Scholé News – January 2026

Dear friends of Scholé

I ask for your understanding that today I am sharing my very personal experiences of the last few months with you. It began with an unexpected stroke in mid-October 2025. That I came through it well I owe to the highly technological conventional medicine at the AKH (Vienna General Hospital). Since I have been back home, I have been enjoying my husband’s devoted care; our quarrel over diverging geopolitical views is forgiven and forgotten.

A friend put me in touch with a healer who works with frequencies on the basis of just a short preliminary conversation, entirely without technical means. At the agreed time for the telephone session with him, I was simply to lie down, relax and pay attention to my perceptions. Immediately the image appeared of a scantily dressed girl crouching like a picture of misery on a cold stone floor. I recognised the child I was obviously supposed to take a closer look at: it was clearly me at the age of 9, when, on the advice of the doctors treating my heart valve defect, I was sent to a convent boarding school in the countryside because I would be protected there from the increased risk of infection in the big city.

The large grey house with its long corridors and the high wall surrounding the grounds already looked like a prison. But the worst thing were the countless crucifixes, that is, crosses with a bloody corpse hanging on them. They came in all sizes and hung in every room. Even the nuns who ran the house all wore silver crucifixes around their necks. In the church, where the day usually began at dawn, there were also statues and pictures of tortured martyrs, a picture of the Madonna with her heart pierced by 7 swords, and the cruel Stations of the Cross, which make so many churches look like crime museums to the unbiased observer.

The teaching was unmistakable and was reaffirmed verbally at every opportunity: the most essential things for Christians are sin, death and suffering. For us children, this meant constant examination of conscience and weekly confession. Everything that was not expressly permitted was forbidden. Being alone or having a private conversation, for example, was also forbidden, because the nuns sensed dangerous temptations everywhere. There was no room for joy of life; it was only about offering up suffering and pain to God. The harder something is for me, the more pleasing it is to God, we learned. In the evening in the dormitory, we were read stories of children who had died a martyr’s death. As a result, in the 18 months I spent in this house, I prayed every evening to be allowed to die a martyr’s death in order to go to heaven – without a stopover in purgatory (suicide would of course have been a mortal sin that would have taken me straight to hell). I did argue with the nuns about whether the punishment of hell could really be eternal, which would surely be completely incompatible with a “loving God”, but I was afraid all the same.

Strange how deeply destructive beliefs are anchored, even though very many contemporaries have long recognised this form of religiosity as a dangerous false doctrine. Yet the current news shows that war, suffering and the struggle for survival unfortunately still dominate events. Now even readiness for war may be publicly promoted again!

[…] In the evening in the dormitory, we were read stories of children who had died a martyr’s death. As a result, in the 18 months I spent in this house, I prayed every evening to be allowed to die a martyr’s death […]

Alexandra Terzic-Auer

Free thinker

All the more important that a new generation with life-affirming beliefs is finally growing up: every child who is allowed to be and become who they are, whose zest for life is guarded as the most precious treasure, whose capacity for love is valued and nourished, is a gift to the world! My own childhood trauma made me receptive to this insight, and since I had to confront it once again, I feel more deeply than ever that it is my heart’s concern, the theme of my life! In this respect, the negative experiences also had their meaning. And I experience the many small steps towards liberation that have taken place in recent years as directly healing and soothing. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who stand up for the freedom and self-determination of young people! Stay strong! For the temptations of today’s secular religion of security and comfort are even more dangerous and hostile to life than the antiquated religious cult of guilt from which they emerged.

This cult of guilt trains its followers/victims always to focus their attention on what is missing, what is going wrong, what is sick, injured or at least in need of improvement. This ensures that natural trust in life fades and everyone is constantly on the lookout for a saviour.

“Christ the Saviour is born”, we heard or sang along at Christmas. However, only sensitive people who can hear and understand the song of the angels recognise the child in the manger as the saviour – simple people close to nature like the shepherds in the field, or old

wise men like the Magi from the East. The others are waiting – still or once again – for the strong man who is to liberate them and their people.

Those who hear angels’ voices and the wise of today give us hope that the age of the child will now finally really dawn after 2000 years of waiting, that it is written in the stars and that positive change can no longer be stopped. This message feels good and right. And every single child who is allowed to grow up free and self-determined gives us a foretaste of the becoming-human that awaits us if we no longer let ourselves be kept from following our own inner voice, the voice of the heart, instead of being led astray by external requirements and rules.

In this spirit, a happy, blessed new age! Alexandra

More Scholé news

2nd edition of “Lernen ist wie Atmen” (Learning is like breathing)

The 2nd edition of our book meets a completely changed readership.

In 2017, the idea that learning outside school was possible at all was considered the eccentric notion of a few outsiders. Since then, all parents, whether they wanted to or not, have had to deal with forms of learning outside school.

The number of children withdrawn from school has exploded since then, and alternative learning projects are springing up like mushrooms.

Buy the book (2nd ed., German)

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