to respect the neurologist's view as much as
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my own experience or your experience.
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Or the psychologist. The psychologist might even refer to
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our own ego, which plays sometimes tricks in experiences like you just described.
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And I hope with what I just said, I didn't ... Is that OK with you?
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I didn't mean to belittle your experience in the slightest.
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I tried to put it into somewhat of relativity to a broader ...
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broader audience who may not actually deal with angels and things like that.
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Let me first be clear: was that OK with you Ruth Karina or did I mis-chose my words?
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No, I mean, in this world, we have so many people and we all have the
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freedom to have our perspective on things.
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And you know, I did say it was in an angel store.
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And so of course, then awe becomes a little bit woo-woo for some people.
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And for other people it's not.
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I mean, it wasn't ...
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No, it's OK.
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I mean, we all are different.
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Good. I can assure you, if you had to be a neurosurgeon,
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I would probably represent the viewpoint of an esoteric person
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who is describing a spiritual experience or what they believe to be a spiritual experience.
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I too thought about in preparation what were the moments for me.
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And yes, nature is probably the most powerful catalyst for me to
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get into this state, almost a trance state, where I'm taken by awe.
0:22:54.470,0:22:54.970
But ...
0:22:56.420,0:23:02.890
there is something more down to earth which I prepared for you and I would like to share with you.
0:23:05.839,0:23:11.690
You know, when you walk in big cathedrals, they very often have what
0:23:11.756,0:23:17.870
they call the 'rosette', the glass, the stained glass or painted glass.
0:23:18.200,0:23:25.130
And inside the church, it's mostly cool and it might be dark and outside it might be sunshine.
0:23:25.460,0:23:31.549
And these windows, they appear in all their glory and colorful beauty.
0:23:32.089,0:23:39.019
And on a number of occasions, I have ... I'm not a particularly religious person.
0:23:39.559,0:23:45.019
I was christened as a Catholic, but I don't belong to the church as such.
0:23:45.529,0:23:51.950
So when I go to churches, I don't differentiate between religions.
0:23:54.110,0:24:00.400
Particularly in the Catholic big churches very often I found this awe inspiring,
0:24:01.130,0:24:04.470
the beauty of the light coming through these windows.
0:24:07.519,0:24:08.540
When ...
0:24:09.650,0:24:17.590
Dr Justin Stein, I don't know whether you know him, he is a historian who has done important work also in the Reiki community.
0:24:19.980,0:24:31.780
He came to Zurich and he visited somebody, a colleague of his in the university there.
0:24:31.946,0:24:36.950
And I went to see him in Zurich and we went for a walk. I wanted to show him Zurich a little bit.
0:24:37.220,0:24:41.539
And we went to the Woman's Minster.
0:24:41.606,0:24:44.970
It's a big cathedral like church,
0:24:46.190,0:24:50.100
and there are some beautiful paintings, window paintings there.
0:24:50.359,0:24:54.799
And in preparation, I looked it up and I found a newsreel,
0:24:55.279,0:25:06.299
a news snippet a few years ago when they celebrated the 50 years of the windows of Chagall in Zurich.
0:25:06.470,0:25:07.910
I'd like to show that to you.
0:25:08.630,0:25:12.920
And here you see in the background the church.
0:25:13.250,0:25:13.750
Yeah.
0:25:14.359,0:25:22.300
And I will switch off the sound because what the news speaker says is not so relevant for us.
0:25:22.670,0:25:23.269
Have a look.
0:25:26.019,0:25:28.900
So here you see the church with the windows.
0:25:35.849,0:25:44.330
This is Virgin Mary ... These are iconographic descriptions of Bible history, the Ten Commandments.
0:25:56.569,0:26:00.740
And this is in fact Chagall himself, Marc Chagall himself.
0:26:04.440,0:26:12.240
This was a very awe-inspiring moment when Justin and I went to that church and we looked at those windows.
0:26:12.500,0:26:14.329
I found them very fascinating.
0:26:14.720,0:26:20.119
And I'd like to show you a little more of this film because researching it now ...
0:26:21.230,0:26:30.410
I didn't know that in 1970, Marc Chagall himself was actually in Zurich giving an art exhibition.
0:26:31.940,0:26:34.789
He was asked ... here he is in Zurich.
0:26:36.819,0:26:42.279
And he was asked by the priest of the church who had to do renovations,
0:26:42.346,0:26:45.549
whether he would do the glass windows.
0:26:45.910,0:26:51.740
And there is another person, an important supporter of art in Switzerland.
0:26:52.089,0:26:53.710
And here you have a few more
0:26:55.009,0:26:56.660
impressions of the art.
0:26:56.779,0:27:00.200
This is the granddaughter of Marc Chagall,
0:27:00.430,0:27:06.500
and she's talking about the challenges he had and the doubt he had.
0:27:07.160,0:27:13.610
And, you know, when I heard her speak - this was today when I saw this the first time -
0:27:14.040,0:27:18.140
when I heard her speak about how much the artist himself ...
0:27:18.559,0:27:23.850
and by then he was a well-established artist, 83 years old,
0:27:25.230,0:27:31.070
and he knew that this was his last important big piece of work,
0:27:31.150,0:27:35.299
and he was full of doubt how the people would receive it.
0:27:35.690,0:27:36.769
And in fact,
0:27:38.839,0:27:40.370
she is talking about
0:27:41.809,0:27:49.570
how also he had to ask the rabbi for permission because he is of Jewish descent.
0:27:50.750,0:27:58.310
Here she shows pictures and explains this that the chief rabbi had to give consent
0:27:58.670,0:28:06.710
that Marc Chagall was allowed to do this work for a Christian, for a Catholic church.
0:28:07.600,0:28:12.170
I let it run because here you see him actually working on some of the windows.
0:28:23.519,0:28:30.720
And I believe just now there will be one or two more impressions of the windows themselves.
0:28:32.119,0:28:32.720
There you go.
0:28:44.160,0:28:48.510
These are supposed to be the most beautiful
0:28:51.060,0:28:54.420
painted glass church windows in all of Switzerland.
0:28:55.349,0:28:59.360
So I was looking forward to sharing this moment with you
0:29:00.230,0:29:03.830
because that's a moment where I was just standing there
0:29:04.310,0:29:10.150
awe inspired with the light coming through to see the symbolism of the paintings,
0:29:10.430,0:29:17.519
the history, which at that time when I was there with Justin, I didn't fully comprehend much of it.
0:29:17.586,0:29:22.049
I got to understand now watching the newsreel.
0:29:24.780,0:29:32.069
I just want to say it reminded me of when I was a child going into we have a
0:29:32.136,0:29:35.819
very beautiful cathedral in Tønsberg, the town where I grew up.
0:29:36.809,0:29:41.319
And I remember as a child those windows.
0:29:42.349,0:29:48.220
It was some of the most beautiful things I was seeing.
0:29:48.330,0:29:49.720
I mean ...
0:29:49.950,0:29:57.110
I think that was awe that I experienced. And I was just a small child.
0:29:57.320,0:30:01.040
but I remember the windows in particular
0:30:01.090,0:30:08.500
because of the light that came in and how ... It just does something to you.
0:30:09.279,0:30:11.470
Yes, at least it does for me.
0:30:11.950,0:30:12.450
Yeah.
0:30:12.819,0:30:16.539
Oh, I'm glad then, that I chose this to share with you.
0:30:17.380,0:30:25.809
And I don't think that age is relevant for this mystical, spiritual experience of awe.
0:30:26.259,0:30:32.580
Actually, maybe it stands to reason that as children, we were even more open
0:30:32.810,0:30:38.650
than maybe today when we are so busy with everyday life.
0:30:39.910,0:30:41.259
We're coming to an end Ruth Karina.
0:30:42.160,0:30:47.910
I want to know one more thing from you because you likened awe at one point,
0:30:47.960,0:30:52.000
when you told us the story about the child, with love.
0:30:52.970,0:31:02.270
Is to you love and awe one and the same thing? What's the correlation between love and awe?
0:31:05.410,0:31:08.049
Well, I want to say I can't answer that.
0:31:09.789,0:31:17.340
But to me, I think that it's a mystery, I think.
0:31:17.426,0:31:24.510
Awe is the mystery of a human existence and human potential.
0:31:25.329,0:31:30.009
Like looking at those windows, you know, the creation,
0:31:32.309,0:31:35.250
what a human being can create.
0:31:39.650,0:31:42.559
And I think you're right.
0:31:43.160,0:31:47.510
When we create and we are passionate about it,
0:31:48.020,0:31:54.740
it is love that goes through us into that creation.
0:31:56.230,0:31:59.440
That creates again the awe moment.
0:32:01.089,0:32:08.060
So it might be right that awe can be seen as the same as love.
0:32:11.130,0:32:11.640
Great.
0:32:12.000,0:32:13.019
Thank you very much.
0:32:15.990,0:32:16.740
Thank you.
0:32:22.430,0:32:23.420
Thank you so much.
0:32:26.539,0:32:27.769
Thank you, Ruth Karina.
0:32:27.836,0:32:28.970
Bye-bye to you.
0:32:29.869,0:32:34.700
And thank you René, it has been a pleasure to be talking with you this morning.
0:32:36.109,0:32:36.609
You're very kind.
0:32:37.130,0:32:37.910
Thank you.
0:32:37.976,0:32:39.289
I'll see you around.
0:32:39.759,0:32:45.150
And dear viewers, I thank you very much for having watched another episode of RTalk.
0:32:45.216,0:32:46.130
I hope you liked it.
0:32:46.490,0:32:50.900
I hope you will subscribe and see you in three weeks time.
0:32:54.060,0:32:56.080
English subtitles: René Vögtli
