Smell the Future
Interview with Monika Alleweldt
Monika Alleweldt — co-founder of Tamera Peace Research and Education Center, ecosystem weaver.
Interview was taken by Peter Levich — founder of the Future Foundation. Psychologist and facilitator.
Below is the text of the interview; an audio podcast is also available.
Interview was taken by Peter Levich — founder of the Future Foundation. Psychologist and facilitator.
Below is the text of the interview; an audio podcast is also available.
At the Crossing of Lines
Peter: Okay, hey! How are you?
Monika: This morning I'm in an especially good mood.
Peter: We're making this podcast on the night after the full moon, in the period between two eclipses.
I'll ask some questions, but they're not really direct questions, and we don't need to go through them one by one — it's more like proposing some directions, and from there we can go anywhere, inside or out. My questions are just an attempt to touch on some maybe strange things and see what happens around them.
So I want to start with this: imagine the world now as a constellation — a field constellation. Where do you feel yourself in this field, and what's around you?
You know, like a systemic constellation — family constellations, where we go into a field and place some figures. For example, this is my father, this is my son. Or systemic constellations, where we place forces and processes in the world — the planet, Gaia, Earth, civilization — and give voice to these big forces and processes.
Monika: So I'd say I'm at a point where several — let me introduce a German word into English here — the word geistig, which means something like spiritual-mental and can't really be translated, the word Geist — where very different geistic lines meet. For example, philosophers, scientists, systems thinkers, therapists, political analysts, indigenous wisdom, earth wisdom — they all come together. All these lines cross, and I'm somehow in the pot where many of them meet. I wouldn't say all lines, but many. And that's where I am.
Yesterday an insight came to me: I asked myself whether I know enough to actually encounter myself — to be ready to encounter what a human being is, what comes up when you look into it, into its history, into its trauma, into its beauty. That's a research question for me. And within this same pot of crossing lines, I ask myself: what is there to do for the future, when what I want is to see peace on Earth, a thriving life, not a dying planet? That's where I place myself.
In terms of people and ancestors, I also have many lines — every human being has many lines coming together in them. If I place myself at the center, I can say I'm surrounded by so many people from a global network, and my connection to them is honoring them, respecting them, loving them — people from Palestine, India, Israel, Russia, Germany, the United States, Brazil. I could name many more countries — Nepal, Colombia, Peru, Canada — places I'm connected to through people. This also shapes me: the relations I have with others. I find these are resources. Every person I meet is like a universe I can open and step into, into the kind of soul that comes toward me — always a sparkling universe, with all the lines that come together in that individual. It's very beautiful to get to know people and to live together with them in this same endeavor of creating peace on Earth. That's where I am in the field.
Monika: This morning I'm in an especially good mood.
Peter: We're making this podcast on the night after the full moon, in the period between two eclipses.
I'll ask some questions, but they're not really direct questions, and we don't need to go through them one by one — it's more like proposing some directions, and from there we can go anywhere, inside or out. My questions are just an attempt to touch on some maybe strange things and see what happens around them.
So I want to start with this: imagine the world now as a constellation — a field constellation. Where do you feel yourself in this field, and what's around you?
You know, like a systemic constellation — family constellations, where we go into a field and place some figures. For example, this is my father, this is my son. Or systemic constellations, where we place forces and processes in the world — the planet, Gaia, Earth, civilization — and give voice to these big forces and processes.
Monika: So I'd say I'm at a point where several — let me introduce a German word into English here — the word geistig, which means something like spiritual-mental and can't really be translated, the word Geist — where very different geistic lines meet. For example, philosophers, scientists, systems thinkers, therapists, political analysts, indigenous wisdom, earth wisdom — they all come together. All these lines cross, and I'm somehow in the pot where many of them meet. I wouldn't say all lines, but many. And that's where I am.
Yesterday an insight came to me: I asked myself whether I know enough to actually encounter myself — to be ready to encounter what a human being is, what comes up when you look into it, into its history, into its trauma, into its beauty. That's a research question for me. And within this same pot of crossing lines, I ask myself: what is there to do for the future, when what I want is to see peace on Earth, a thriving life, not a dying planet? That's where I place myself.
In terms of people and ancestors, I also have many lines — every human being has many lines coming together in them. If I place myself at the center, I can say I'm surrounded by so many people from a global network, and my connection to them is honoring them, respecting them, loving them — people from Palestine, India, Israel, Russia, Germany, the United States, Brazil. I could name many more countries — Nepal, Colombia, Peru, Canada — places I'm connected to through people. This also shapes me: the relations I have with others. I find these are resources. Every person I meet is like a universe I can open and step into, into the kind of soul that comes toward me — always a sparkling universe, with all the lines that come together in that individual. It's very beautiful to get to know people and to live together with them in this same endeavor of creating peace on Earth. That's where I am in the field.
Everything Belongs
Peter: I see. I really feel that, and it resonates with how I experience it too — as an intersection of lines, in the future, in the world, at this point where you are, where you feel now.
Monika: Maybe I should add something, because I left out my immediate environment. I live here in a community, together with children who aren't my own but whom I see grow up — I see them being born — and together with elder people, I also see them die. So here I am in an abundance of contacts, an abundance of relations. I also live with people from different countries, and I find myself in a melting pot between people I like and people I don't like so much. So there too it's a very diverse network I'm in, and this shapes my daily life, in the immediate surroundings I live in.
Then there's the regional network around it — the region I live in. So I can see it layer by layer, where I live.
And then there are the animal connections as well — I have a dog and a cat, there are wild boars and other animals around, and they belong here too — the snakes, the rabbits, the spiders, the rats. Everything actually surrounds one individual, and everything belongs somehow to me, as I belong to this environment.
Monika: Maybe I should add something, because I left out my immediate environment. I live here in a community, together with children who aren't my own but whom I see grow up — I see them being born — and together with elder people, I also see them die. So here I am in an abundance of contacts, an abundance of relations. I also live with people from different countries, and I find myself in a melting pot between people I like and people I don't like so much. So there too it's a very diverse network I'm in, and this shapes my daily life, in the immediate surroundings I live in.
Then there's the regional network around it — the region I live in. So I can see it layer by layer, where I live.
And then there are the animal connections as well — I have a dog and a cat, there are wild boars and other animals around, and they belong here too — the snakes, the rabbits, the spiders, the rats. Everything actually surrounds one individual, and everything belongs somehow to me, as I belong to this environment.
The Duty of Belief
Peter: Yes, I feel these lines around us. From this point in the center, at the intersection of all these lines, when you pose the question of a peaceful future on Earth — what voices come from the field around you? Not only voices that support this, but maybe also voices against it — local voices, human and non-human voices, and voices of the big processes on the planet right now.
Monika: There's a huge noise — almost the only noise — in the media, and in people's hearts, opposing this idea of achieving peace. And still, I know that the deepest point I can reach is the question: how would I envision a world where there is peace? Where all the rivers are flowing again, life thrives, fish are everywhere, the water is clear and clean, where I can smell the forest again, growing again.
By doing this — without letting myself be distracted by whatever people say — I'm helping evolution find a goal. Because if I don't believe in it, who is able to believe? And the power of manifestation that we human beings have is immense.
If I do follow the track of trauma and only look at the side that says the earth is dying — yes, I see that side too, it's clear, I see it — I still have to put all my weight on the other side. I don't care about people who say it will fade away. As long as I can truly believe — it's almost a spiritual task, a duty — I have to envision it. You know how it works on a personal level: when you really long for something, when you can imagine it and even feel it in your body, it comes. You manifest it. The same is true for the whole world.
One individual alone very likely isn't enough. But if a group of people starts to do this, to really put their inner weight on the side of peace, despite all the signs that say the contrary, I think we can achieve it. We don't need many people for this, but it has to be truly done — you can't cheat, you can't pretend. You have to feel it. And this is actually a wonderful task. Maybe it's the quickest path to manifesting it.
Peter: Wow. Duty of belief.
Monika: You're not allowed to let yourself be driven by fear or doubts — you have to put that away. You have to say: okay, I'm clear here, this is possible, I can feel it, I can even smell the forest, I can see what people are doing in this new way. What does the future look like — like a smell of the future, and a feeling of the future. And the more you feel it, the more you have to do it, you have to feel it.
Monika: There's a huge noise — almost the only noise — in the media, and in people's hearts, opposing this idea of achieving peace. And still, I know that the deepest point I can reach is the question: how would I envision a world where there is peace? Where all the rivers are flowing again, life thrives, fish are everywhere, the water is clear and clean, where I can smell the forest again, growing again.
By doing this — without letting myself be distracted by whatever people say — I'm helping evolution find a goal. Because if I don't believe in it, who is able to believe? And the power of manifestation that we human beings have is immense.
If I do follow the track of trauma and only look at the side that says the earth is dying — yes, I see that side too, it's clear, I see it — I still have to put all my weight on the other side. I don't care about people who say it will fade away. As long as I can truly believe — it's almost a spiritual task, a duty — I have to envision it. You know how it works on a personal level: when you really long for something, when you can imagine it and even feel it in your body, it comes. You manifest it. The same is true for the whole world.
One individual alone very likely isn't enough. But if a group of people starts to do this, to really put their inner weight on the side of peace, despite all the signs that say the contrary, I think we can achieve it. We don't need many people for this, but it has to be truly done — you can't cheat, you can't pretend. You have to feel it. And this is actually a wonderful task. Maybe it's the quickest path to manifesting it.
Peter: Wow. Duty of belief.
Monika: You're not allowed to let yourself be driven by fear or doubts — you have to put that away. You have to say: okay, I'm clear here, this is possible, I can feel it, I can even smell the forest, I can see what people are doing in this new way. What does the future look like — like a smell of the future, and a feeling of the future. And the more you feel it, the more you have to do it, you have to feel it.
Keeping the Heart Open
Peter: Do you have some special practices for connecting with the future in the body — this smelling of the future?
Monika: Yes, you can do it mechanically — you can think, okay, I'll practice this every day until I can do it. But I don't think that's the way. I think there is no method, really. The only thing you can train is to open your heart. Try to keep your heart open. Don't let anyone be the reason you close your heart.
There's nothing — I mean, this is a big lesson — to be in a state where, with an open heart, you look at the world as it is, you look at other people, and you don't react. That's a huge task, but I think it's the way. I'm not very disciplined, you know — I can't think about these things mechanically. And in the end, there is no method. All of a sudden it's there. All of a sudden you're in it. Or your heart, all of a sudden, opens by itself, almost. Love is the answer, actually.
And maybe there is a method, in a way. Sometimes I look into the world and pick out something that touches me — something I'm touched by, let's say a child who is starving, or something that is really suffering. And then I try to step into the moccasins of that child. I try to see what's happening in its soul. And I go so deep into it that I notice the tears I shed aren't for my own pain — I cry because of the pain of others. And that's the moment when the heart opens. I often do this to find direction again.
Monika: Yes, you can do it mechanically — you can think, okay, I'll practice this every day until I can do it. But I don't think that's the way. I think there is no method, really. The only thing you can train is to open your heart. Try to keep your heart open. Don't let anyone be the reason you close your heart.
There's nothing — I mean, this is a big lesson — to be in a state where, with an open heart, you look at the world as it is, you look at other people, and you don't react. That's a huge task, but I think it's the way. I'm not very disciplined, you know — I can't think about these things mechanically. And in the end, there is no method. All of a sudden it's there. All of a sudden you're in it. Or your heart, all of a sudden, opens by itself, almost. Love is the answer, actually.
And maybe there is a method, in a way. Sometimes I look into the world and pick out something that touches me — something I'm touched by, let's say a child who is starving, or something that is really suffering. And then I try to step into the moccasins of that child. I try to see what's happening in its soul. And I go so deep into it that I notice the tears I shed aren't for my own pain — I cry because of the pain of others. And that's the moment when the heart opens. I often do this to find direction again.
Between Two Infinities
Monika: Or, about death: when you deal with death, you find life. When you deal with the very end of life — where you think, oh, I'm afraid to look — that's exactly when you find your way back to life, when you suddenly notice how precious this life in this material body is. We spend more time, if there's time, in the beyond, without a body — this incarnation is a very special situation, and we should use it very wisely, because otherwise we regret what we've done. And most of the time we do regret it — oh God, what have I done, because I wasn't conscious enough. But we have chosen.
Peter: A short moment between two infinities in the body.
Monika: We have chosen to incarnate, because we wanted to experience life in the body. And what we then do on this side is a disaster, because we forget about this. That's where all the wars come from.
Peter: A short moment between two infinities in the body.
Monika: We have chosen to incarnate, because we wanted to experience life in the body. And what we then do on this side is a disaster, because we forget about this. That's where all the wars come from.
From Fear to Trust
Peter: Sometimes, when I recognize a lot of traumas in myself, and when I'm more connected to my traumatized parts, I understand — I recognize — that I also smell the future, but a future that comes from these traumas. And I think a lot of people in the world now also act from this kind of smelling of the future, directing their attention toward a future of wars, for example, of extracting the planet's resources, of war with nature too.
So when we say, okay, let's turn our attention and our hearts to the future — there are also a lot of people doing the same thing, but smelling a different future, maybe because of trauma. For example, I sometimes think about transhumanist movements and singularity movements — they're rather optimistic. They don't pose an intention for war, but they pose an intention for a world they believe in, and they smell it too. I don't know — maybe they smell the technological singularity.
Do you think that comes from the path of their hearts too, or does it come from trauma?
Monika: I think we can distinguish between an action driven by trauma and an action that comes from an open heart.
To think that a machine and a human being together make up a singularity, or that this is what's meant by singularity — I can't see it that way. What I can see is that singularity means the divine and the human coming together, so that our hands, our words, our feet actually become the hands, words, and feet of a divine being — not of a traumatized human being, a frozen one with frozen emotions, unconscious, but of a very wide, open-minded, conscious, open-hearted being. Whether technology helps us understand that the machine isn't the other part of me but some kind of life force — it can be, it can be. I mean, human beings believe in technology, they have goals, they want to reach Mars, they want to create AI and even better computers, and so on. In that sense, the human mind is fully creative. But when it comes to social patterns, social organization, and the healing of human beings, it's numb. It doesn't work in that field with the same creativity — nobody says, let's heal the whole of humanity. Almost nothing has been done at that scale when it comes to human beings, to love, to love relationships — even though this would make a huge difference in my life, whether I have fulfillment in love or not. When I look at what's being done on this planet, I'd say almost 99 percent of it is fear-driven. The fundamental ground we stand on is fear, not love.
So when we say, okay, let's turn our attention and our hearts to the future — there are also a lot of people doing the same thing, but smelling a different future, maybe because of trauma. For example, I sometimes think about transhumanist movements and singularity movements — they're rather optimistic. They don't pose an intention for war, but they pose an intention for a world they believe in, and they smell it too. I don't know — maybe they smell the technological singularity.
Do you think that comes from the path of their hearts too, or does it come from trauma?
Monika: I think we can distinguish between an action driven by trauma and an action that comes from an open heart.
To think that a machine and a human being together make up a singularity, or that this is what's meant by singularity — I can't see it that way. What I can see is that singularity means the divine and the human coming together, so that our hands, our words, our feet actually become the hands, words, and feet of a divine being — not of a traumatized human being, a frozen one with frozen emotions, unconscious, but of a very wide, open-minded, conscious, open-hearted being. Whether technology helps us understand that the machine isn't the other part of me but some kind of life force — it can be, it can be. I mean, human beings believe in technology, they have goals, they want to reach Mars, they want to create AI and even better computers, and so on. In that sense, the human mind is fully creative. But when it comes to social patterns, social organization, and the healing of human beings, it's numb. It doesn't work in that field with the same creativity — nobody says, let's heal the whole of humanity. Almost nothing has been done at that scale when it comes to human beings, to love, to love relationships — even though this would make a huge difference in my life, whether I have fulfillment in love or not. When I look at what's being done on this planet, I'd say almost 99 percent of it is fear-driven. The fundamental ground we stand on is fear, not love.
Healing Biotopes
Peter: As I understand you, it's very important to look for answers to this challenge — the move from fear to love — in connection, in community with other people, and not only with humans. It can't be an individual path. Because now, when we use the language of trauma — which has become a very common language in some psychotherapy approaches, and a lot of psychotherapy systems work with trauma, quite successfully on an individual level — it seems like the trauma we're talking about now isn't only individual. So when a person goes to individual psychotherapy, say, one session a week, one-on-one, some parts of very deep trauma can't be healed that way. Do you think so?
Monika: I think we have to create healing biotopes — places where people live together with the intention of healing their trauma by creating a new life. If I live in a society with certain conditions, a certain paradigm that says this is right and this is wrong, and this is how you should behave, then I can't heal there. I have to create a life where the life force has value, where ethics has value, where I learn to become a social being — a being that cares for others. That's a learning process.
We can be intelligent enough to create life forms — environments that heal us. We can't only work with one individual healing another individual, because when you look at the therapist too, he also lives in the same society, with the same restrictions as the person he wants to heal. So I've always thought that therapy sometimes just means helping somebody adapt — giving them the strength to adapt to a system that is wrong. But we have to create a whole new system, so that we can heal according to our life force, our nature, our geistig — our mental being — our brain, our heart, our sexual nature. Everything has to fit in there.
This liberation, it's true, can't be done by the individual alone. But we could be intelligent enough to create these islands, these oases, where healing can take place together — with animals, plants, children, adults — so we create a healing environment. It's at least an attempt, an intelligent attempt. One has to see whether it works or not. And within such living experiments, individual therapy has a different value, because it really can help someone overcome a trauma — but then it releases that healed individual back into an already healing environment. So it's a different direction.
Monika: I think we have to create healing biotopes — places where people live together with the intention of healing their trauma by creating a new life. If I live in a society with certain conditions, a certain paradigm that says this is right and this is wrong, and this is how you should behave, then I can't heal there. I have to create a life where the life force has value, where ethics has value, where I learn to become a social being — a being that cares for others. That's a learning process.
We can be intelligent enough to create life forms — environments that heal us. We can't only work with one individual healing another individual, because when you look at the therapist too, he also lives in the same society, with the same restrictions as the person he wants to heal. So I've always thought that therapy sometimes just means helping somebody adapt — giving them the strength to adapt to a system that is wrong. But we have to create a whole new system, so that we can heal according to our life force, our nature, our geistig — our mental being — our brain, our heart, our sexual nature. Everything has to fit in there.
This liberation, it's true, can't be done by the individual alone. But we could be intelligent enough to create these islands, these oases, where healing can take place together — with animals, plants, children, adults — so we create a healing environment. It's at least an attempt, an intelligent attempt. One has to see whether it works or not. And within such living experiments, individual therapy has a different value, because it really can help someone overcome a trauma — but then it releases that healed individual back into an already healing environment. So it's a different direction.
There Is a Way Out
Peter: So what would you advise people who live within the system now — in cities, for example — connected to the system through these lines you talked about at the beginning? A lot of people live and work within systems now — maybe not in the war industry, but just within modern civilization, the capitalist system. There's an intersection of a lot of lines of energy there, for example: they need to pay for an apartment, for food, so they need to work to pay for the apartment; if they have children or elderly parents, they need money for that too. This connection to the system is very pervasive, touching every point.
Whereas, for example, if you're in a community on the earth, living, collecting, harvesting, making juice — that's a completely different situation. One piece of advice, of course, could be: find a community, live on the land, with the earth, find a place, buy a house, buy a farm. But for those who can't do that right now — what advice can you give?
Monika: I can't really give advice to people I don't know. If they're so entangled in society, in everything, that they can't move anymore — they're almost trapped, and there's almost no way out, especially if they have children — they can't just stop. The children go to school, and the parents don't earn enough to do anything else or go anywhere else. So maybe the only way is to find online communities where you can start to exchange things. I mean, you can always start with relationships — you can always dedicate some time to building relationships. And from there, slowly, slowly, you start to get detached from many things.
I can say for myself that at some point I decided to leave that kind of life, quite early on. And I remember thinking, how could this ever work, how could I survive without a job? And after I quit my job, I actually had more money than when I was working regularly — it's a bit of a miracle how that happened. But it's because I no longer had all those regular expenses — paying for my apartment, paying for a car because I had to commute, and so on. Almost everything I earned, I spent just to be able to earn that money. I was living for work I didn't even like.
When I quit, I could do what I wanted, and I got money from different sources too — I ended up richer than before. I didn't end up under a bridge, like they warn you. So often you're told, oh, you'll end up lost, don't leave society — but that's wrong. You can leave it, and a new world opens up.
But I didn't have children, I wasn't married, so I didn't have all those responsibilities. I was young. So I can't tell anyone else to do the same — you have to look at your own situation. But for all people, no matter where they live, there is guidance within themselves. When you're not happy, you can ask for guidance, and then do what you're told to do. There's always an answer when you have a real question. This is true for all people, no matter where they live.
Peter: Can you say more about that miracle — for people to see it more concretely, in a material way, how it can happen that you had more resources after leaving a job? I'd like to hear more examples. Maybe more about your own example — you said you decided to leave your job and your life in the city, and as a miracle, you ended up with more resources. That was a long time ago. Maybe, for someone — or for myself, actually, not only someone else — to trust this miracle, one needs to see how it can work, because the story we're told by civilization says the opposite: don't do it.
Monika: I mean, you don't have regular costs anymore — you give away your car, you give away your apartment. Maybe you live with friends, you travel, or you get a job, you have money, you do this — and all of a sudden you find yourself in a different life, open to occasions, to situations you can use for yourself. I never had money problems in my life. If I had problems, they were love problems, or problems with orientation — but never money problems. When you follow your inner sense — in the beginning you don't really know the way, you have to look for it, search for it. You take one step, then another. You follow it as if you were blind. You follow certain paths, and then you find more and more resonance. You ask yourself, do I go right or left? And then you find the answer inside yourself. And you're always given what you need — as if life is there to give to you, to help you. It's not that you get punished. But I can't generalize this, I can't say it's true for everyone.
I can't say more about the miracles that happened to me, but I know of one woman from Germany, Heidemarie Schwermer, who also wanted to try the experiment of living without money. From that decision, miracles started happening. In spring, she gave away all her winter clothes, and in the fall she received donations from people — clothes that were exactly the ones she liked, or would have loved to find. Or she'd want to eat some chocolate, and then she'd pass a supermarket and find chocolate that someone had dropped — and it was her favorite kind. It was as if the universe would constantly give you presents when you're at a certain frequency.
When you're rushing, when you only have a little time and you have to get things done, you're not open to this kind of miracle, and then you say they don't exist. But when you shift your life's frequency, these miracles can come. She wrote a book about it — it's very interesting. She gave the manuscript to a publisher, the publisher took it, and she was asked to write more. Then she had money, because she earned it through the book. But she didn't want to have money, so she put it into little envelopes, went into the middle of a city, and gave it away. People were so astonished — they could hardly believe that someone would just give away money as a gift.
It's an interesting story to tell — a bit of an extreme example, no? But it happens. You have to be in touch with something different. In our normal society we live a structured life in such a way that you function constantly, from the moment you wake up until you fall asleep at night — you have to get your children to school or to kindergarten, cook, work, meet someone, go to the doctor. Your whole life, you're running. And in the end, you fall into a coffin, and that was your life — and you wonder, what was it all about? But when you step out of that and shift into a different frequency, things can come very differently. You can live side by side with someone and it's as if you're living in two different universes.
Peter: I understand.
Monika: Peace Pilgrim is also a very good example — a woman from the U.S. who decided, I think she was around fifty, relatively old already, to walk only for peace. She didn't have anything — I think just a toothbrush, not even a blanket or a sleeping bag — and she walked. She never asked people to give her food; they would just give her everything. She was so connected that she would always find a good place to sleep, always find enough food. She walked for miles, thousands and thousands of miles, and became well known by the end — she walked tens of thousands of miles. Peace Pilgrim. She wrote a beautiful book, also freely available online, about the spiritual path she walked.
It was exactly what she was meant to do. There were also many miracles, as she describes it.
Whereas, for example, if you're in a community on the earth, living, collecting, harvesting, making juice — that's a completely different situation. One piece of advice, of course, could be: find a community, live on the land, with the earth, find a place, buy a house, buy a farm. But for those who can't do that right now — what advice can you give?
Monika: I can't really give advice to people I don't know. If they're so entangled in society, in everything, that they can't move anymore — they're almost trapped, and there's almost no way out, especially if they have children — they can't just stop. The children go to school, and the parents don't earn enough to do anything else or go anywhere else. So maybe the only way is to find online communities where you can start to exchange things. I mean, you can always start with relationships — you can always dedicate some time to building relationships. And from there, slowly, slowly, you start to get detached from many things.
I can say for myself that at some point I decided to leave that kind of life, quite early on. And I remember thinking, how could this ever work, how could I survive without a job? And after I quit my job, I actually had more money than when I was working regularly — it's a bit of a miracle how that happened. But it's because I no longer had all those regular expenses — paying for my apartment, paying for a car because I had to commute, and so on. Almost everything I earned, I spent just to be able to earn that money. I was living for work I didn't even like.
When I quit, I could do what I wanted, and I got money from different sources too — I ended up richer than before. I didn't end up under a bridge, like they warn you. So often you're told, oh, you'll end up lost, don't leave society — but that's wrong. You can leave it, and a new world opens up.
But I didn't have children, I wasn't married, so I didn't have all those responsibilities. I was young. So I can't tell anyone else to do the same — you have to look at your own situation. But for all people, no matter where they live, there is guidance within themselves. When you're not happy, you can ask for guidance, and then do what you're told to do. There's always an answer when you have a real question. This is true for all people, no matter where they live.
Peter: Can you say more about that miracle — for people to see it more concretely, in a material way, how it can happen that you had more resources after leaving a job? I'd like to hear more examples. Maybe more about your own example — you said you decided to leave your job and your life in the city, and as a miracle, you ended up with more resources. That was a long time ago. Maybe, for someone — or for myself, actually, not only someone else — to trust this miracle, one needs to see how it can work, because the story we're told by civilization says the opposite: don't do it.
Monika: I mean, you don't have regular costs anymore — you give away your car, you give away your apartment. Maybe you live with friends, you travel, or you get a job, you have money, you do this — and all of a sudden you find yourself in a different life, open to occasions, to situations you can use for yourself. I never had money problems in my life. If I had problems, they were love problems, or problems with orientation — but never money problems. When you follow your inner sense — in the beginning you don't really know the way, you have to look for it, search for it. You take one step, then another. You follow it as if you were blind. You follow certain paths, and then you find more and more resonance. You ask yourself, do I go right or left? And then you find the answer inside yourself. And you're always given what you need — as if life is there to give to you, to help you. It's not that you get punished. But I can't generalize this, I can't say it's true for everyone.
I can't say more about the miracles that happened to me, but I know of one woman from Germany, Heidemarie Schwermer, who also wanted to try the experiment of living without money. From that decision, miracles started happening. In spring, she gave away all her winter clothes, and in the fall she received donations from people — clothes that were exactly the ones she liked, or would have loved to find. Or she'd want to eat some chocolate, and then she'd pass a supermarket and find chocolate that someone had dropped — and it was her favorite kind. It was as if the universe would constantly give you presents when you're at a certain frequency.
When you're rushing, when you only have a little time and you have to get things done, you're not open to this kind of miracle, and then you say they don't exist. But when you shift your life's frequency, these miracles can come. She wrote a book about it — it's very interesting. She gave the manuscript to a publisher, the publisher took it, and she was asked to write more. Then she had money, because she earned it through the book. But she didn't want to have money, so she put it into little envelopes, went into the middle of a city, and gave it away. People were so astonished — they could hardly believe that someone would just give away money as a gift.
It's an interesting story to tell — a bit of an extreme example, no? But it happens. You have to be in touch with something different. In our normal society we live a structured life in such a way that you function constantly, from the moment you wake up until you fall asleep at night — you have to get your children to school or to kindergarten, cook, work, meet someone, go to the doctor. Your whole life, you're running. And in the end, you fall into a coffin, and that was your life — and you wonder, what was it all about? But when you step out of that and shift into a different frequency, things can come very differently. You can live side by side with someone and it's as if you're living in two different universes.
Peter: I understand.
Monika: Peace Pilgrim is also a very good example — a woman from the U.S. who decided, I think she was around fifty, relatively old already, to walk only for peace. She didn't have anything — I think just a toothbrush, not even a blanket or a sleeping bag — and she walked. She never asked people to give her food; they would just give her everything. She was so connected that she would always find a good place to sleep, always find enough food. She walked for miles, thousands and thousands of miles, and became well known by the end — she walked tens of thousands of miles. Peace Pilgrim. She wrote a beautiful book, also freely available online, about the spiritual path she walked.
It was exactly what she was meant to do. There were also many miracles, as she describes it.
A Dream
Peter: I think maybe a last question — it's a kind of standard question I ask everyone in this cycle of podcasts. If you had the opportunity to construct — to set, let's say — a night dream, for billions of people, so that on the next night everyone could have the same, coherent dream — every person on Earth, or maybe not all, but a very, very large number.
Monika: And I would give them the dream, as if I were playing a movie in their heads.
Peter: Well, of course a night dream isn't a movie — I mean it's some kind of experience. You'd have the opportunity to construct this experience, to send some message through this experience of a night dream, for billions of people, the next night.
Monika: Then I would send them a dream where they meet their deepest love — the one they were longing for, their deepest love — and all of a sudden this love works. Like the lover they were always yearning for comes and says, you are beautiful, let's be together, or something like that. I would give them dreams that end in the fulfillment of love, of their deepest dream, their deepest longing. The most beautiful woman they can think of says, I like you, I love you, you are in my heart like this — or the most beautiful man, or the most beautiful creature — so that they feel loved. This is the dream I would send them, as deep into the heart as I can. And they would wake up in the morning, and all of a sudden their world would be changed, because they'd feel accepted and loved. This is what I would send them.
Thank you for this interview — it was interesting.
Peter: Thank you, Monika.
If you want to get in touch with us:
Monika Alleweldt: email: monika.alleweldt@tamera.org
Peter Levich: linkedin, facebook, telegram, email: levich.petr@gmail.com
Useful links:
Tamera Peace Research and Education Center
Illustrations created by Peter Levich with Midjourney.
Monika: And I would give them the dream, as if I were playing a movie in their heads.
Peter: Well, of course a night dream isn't a movie — I mean it's some kind of experience. You'd have the opportunity to construct this experience, to send some message through this experience of a night dream, for billions of people, the next night.
Monika: Then I would send them a dream where they meet their deepest love — the one they were longing for, their deepest love — and all of a sudden this love works. Like the lover they were always yearning for comes and says, you are beautiful, let's be together, or something like that. I would give them dreams that end in the fulfillment of love, of their deepest dream, their deepest longing. The most beautiful woman they can think of says, I like you, I love you, you are in my heart like this — or the most beautiful man, or the most beautiful creature — so that they feel loved. This is the dream I would send them, as deep into the heart as I can. And they would wake up in the morning, and all of a sudden their world would be changed, because they'd feel accepted and loved. This is what I would send them.
Thank you for this interview — it was interesting.
Peter: Thank you, Monika.
If you want to get in touch with us:
Monika Alleweldt: email: monika.alleweldt@tamera.org
Peter Levich: linkedin, facebook, telegram, email: levich.petr@gmail.com
Useful links:
Tamera Peace Research and Education Center
Illustrations created by Peter Levich with Midjourney.