Europe has to receive many people who are fleeing their own countries. The question arises as to how we can keep our specific European nature while doing so. Movements are being stirred up that protest against such ‘flooding’ with people from the Arabic countries.
But what is our true identity? Does it matter so much that we keep it? It only matters if we have our own true identity. But if we really had a true identity we would not have to fear to losing it, if it is strong and sound enough.
In the nineties I wrote a book: Seek the light that rises in the West. In German 'West' is translated in 'Abendland', the country of the evening. In the East the sun rises and therefore it is the country of the morning. In the West the sun sets and it is therefore the evening country.
The East has a very specific spiritual tradition. In the West there seems to be more a religious tradition, and this doesn't touch the real essence of the human being as deeply as a spiritual movement does.
In Europe we should have a strong spiritual impulse. Were we to develop this, we could welcome the whole world and still not lose our true European identity.
But the European illness is that there is no feeling for the necessity of solving problems in the inner life, nor that solving them inwardly would really lead to worldwide positive outward changes.
Who can believe that?
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What then is the nucleus of European spirituality, the nucleus of esoteric Christianity?
It is the turnaround that I have written about in the last two weeks on this blog. No outward movement is needed; an inward movement, motion is needed, which will turn out to be at the same time the deepest Christian emotion, because it is viewing the Logos in His resurrected state. The inner regard of thinking has to be turned to thinking itself. There, where the outer light sets, the inner light rises. Thoughts are mostly conscious. Thinking itself, however, is forgotten and, by forgetting it, we forget more and more who we actually are: we, Europeans, are the people that have the opportunity to bring intellectuality on to a spiritual level.
![Motion and emotion](https://www.miekemosmuller.com/images/Blog77_A.jpg)
Motion and emotion by Mieke Mosmuller