The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (New Zurich Newspaper, NZZ) reported today about a fascinating project of two Swiss artist who developed a method of overcoming the Chinese censorship in the internet. The site “picidae.net” was officially launched last Tuesday and is in English, German, Chinese and Arab. The name “picidae” comes from Latin and means “woodpecker”. The first holes in the Berlin wall were hit by so called “Mauerspechte” (woodpeckers) and gave the project its name: picidae (woodpecker).

They call picidae “an art project, that deals with one’s own horizons of imagination, the image of the world, communication and its hurdles and barriers.” picidae negotiates the firewall (Internet censorship) eg. in China or in the Arabian states. picidae delivers a complete, readable and even clickable image of the censored web sites.

The picidae site is not made up of text and HTML elements (tables, images etc.). picidae delivers a screenshot. The page is visible but not machine-readable. This means the text cannot be searched, marked or saved as a text file. That’s why internet censorship, which reacts on keywords (similar to search engines and correction programs), is not able to detect or suppress picidae pages. picidae is not a centrally organised system and is not be reachable via a centralised database. Every access point and every server runs independently and without description and naming – to prevent censorship and deactivation.

Their definition of picidae as an art project is very close to spiritual concepts of visualisation and going beyond the form, realising oneself as the observer, the I AM, which is not defined by the object he sees: “Art searches for new ways (repetition is in terms of Fine Arts just copying). The new images picidae provides are images of ones own horizon of imagination: images of a global communication and images concerning limitation and overcoming of ones own view. The images are generated in the head of the observer, exactly like in an image gallery. The point is not exactly what is displayed in an artwork but what is inspiring in the sense of Art history and reflection.”

I tested the picidae-server with our good-will website, and it is astonishing how the site is perfectly rendered, as an image. (I tried to put a link to the site, but the url changes, so you cannot link to the picidae-transformed view.)

Hopefully this approach is being used for expanding the freedom of expression and information, to further human relations and not to spread perverse and destructive ideas beyond any sense of discrimination.

By the way, the two artists have earlier launched a site called Zone*Interdite, “a test arrangement that serves as a starting point for individual exploratory tours” into the world of military restricted areas, which they are showing on an interactive map. “Individual imagination and the joy of discovering occurs, i.e. spotting, replacing the patriotic and pacifistic duty of a knee-jerk avowal, and undermining censorship, as well as the restriction of perception.”

Pecking through the great firewall of China and other totalitarian systems

The last weeks my wife and I met several situations with people where in some way or another sexuality was playing a decisive role: young couples searching their common ground and way, partners working on their relation, persons having divorced looking back at the “lessons learnt” and the way they now are going their path alone. One lady, in the later part of her life, was thinking about the different little affairs she has had besides her marriage. It was a matter of keeping up a façade of normalcy, of what to share and what to hide.

Hiding is often closely related to sexuality, especially with amorous adventures, but it seems that when you hide parts of your life’s biography, the tendency of hiding spreads to other parts of your behaviour. The “breaks” in the biography give rise to inconsistencies, and your personality tends to develop in roundabout ways.

When you are trying to take to the spiritual path, inner transparency becomes of increasing importance. If you are transgressing the natural regulations – the “laws of dharma”, as they are called in the east – the flow of your energy gets impeded and causes disturbances in your character – and this normally without your noticing it. This has nothing to do with moral conventions, but is a matter of cause and effect.

Today you can observe much ignorance in society as per these rules and regulations.Talking about it in a natural way is very much loaded with a variety of barriers. Nevertheless it is obvious that the way you deal with partner relations and sex has a deep influence on how your life evolves.

In the book “Mithila. A New Age School Syllabus” there is an interesting caption on dealing with sexuality in the chapter on Money and Sex, which is of relevance for the spiritual path. You might also like to read the Good Will in Action-newsletter on Dealing with Sexuality.

Entrance of an erotic shop in Zurich. This kind of dealing with sexuality creates an obscuration towards the higher realms of life.

We just changed our internet and phone landline to cable networks and had some problems getting online, but now the system is running There were also some problems in changing the settings of the router. This morning I awoke with the impression what to do – and it worked! Back to the online-world. This was a good experience, after hours of searching for a solution…

Yesterday I received a parcel from Bulgarian friends: They sent me copies of the Bulgarian version of “Spiritual Astrology” by Master EK (Ekkirala Krishnamacharya). They had translated the book and published it by themselves. It is the first Bulgarian edition of the WTT wisdom books, and though I won’t be able to read it in this language, it was a joy to see the book:

My friends had visited us June last year, and I had given them an English copy. They were so fascinated by it that they started translating and publishing – and this without much financial resources. They also had to overcome other difficulties, but the enthusiasm carried them on.

It was for me a good example that when there is a will and the skill to do something, you can get it done.

The book is very profound and has nothing to do with what you normally get to read or hear about astrology. It deals with the spiritual evolution of man and provides some keys for a deeper understanding of the zodiac and the planets from an inner view. You might like to read an extract on the correspondences between micro and macro-cosmos – or read some of our Letters on Spiritual Astrology.

A friend of mine who is teaching at an American university sent me yesterday the following interesting lines:

“I have been cruising the web the past days for material I can incorporate into the class I teach and found a current development in Hollywood circles quite inspiring. It seems that more and more celebrities take action toward a good cause and use their fame and social status to help make the world a better place.

For example, Leonardo DiCaprio has produced a documentary about environmental damage and its effects on our planet titled The 11th Hour. What is most incredible about it is that he and his team don’t leave it there. They have created a website with a lot of information for people on how to make changes and contribute individually.

Another actor who’s been in the media recently for his activity for a good cause is Brad Pitt. He’s spent millions of dollars to help rebuild New Orleans’ homes in an environmentally friendly way.

Someone who is having a great impact on the Native American nation that is close to my heart is Viggo Mortensen. He founded a publishing house where he publishes books about the Lakota Sioux nation of the Dakotas. Mortensen was a published poet and painter already before he landed the role as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. Among other books that pertain to Lakota culture, he wrote a book titled Miyelo in 2003 in which he documented the history of the Lakota and the tradition of the sundance. The greatest part of the sales of the book flows toward the Pine Ridge Reservation where Mortensen was welcomed when he learned the Lakota language for his role in Hidalgo. It seems he has found a second home there.”

Doing good doesn’t only inspire Hollywood stars. Today I came across an article about “Silent deeds for a better world”, an ad-campaign of a German soft drink producer (“the official drink for a better world”) who has realised a website called Stille Taten (Silent Deeds), which inspires to do anonymously good deeds to others and gives an occasion to write reports on it. This initiative has caused a great deal of discussion in blogs and the press. Though it is an PR-campaign, it leads people into a good direction.

Another friend from the States sent me today the following lines of H. P. Blavatsky’s “Secret Doctrine“, which fit very well to this theme:
“Altruism not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but many bad effects. If virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind, it is only because mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own savior and his own destroyer.”

Spreading some sunlight into the life of others

The wisdom teachings say that your character has to be developed and your life firmly oriented towards good will before you can be entrusted with subtle powers or energies without causing harm. Money is a very concrete kind of energy, and it seems that dealing with great amounts of it can have disastrous effects and damage your life.

I read this week an article in the German magazine “Der Spiegel” online about brokers: Those financial pros who shift most money are the most psychically disturbed persons. The “roller coaster drive” of the stock markets causes great stress to the traders. Many bankers, fund managers or brokers easily get into an emotional exhaustion. Studies have shown that rage attacks, depressions, fear or all kinds of psycho-somatic symptoms are very frequent, much more often than in other branches of society. Alcoholism, drug or medication abuse are quite normal, as well as gambling and sexual excesses. The most successful brokers, who control enormous amounts of capital seem to be mentally and emotionally most deranged. The more stress, the more they have a tendency to manipulate and become dishonest. This destructive development often ends in broken marriages or even suicides.

“A lot of these guys have manic-depressive tendencies that are triggered by the volatility of the market. They also lack the insight or the coping skills to deal with the stresses of the market,” said Dr. Alden Cass, clinical psychologist and president of the Catalyst Strategies Group. “As a result, it’s natural to find higher levels of depression amongst them.” Cass’ research found stockbrokers to be at higher risk for mental health problems such as burnout and anxiety disorders than the general population, but they rarely seek help or utilize assistance services. When Cass tried to contact the persons eight months after his study, more than a quarter of the most successful brokers wasn’t anymore at their post – they had been either fired, changed their job or just burned out and gone away: Money makes the world go round – or people…

You absolutely need a solid inner foundation when you are working in such hot-spots of money and power, but also in “lower voltage” contexts. Money is energy, and energy has to be handled with great care. Using money for right purposes helps creating and upholding an equilibrium.

You might like to read the newsletter from “Good Will in Action” on “Money and Good Will“.

Rainbow and tramway current lines, yesterday evening: channelled energy, like money directed into a creative direction.

Last week I read an interesting interview in the NZZ with Theo Wehner, professor for work psychology at the Center for Organization and Work Sciences of the ETH Zurich, about the identity crisis of the work society:

Often in our modern society people don’t succeed in blending work, meaning and fun. In surveys about one third of the persons employed said they would like to stop working if they could. However, two thirds would like to continue, though under changed conditions.

In the 1980ies people said they would like to change their working conditions, in the 1990ies they wanted to have less pressure of time, and now they want more “authority over time” or leisure time.

People however, who lose involuntarily their work are often so much blocked that they can no longer even fulfil their personal duties nor their hobbies. Working is a measure for disciplining and socialising.

It is more and more difficult to find meaning in modern industry and service jobs. Work is being experience as being chopped up into little pieces, and one’s own contribution cannot be experienced within the whole.

Many people commit themselves to voluntary work without payment in charitable or non-commercial activities. They want to do an activity which they like and which is meaningful to them. This is more important than making new acquaintances or giving money for some charitable activity. They found out from their researches over the last years that the main purpose is to do something meaningful, and this is difficult to find in many jobs.

Most volunteers are middle-aged people, where they feel that they want to give something back to society. If they cannot do this, there is the danger of burnout or “mentally giving notice”. Jobless people first want to find a job before going into volunteer work. They found people who after having lost their jobs weren’t anymore able to do their previous activities in an association.

People who had a meaninful life normally can also cope well with the situation of retirement and find something new. The dream of “never working again” seems to be the result of a failed work relation and not a way into freedom.

See also the blogpost on “How to live happy” or the post on The Future of Volunteer Work.

When the old tracks are blocked: Finding a new orientation in work life.

My wife is accompanying several young people in different situations in their lives. It is done very informally, but from her side with intention and not just undesigned. She said to me this morning: “I had been missing such orientation very much in my youth, perhaps that’s the reason why I’m trying to help this way.”

She told me of a talk she had with the daughter of a friend who is about to start her university studies. Since over a year the girl has a committed relationship. The affair seems to be symbiotic, i.e. both feel a passion for each other and want to live together. However, there are differences in attitudes. My wife asked, what the common ground was, and it was not so clear. The girl said, doing projects together, but didn’t exactly know what kind of projects. From the beginning he wanted from her an “eternal commitment”, she felt constricted by this. She was unsure what in these incertitudes was her part and what was from her partner.

My wife loves illustrating inner processes and relations with little diagrams (see here, here and here): A person who is centred within himself is living in a right angle:

and integrated . You might encounter situations or emotions without losing your right angle.

In a relation, you can turn to the other without losing your inner centre. It is like turning your right angle cross towards the other, and the angles meet. The meeting point can be on different levels – on the physical, emotional or mental or even higher levels (represented by the sun). And you can meet on different planes at the same time. When you have a congruence in something higher – common ideals, attitudes, values – it is more easy to find congruence also in other points, like doing a project together. And also to overcome problems and conflicts in matters of day-to-day life and not to get stuck-up. In a relation harmony isn’t always necessary, but if the fundamentals are sound, it is likely to continue as a good relation, where the partners aren’t bound to each other by conflicts.

My wife mentioned: “Some couples just seem to have as a common project raising the children, and when the children are grown up, they separate again.” She asked the student about her higher meeting points with her partner, and the young woman wasn’t sure about them. She wasn’t even sure about her own purpose in life, nor about her partner’s. She felt, she had to ponder on what really is the common denominator in her relation. She surely will find out.

This blog-post has been translated into Spanish, together with some other posts of this series.

A friend wrote me some days ago that she sometimes feels depressed and disappointed and that she has troubles in getting the equilibrium. She had read that this is related with the solar plexus centre: “Although I know it represents the balance between the soul and the body, I don’t know yet how to manage my emotions.”

A short time ago when she was feeling quite bad, she went to a doctor. The lab analysis said that she is physically healthy, and the doctor told her that she has a depression. She should see a psychiatrist or a psychologist. She didn’t want to go to any of them, but decided to go through the process alone with meditation and studying. She also was planning to do some work for needy people to overcome loneliness.

I encouraged her plan to do some volunteer activity, for helping others is a good antidote against solitude and feeling depressed. I have observed that these feelings come when you are not in the flow of life. Life wants to flow like a river, being active for others is like flowing water, being blocked within your own circle like stagnated waters. Meditation and studying alone don’t help in getting into a flow, but activity for others does. For a good flow in life the wisdom teachings recommend the triangle of meditation-study-service, and in this a meaningful activity is very important and must not be neglected.

A rhythmic routine does wonder in stabilising. Having ups and downs is very normal, like high tide and low tide. Especially on the spiritual path these fluctuations can be quite intense for some time. It isn’t a disease, but an integration process. During these processes an academic psychologist might not be the best help.

I told my friend that for stabilising emotional ups and downs the wisdom teachings recommend the use of silver. It is related to the Moon, to psyche, and to the zodiacal sign of Cancer governing the circulatory processes in the body. Silver affects sensitivity, psychic susceptibility and behaviour. It is related to the solar plexus centre and the reactive faculty of the mind. Silver in homoeopathic form (Argentum nitricum) is a remedy suited for calming the solar plexus. You also can fill water into a silver cup in the morning, keep it in a room with a current of air and drink it in the evening. Then you refill the cup, put it to the air and drink the water on an empty stomach in the morning. The water gets impregnated by the quality of the silver.

My friend answered: “l tell you that just today I’ve begun drinking the water which was during the night in a silver jug, and I feel happy, really believe me, I’m feeling well, it’s true. And besides now, nice days are coming and that makes me feel well, too. The sun is so important to me that I can’t explain you the good it makes me.”

At my office at Swiss Red Cross I saw last week the pdf of a poster “Trinconmalee – 4500 Houses”, to be printed soon in Sri Lanka. It showed a picture of many colourful houses, which had been constructed in an area destroyed by the Tsunami of 2004. With the financial help of a “cash for repair and reconstruction“-program people had rebuilt houses themselves – an interesting approach to support them in the rehabilitation of their fully or partly damaged dwellings.

Click on the picture to see the whole poster.

Today I read a news in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) about Tamil refugees exactly in this area, who had to flee, hardly their houses destroyed by the Tsunami had been reconstructed. The article described the violence between the government troups and the Tamil rebels, and the refugees being caught between the front-lines and depending from the help of international NGOs, who are slowly withdrawing from post-Tsunami reconstruction.

It is a tense situation, and it seems that the long list of ongoing atrocities of the civil war, ongoing since 1983, won’t end soon. How much suffering will be needed until people find a way out of ideological obstructions and mutual suppression of opponents until a common ground is found for realising peace?

From a spiritual point of view these conflicts, however bitter they might be, are learning processes, which don’t end just with the present life. Suppressing opponents doesn’t solve the tensions. Unless you learn to settle your conflicts in a peaceful way and to integrate opposing viewpoints, the lesson to see the greater whole is still to be learned. It might take a long time, but Nature is patient.