An Energywork Lesson from a Concentration Camp

[A reflection on the two faces of energy.]

“ . . . like orbiting twin stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what’s evident, forever affected by the gravity of what’s concealed.”`
~Sue Grafton

For several years I lived near Dachau, Germany, where one of the largest Nazi concentration camps was located. Even a short tour of the grounds leaves a strong impression. Rows of barracks stretch out in the tidy right-angled enclosure, surrounded by neat, evenly spaced coils of barbed wire atop gray cement walls. Everything is set on a grid in right angles. Men operating under the bizarre trance of the Nazi’s “final solution” apparently developed a neurotic worship of the squarish details of their mission in order to keep alive the frame of mind necessary to run a successful concentration camp. According to some accounts, there was always a prisoner whose duty it was to go from barrack to barrack with a carpenter’s square and a ball of string to snap straight chalk-lines on the floors in order to make sure that each bunk was exactly perpendicular to the walls of the room.

The grounds of the Dachau Concentration Camp are well kept. Clean white gravel pathways crunch under the feet of tens of thousands of tourists who come each year. The museum’s photo exhibition shows masses of wasted…