Wisdom teacher offers spiritual fitness program: "You have to let nature work without judging it"

Created: 12/20/2022, 6:00 p.m

Contemplation and wisdom teacher: Roland R. Ropers offers a "spiritual fitness program" in Bernried and thinks about the future of the cultural sector.

© SABINE NÄHER

Roland R. Ropers is a contemplation and wisdom teacher in Bernried.

In an interview with the local newspaper, he talks about his work and the fact that there is definitely a difference between reality and reality.

Bernried - Watching-Wisdom-Walking - that's what Roland R. Ropers calls the hikes he leads around Lake Starnberg, which he offers for individuals or small groups and describes as a "spiritual fitness program".

In about five hours out at the lake, it's not about physical training, but about "the way home to yourself", says Ropers: "People go step by step without pursuing a goal.

Every step should be consciously perceived.” There is no speaking.

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"With every spiritual master the conversation is short"

After an hour, Ropers pauses for a first reflection.

"But all in all, the word portion is no more than half an hour," he emphasizes.

People should get in touch with themselves.

"With any spiritual master, the conversation is brief," Ropers clarifies.

Another exercise: you stop opposite two old oak trees in Bernrieder Park and do nothing for a whole hour other than make contact with these trees.

"It's about realizing that nature works cyclically.

And our lives are not linear either, but are also subject to cycles,” explains the Hanseat, who was born in Stade an der Elbe in 1945 as the eldest of five sons in a family steeped in tradition.

For a good 20 years he worked as a foreign trade clerk in the petrochemical business for large American corporations around the world before turning to studying comparative religious philosophy and linguistics.

Ropers studied at universities in the USA, India and Sri Lanka and realized that this alone could not lead him to the desired goal: “You have to learn from a master.

That's the bottom line.

And I found my great teacher in India.”

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Friendly contacts with greats of the music world

Ropers was apprenticed to the Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths, who researched the common origin of world religions.

And since then he has been carrying his findings out into the world in lectures and publications.

But back to Bavaria: From 1989 to 1997, Ropers was the managing director of a private clinic on Lake Tegernsee.

Since he missed an appealing cultural program there, he quickly created one himself.

At the "Kreuther Kulturforum" he organized a concert every Friday, using the artist contacts he had made on his world-spanning travels.

The musicians, who traveled from far away, were guests of Ropers and his wife, the doctor Christiane May-Ropers, for the whole weekend.

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This resulted in friendly contacts with greats in the music world such as the soprano Diana Damrau, the Russian pianist Svjastoslav Richter and the Italian pianist Alessandra Gentile.

To this day, Ropers allows his good connections to play in the background at local concert promoters.

But the culture industry as we have known it has survived, he says.

“We currently have several crises at the same time.

The renewal of culture will take place regionally, globalization has turned out to be a mistake.

The megastars that travel around the world and fill the big halls everywhere are a thing of the past.

But without culture and music, the world would collapse.”

(The local newspapers in the Weilheim-Schongau district are represented on Instagram under “merkur_wm_sog”.)

Reality is not the same as reality

Artists who regroup to work locally will keep the culture alive, Roper hopes.

This also offers the opportunity to involve the audience more again.

Because most people would have lost touch with their direct and immediate surroundings.

So back to the guided hikes on the lake: It's about experiencing reality.

“Not to be confused with reality, because reality has an object.

Reality is what affects us.

You have to let nature work its magic without judging it.

Intellectualizing is not wanted right now.”

This is easy on the one hand and very difficult on the other.

But definitely worth striving for, because “true being takes place in reality, what we are always looking for – consciously and unconsciously.

Healing can also take place here,” promises Roland R. Ropers.

FROM SABINE CLOSER

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