Thoughts on the topic of Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, who will speak about ,,Melting the ice in the heart of men”

written by Noël Norbron, January 2024

The first of our four main lectures at the ISC is entitled “Melting the ice in the heart of men”. This sounds beautiful and describes an image that I think all of us can relate to, a metaphor that can have a meaning for everyone, as one of the properties of ice is coldness, and we don’t want to carry that in our hearts. 

The heart, the subject of this conference, is so warm, so alive. It is full of virtues and emotions and full of power to keep us alive, not least to keep our heads alive. Besides all medical data and breakdowns of the hormonal origins of our emotions, there is a feeling within us that localises love, courage and trust not just in our brain, but as a holistic feeling that originates not from our crown, but from our centre.

The world we live in today largely takes place in our mind, it is thoughts about thoughts that make us do something and then stop doing it again. Changing thoughts, influenced by this and that, and unfortunately far too often isolated from the impressions of our many senses. I am talking about the extremes here, about the coldness of the head and the heat of the heart, this image arises in me when I see these two forces in me as separate from each other. But if I allow these organs to work together, then a third force can arise within.

For me, “Melting the ice in the heart of men” is a role call to our wholeness. An appeal to our thinking, our feeling and our will. An appeal which arises out of necessity, out of a crisis, but can take us much further than just out of the crisis that brought it about!

The “ice” we feel in our hearts is certainly different for everyone. But do we actually feel it? Haven’t our hearts, exposed to the ice, become too numb to feel that something is actually cold? I think we have reached a point where we need each other to notice the cold in our own and to melt the ice in each other’s hearts, to help each other warm up the cold that makes us more and more lonely. 

There is something beautiful about the nature of this task: we are not waging a battle against the ice in order to drive it away or break it. We are concerned with softening the hard ice and making what is valuable in it available again – the water, the substance on which all life is based.  

I still haven’t written anything about what the ice in our hearts might symbolise, where it comes from and why we are exposed to it. I can try, but I will leave the answer to this question to all of you individually, and to the Inuit shaman Angaangaq, who will have much to tell us on 10 April.

We live in a time in which material things dominate our thoughts and thus (excessively) determine our present and our future. We are destroying nature, our basis of life, despite all clear thinking and every feeling, solely in order to create material goods that will enable us to continue living exactly in the same way for a limited period of time. This behaviour is based on greed, fear, and our love of luxury; we are frozen in a way of life that could not be more hostile to life and that brings existing life forms on earth to the brink of extinction. 

We treat Mother Earth as if she was a predictable machine, and even calculate how much damage we can still cause until the collapse will finally happen. Of course, calculating our damage serves an important purpose. But it pains me to see how, even in the face of the immeasurable suffering that humans are inflicting on the planet, we are still calculating how much more it can withstand and then pushing it to the limit (and worse, beyond). 

The urgent task of protecting the earth has been shifted to science. A science that deals with the life crisis of people on planet Earth as if it were a mathematical instead of a behavioural problem, a crisis of consciousness or a relationship crisis. Does the origin of the catastrophe really lie in the amount of greenhouse gases? Or can´t we recognise underlying parts of the problem when people start to claim land as their own, clearing swathes of land for their own benefit and putting their own prosperity above a good life for all and coexistence with nature? 

We are hardened in our notion of power, which stems from the abilities we have as free-thinking beings.  And this in turn leads us, counter-effectively, to a loss of truly free thinking, which nowadays seems to fall victim to the greed for more and more material goods.

Our emotional, innate connection to the other living beings on this planet, which reside in the heart, the life-giving organ, is paralysed by this hardening. And we see the effects of this not only in a completely unsympathetic approach to the world around us, but also in a deterioration of our own health, both physically and mentally. 

And our will? The power that resides in our limbs? This flows completely into the organ that is not anaesthetised, into the mind, which, however, functions without any feeling. The will is transformed because it cannot follow its actual purpose, which would be a healthy thinking from the heart. It transforms into a pitiful image of itself: The will to own. 

But even after this development our will does not leave us in peace; somewhere in us there is something dissatisfied, something neglected, ready but trapped. Something that we cannot satisfy by always having more. 

This is what prompts us to go on a search and to direct our thoughts towards our feelings towards the world and how we deal with it. What prompts us to train our consciousness and to develop our consciousness soul. In the end, this is what gives us real strength to free ourselves from the icy hardening in our hearts and to give each other warmth, so that the cold inside can be warmed from the inside as well as from the outside.

It might seem commonplace or banal, but this is actually the most fundamental way of becoming active for our world from within and to let the warmth arise within us instead of the atmosphere. The ice that melts into water within us makes us so alive that we can counteract the melting of the ice on the polar caps. We become empowered, finally throw off the feeling of powerlessness that is our constant companion and see what we are capable of achieving as human beings. 

Sometimes I think that human beings already have their hands full being grateful and appreciating the gifts that the world tirelessly gives us.

I want to incorporate this gratitude into my actions. And check every action to see whether it is done in the spirit of my gratitude towards the gifts of this world. This is a very conscious process that is not difficult, but rather gratifying and inspiring.

People are bringing more and more of this awareness into their lives as an ability that is given to us at birth. And this heightened awareness of people’s actions in the world, and the state of people’s relationship with each other and with nature, can be very painful for those sensitive souls. 

Whenever young people have an impulse in one direction, the counter-effect can take a lot of strength from this impulse. We are experiencing a great overload of people’s awareness of reality. Escape options from this are found in virtual reality; addiction to computer games is an everyday phenomenon in today’s society, increasingly so, as is the use of drugs. More and more people are no longer able to cope psychologically and are withdrawing from the outer world, which manifests itself in communication disorders.

But as we develop a consciousness, we will realise that we have a certain responsibility. Not just humanity as a whole, but each bearer of consciousness him- or herself.

This responsibility is our strength, not our downfall! The sense of responsibility is not the problem, which video game addiction would therefore be a symptom of. It is how we absorb the responsibility we feel, and how we deal with the urge to make a difference on this earth, that determines whether our heightened sense of responsibility drives us into flight or into action.  Into isolation or community. 

Individuals are not alone with their urge to help the earth, with the burden of their responsibility as human beings. We are united in this feeling, and community is the key to moving us into action that can fulfill our urge to help. That is why one of our great tasks is to find our way together.

Isn’t each of us a representative of humanity in our very own actions? If you met an alien, the impression you would leave behind would be the image other aliens would have of humanity from that point on.  Why is this so far-fetched? It doesn’t work with aliens only – we project images of ourselves into all life forms unknown to us anyway. 

We also operate in this way when we encounter each other and our environment.

This responsibility can easily be perceived as a burden, and this feeling also quickly leads us to a feeling of powerlessness. Fortunately, however, we can also work on freeing our hearts from its numbness. With this release, we will unleash more than we think! It is the virtues of the heart that now come to our aid, it is courage, a lot of courage, it is feeling that enables us to realise that we are not alone. It´s also hope, which cannot die in a beating heart, and warmth, which makes us independent. We are not immobilised when it gets too cold, like lizards, we are little power stations that can provide warmth to each other when it gets dark – like bees. It is trust that lives in our deeming heart, deep trust in our own abilities and in the help of the planet on which we live. Because it has always been there. We can trust in the rising of the sun and in all the gifts that come to us every day, unnoticed.

Imagine walking through a market as a person with a free mind and an open heart, wanting food.  But it’s not like a normal market; instead, everyone is giving you presents and won’t let you pay!  For my part, I would pay very close attention to what and how much I take home with me. 

For me, this market is the image of a world in which people have been able to melt the ice in their hearts and finally recognise the gifts of the earth as such and don’t want to shirk their responsibility as recipients.

There is no need to fight for food or to forcefully snatch food from the earth. You will be taken care of, you can trust that. This is the economy in which a warm human being can live.

Economist Kelley Buhles will tell us more about this in her presentation at the ISC. Her impetus for our society will also be the subject of the next blog post.