A few words about me

My name is René Kälin. I was born on 29 April 1979 at 1:44 pm in Einsiedeln, on a radiant spring day. The sun was shining, the air must have smelled of new beginnings, and the first blossoms were surely opening. When my mother carried me home five days later, the world lay still under a white blanket – it had snowed.

Perhaps that was my first sign. For this field of tension has accompanied me ever since: light and shadow, warmth and cold, birth and death, heaven and earth. Two shores – and me in between, always looking for the bridge.

My name means «the reborn one». And indeed, I have been born anew many times in my life. Sometimes through crises that took me all the way to the bottom. Sometimes through grace that simply happened, quiet as snow at night. And sometimes through journeys inward, into landscapes for which there are hardly any words.

I am the father of two boys – two golden treasures. Every day they show me what authenticity means and what trust is. They hold up a mirror to me, incorruptible and loving at the same time, as clearly as only children can.

When my sister died in a car accident at the age of sixteen, a world broke inside me. Since then, the big questions have accompanied me like quiet companions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there an afterwards? And what actually is the now?

For a long time I imagined life as a chain: one existence after another, like pearls on a string. But experiences that fundamentally changed my life have widened this picture. Today I ask myself: what if these pearls don't lie one after the other at all? What if we are in many rooms at once – woven together across time and dimensions? Perhaps we are more than this body, more than this time, more than this one story. Energy, vibration, consciousness. Permeated by the power of the earth and the sky and of everything that pulses in between. Carried by a universal intelligence that I call love – the great whole into which we are woven like a thread into a colourful cloth.

For a long time I fought against systems. School was never my place. Not because I couldn't keep up, but because I wanted to understand instead of memorise. Because I wanted to feel instead of function. While the chalk scratched across the blackboard at the front, my thoughts often flew out of the window, to where the questions lived. Again and again I wondered why we believe so many things just because we are told them. Why we take theories for truths just because they are recognised. What if our knowledge confines us more than it frees us?

I believe we know much less than we think. And that is a good thing. Perhaps it is precisely this not-knowing that is the open sky in which we can truly grow – wide, quiet and full of possibilities.

For me, one of the greatest themes of our time is fear. It is everywhere, sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, often well hidden like a shadow at noon: fear of lack, of rejection, of losing control. Fear of closeness and of freedom, of death and of life. Fear of not being enough. Fear of being different. Fear of being ourselves.

I believe our task is to recognise these fears, to feel them through and touch them with light – and then to let them move on like clouds drifting away. So that space opens up again for love: for ourselves, for others, for life.

I dream of a world in which we stop judging. In which we see, hold and remember one another. In which we celebrate our uniqueness like the colours of a rainbow and at the same time feel that we are all made of the same light.

I believe in us humans. In our radiance. In our creative power. And I know: we can do things differently. Together.

Perhaps that is my task – or rather: my remembering. To be a beacon in the twilight. And to remind you that one burns in you, too.

Come, let us leave everyday life behind for a while. Let us dive in. Let us fly. I'll take you with me on this journey – and show you my colours.