Yesterday afternoon we went with our eldest son to the cinema seeing “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (see also the previous post). Though I found the film was better than the last one, my son said when leaving the cinema: “I had imagined it very differently”.

A book might give you strong inner images. A film is an externalisation of the imagination of the director, the producers and the public expectations. The Harry Potter-film contained quite an intense visual imagination work, elaborated in the high-tech studios.

Outer pictures superimpose themselves on your own imagining. This is what my son felt, and me too. If you get an overload of outer images, they can drown you and block your own process. But they might also be a stimulant, because they are a concretised visualisation. Visualisation is an important tool for the journey inside.

It’s now three weeks ago that my father passed. Everyday life has taken over again. There had been quite some talks with family and friends around the passing, and it had opened doors to some profound conversations. Even at my office a woman, with whom up to now I never had exchanged about anything private, spoke to me about the situation with her mother, who just had to go into an old people’s home and where she had to dissolve the house. Others spoke about their encounter with the death of loved ones and how it had affected their lives. Again others shared reflections about experiences of pain, of transformation of relations, of farewell situations.

It was not just a casual expression of sympathy, but the passing of my father stirred in them – and also in me – thoughts touching regions about which you normally don’t speak. It was like an opening of souls, and expression of a bond of a subtle connectedness. New qualities of relation were forming.

Complexity of relation – picture sent by a friend

When looking back to the experiences of the last weeks, with the passing of my father and the changes going on in my family of origin, my wife and I were reflecting on what keeps people together and what makes them separate.

It seems that there is always a “third thing” or a “third force” holding together: At work, you collaborate with people to accomplish some job, or with clients, patients etc., who contact you because of some service. In a family you are together because of the relations in the family structure, and if the relation structure changes and there is no more common ground, the family falls apart. If there isn’t a third force, but only an emotional congruence, the relation won’t last. This might be the reason why many marriages fail.

“Birds of the same feather flock together” goes the saying, and this is true for religious people, bankers, disco-goers. People come to the yoga class of my wife not just because of her, but because of the yoga exercises. In our spiritual group people are attracted by the teachings and by the magnetism of the teacher. In my life, I have several times changed the the movement and teachings, and with it there has always been a change of the whole circle of acquaintances. So the relations weren’t on a person-to-person basis, as I had felt, but to a “third thing”, a common interest.

I met people complaining that others didn’t take real interest in them – was it because they didn’t take a real interest in the “third thing”? Some “third things” are of a fleeting character – you have an encounter just for a short time, maybe just once. Others are deep and long lasting. What “third thing” interests are there, going to the deepest core? Where you are meeting the inner centre, in yourself and in the others.

Watching a dawn together at Gemini Full Moon, Mount Rigi, Switzerland, May 99

For the funeral of my father about 150 people gathered in the church, where nearly 2 years ago the funeral ceremony for my mother had taken place. It was somehow familiar and at the same time strange to be among friends and relatives of the family which partly I hadn’t seen for many years and probably won’t see again. I felt outgrown of this world, a heavy feeling of past times, but nevertheless still related with me.

At the beginning of the mass, after an address of the priest, I made a short speech about the life and the guiding ideals of my father, focusing on the transformations which had taken place in his life. The words were meant to invoke the presence of the energies of light to pierce through the dense, heavy atmosphere prevailing at the funeral, and it was for me a very special experience.

The entire setting of the mass and the funeral was very traditional. After the coffin was lowered into the ground of the cemetery, many people came putting some earth and flowers on it and expressing their condolences to my sisters, brother and me. For many it seemed that my father was in the grave, though it was only the corpse. The ideas expressed about the “thereafter” by the clergyman or the people in their letters of condolence were so nebulous and vague as I had known from previous situations in the past. When will they come to realise that there is more to know and to experience about the immortality of the soul?

Later, when reflecting the day, it was like a tidal wave settling down, an energy field taking to another shape. Both parents having gone, the relations will change, giving rise to new constellations. What these new forms will be is still a seed sprouting in the future.

Reflections in a globe at the little pond in the family garden

It was only after the death of my father that I dared selling my coin collection which had been in my father’s safe for over 30 years. Selling it would have been a sacrilege to my father, and I only had sold three valuable coins about 12 years ago to help a friend, and my father hadn’t noticed it.

Though I knew that most of the coins were of not much value for collectors, though there were some old ones in the collection, I thought that a number of them – special editions of 5 and 10 Deutsche Mark – would be interesting to sell. We went to a coin dealer in the city of Münster. They told us that years ago it would have been worth selling them, but now they had no more value except the nominal DM-value which we could change at the Bundesbank to Euros. For the big folder with all the other coins they gave me 30 Euros, and at the building of the Bundesbank, in a high-level security room, the DM-coins melted to some Euro banknotes.

When we left, I felt happy and free: a tie that had bound me for a long time had fallen off, and the energy blocked in the coin collection had finally been released.
You might like to read the text on “Money and Good Will” from the Good Will in Action-series.

Sometimes you want to sail south, but the winds are blowing you towards north. We had planned for two weeks of holidays on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. In the afternoon of the first day on the campsite, a note reached us saying that my father just had a stroke in the public swimming pool, fell into koma and my sister was asking if we would come. It was like a veering of the wind, changing the whole situation.

Next morning, when we were ready to set off, the mobile rang and my sister told us that my father just had died. Through the hot summer day there came a breeze of good-bye, of breaking away of old grounds. Inner and outer scenes flew along during the three days of driving: first at low speed along the serpentine roads through rugged Corsican mountains, then a night on the ferryboat with a beautiful sunrise meditation, the Italian highways and the crossing of the Alps via the pass of the Great St. Bernhard to our home near Berne, where we stayed overnight and reloaded.

Dawn on board of the Corsica Ferry

Next morning further north through Germany, until in the evening we stood in front of the dead body of my father in the mortuary.

There was the apprehension of a matter of fact: His soul had released itself from the body and moved on. The corpse, that wasn’t my father, it was just the case, the cover, not the content. The soul’s continuum of existence became so evident. Death is an illusion, as Eastern wisdom tells us, there is only a change of form, of spheres, not of essence.

Buddha Statue in the family garden

Next day the impact of all the changes of my father’s passing made itself felt. Things became clearer to the feeling which had been clear to the mind. On one inner level, there was the mourning, on another the experience of the fundament of existence on which life was now arranging new patterns. While sitting in the beautiful garden of my family of origin I said good-bye not only to the home where I had grown up, but to a period of my life. Of course there was the feeling of sadness stirred by the passing of my father, but it was about myself, and the present situation was just creating the field of experience.

Seagull

A friend wrote me some days ago that he went through harsh moments, when he experienced strange things in his being. He had done intense spiritual practices and breathing exercises for long hours, experiencing an indescribable serenity, immense joy, and a long mental silence. It was as if he was united with the Supreme Consciousness. But then he had a boiling and pricking sensation in his body and a feeling of an unregulated upsurge of “something” like a swarm of impressions along his spinal column. The more he practised meditation the worse the situation was getting, up to the point where he rushed to a hospital. The treatment prescribed, however, did not relieve him conveniently.

I told him that he might have got an “overdose” of vital energy and that it is important to integrate the exercises one does into a continuous routine and normally not do them over too long a period. Otherwise it is like playing with a fire that can cause serious damages to one’s subtle bodies for a long time. H.P. Blavatsky compared it with jumping into a pond full of crocodiles. I gave him some hints how the fire might come down and the energy re-establish a normal, natural flow.

He then answered that actually he overdid things and that now the “hurricane” has gone over, he feels as comfortable as before. He described the practices he had been doing and said he has now followed my advices, cut down some of his practices and took a lot of fresh water. It was not his first experience in which he tried to catapult himself towards a higher plane, in his eagerness to consciously align with his Higher Self to be a good channel for the Divine.

His eagerness of striving for inner experiences, to align with the higher self, is very understandable. However, on a sound spiritual path it is absolutely necessary to establish a regulated, normal routine of life and not to try to “shoot up” into the higher worlds, to unite with the Divine – at all costs. The orientation should be to train oneself to acquire skills and competences in order to be of good use for a work of service and good will. Personal experiences are regarded as “secondary by-products”, but not as the primary focus. Therefore it is of great importance to balance one’s life and also one’s practices, to have a stable stand in the world and reach out for others. The thing is, you realise the side-effects of unhealthy practices often only years later, when they have done damages. In the positive or less positive way meditation exercises are powerful tools for transformation.

My wife says, the fiery striving is like a big summer fire, which has to be reduced and put into a small oven to be of use for cooking. The big fire would only burn oneself and the others. Spiritual progress is not done by “fireworks” of catapulting oneself towards higher planes, but a work of slow and steady integrating the different fields of life.

Picture of a fire ritual

A friend from the southernmost part of Chile, at the Strait of Magellan, who started some months ago to meditate, wrote to me last week:

“You know, during the morning meditations something marvellous is happening. I can recognise the sound of my self, like a heartbeat, like the blood circulation, the different kinds of respirations which I might have. I became aware of the importance that a bit of silence during the daily activities can have. I feel already that this experience is necessary during the day. I can only say that it is magical in every sense, and the most extraordinary is, that you don’t have to look for it neither in the shops nor in the internet nor with friends, for the experience is unique, individual.”

This is a beautiful description of the effect the regular experience of silence starts opening in us. You cannot describe it with words, you have to experience: “Silence is the source of the soul!” (K.P. Kumar, On Silence).

By the way, while we are enjoying summer, in Patagonia it is now very cold and full of snow. A week ago my friend had been with a plane in an area more to the north – Puerto Montt / Los Lagos, which had been colonized 150 years ago by Germans and Swiss – the way of life is said to be still quite European -� and it looks beautiful.

Yesterday I participated in a staff forum from my office at Swiss Red Cross. After some staff general information about latest organisational reorganisations – the waves of it will touch me a bit in the next time – we had the occasion to see some “market stands”, where parts of the organisation or affiliated entities presented their activities.

I first went to a presentation of the Humanitarian Aid of the Swiss Confederation, which has its central warehouse in the Red-Cross building. They showed us the activities of the Rapid Response Teams, which has to be prepared to react very fast in emergency situations world-wide such as earthquakes, droughts or floods. Besides natural disasters they have facilities for all kinds of technological disasters such as nuclear, biological and chemical incidents or other man-made conflicts. There is quite an infrastructure behind these rescue activities you normally just see on TV, and a number of trained volunteer specialists is ready-to-go within a short time to assist victims of disasters.

Afterwards I participated in a presentation of the ERU (Emergency Response Unit) of the Red Cross, where the Swiss Red Cross is closely collaborating with a number or European Red Cross societies in their network for Disaster Preparedness. At the beginning they highlighted what they just are doing, while the media report about the monsoon floods, which aren’t in the limelights yet, but have caused about 1.5 million people to leave their houses and have destroyed about 0.5 million homes. Specialists from the ERU have immediately left towards Pakistan to evaluate the situation on site and what and how can be helped. In case the situation is clearer, the members of the different teams immediately start organising the help with a complex network of specialists. They showed pictures of their mission during the floods in Mozambique and explained how they have to set up infrastructures in a situation where the local structures have collapsed or can no longer cope with the situation.

The last “market place” for me was a presentation of the Ambulatory for Victims of War and Torture about group therapies with children in the age of 6 – 18. Many children of victims, who haven’t gone through the experiences their parents had, are highly affected by the effects of the traumatisation of their mother or father. It was impressive to see how in the therapy they are using elements of meditation and rituals together with techniques of building up trust and inner security with the children.

I like these presentations where you can get an insight into working conditions which normally you don’t come much into contact, even if you are working in the same organisation.

Statues in front of the International Red Cross Museum in Geneva, symbolising victims of war

Our youngest son (14) yesterday evening dyed his hair. He tried a chestnut brown Henna colour on his blond hair, but it turned out to be patchy and quite red, and he didn’t want to appear out of the bathroom nor go out in the evening. My wife had to save him by rushing to a nearby supermarket to buy a dark brown colour, and so he did a second turn. Afterwards all over the bathroom and on some of the clothes different colour spots were spread.

Not only we, but also he felt at first a bit irritated with the result of his change of appearance – brownish black hair. After returning home in the night he told my wife he would like to go to a barber to undo the dying. He himself is quite cured of dying his hair on his own. We quickly got used to the new outlook, and it’s not bad, but he isn’t very happy with it.

This way he is making his experiences with presenting himself in changing outlooks – in search of “Who am I?” and “what is my effect on others?”

Water Spirit – Artwork in the Kien Valley, photo from today’s excursion