I got several mails with links to websites fostering global cooperation through subjective meditational work:

One is the “Global Coherence Project“, which “is designed to help individuals and groups work together, synchronistically and strategically to increase the impact of their efforts to create positive global change.” The project “offers education and technology on how to increase individual heart coherence. As groups of people in the Global Coherence community intentionally send coherent love and care to the world, a more powerful heart-filled environment is created.” They want to scientifically observe changes in the earth’s magnetic field and test the hypothesis that the earth’s field is affected by mass human emotion, positive or negative. For this they want to use a method they call The Global Coherence Monitoring System.

Another effort along similar lines is “The Intention Experiment“. They say: “The Intention Experiment is a series of scientifically controlled, web-based experiments testing the power of intention to change the physical world. Thousands of volunteers from 30 countries around the world have participated in Intention Experiments thus far. …” They do a Peace Intention Experiment: “September 14, 2008 will see the first in a series of Peace Intention Experiments testing the power of group intention to lower violence in areas around the world. This could be the largest scientific study in history, with hundreds of thousands of participants sending an intention for peace under highly controlled scientific conditions.”
You can join the experiment, if you like.

A third initiative is “The Orion Project” for “developing clean energy solutions to empower the 21st century.” They want “to transform the current energy, environmental and social crisis into a world of sustainability and Enlightened Abundance.” One of their “goals is to support the research and development of new energy generation systems to benefit the environment, alleviate world poverty and decrease dependence on all forms of fossil fuels.” There are a lot of links and calls for donations (energy-input). The intentions  are certainly going into a good direction, while the output still seems to be vague.

The latest newsletter of the Aquarian Age Community, who are dedicated to supporting the UN from a spiritual side mentions: “Increasingly, voices such as that of HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal are seeking to establish a supportive global environment wherein “individual rights, states rights, and international rights must be seen as an indivisible and dynamic unity” and “not as a source of polarization and conflict. … Gradually, and seemingly ever so slowly, humanity’s new habits of enlightened self-interest, cooperation and human solidarity based on recognition of the interconnectedness of all life are becoming the compelling directives of our day.”

A globe of white roses, from a flower-exposition in Berne, May 08

Today Switzerland is celebrating its national holiday, at the date supposed to be its establishment in 1291 – though historians doubt it…

What to take pride in as a nation? This topic is stimulating the minds on such occasions, and it is a fertile field of patriotic moods. I yesterday read articles in some newspapers on this theme, discussing the situation of freedom in a time of excessive administrative regulations (NZZ) or if there are really good Swiss jokes (not really, says the Tages-Anzeiger). Other countries seem to celebrate with less intellectual embarrassment, as I saw in India last January: “I love my India”.

Of course, national identity is an important factor for a sound and stable social system, and celebrating the accomplishments of a nation certainly contributes to form a meaningful national identity. Like an individual, nations also have their personality and soul qualities. The personality traits, in their gross forms for example chauvinism, racism or xenophobia, are often supported by economic egotism, which always has an eye to one’s own interests (money, money…), and also the feeling of social or cultural superiority (we are the champions…).

The soul qualities of a nation show in its power of integration, of humanitarianism, of a responsible and committed attitude towards the welfare of the environment without the egotistic eye. In spirituality crises and conflicts are seen as times of growth towards a large scope of consciousness, and this is also true for nations. If they don’t learn to share, crises will teach them.

Many people are feeling the need to celebrate global festivals like the earth day, celebrating the global village or festivals of good will in order to rise the awareness of the oneness of life. They are good ways to install the feeling of unity and inter-connectedness.

So the love for one’s country can expand towards a love of the greater global whole and the readiness to take the related responsibilities of exchanging and sharing. Like Michael Jackson and his crew once sung: “We are the world, we are the children”. Maybe it’s the hymn of a future celebration of global unity. As the refrain says: “We are the world, we are the children. We are the ones who make a  brighter day, so let’s start giving.”

Flags of the Swiss cantons and the national flag in front of the Swiss Federal Building, for today’s celebration

After a turbulent week at my office – leaving no time for blogging – we rushed up through Germany on Friday for another seminar with our spiritual teacher, Dr. K. P. Kumar. The location was a beautiful seminar centre of a chemical enterprise about 40 km from Cologne, surrounded by forests. At that place we met Sri Kumar for the first time 11 years ago. About 120 persons had come mainly from Germany, but also from Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and India. Again there was the hearty welcome of the group members, like a “family meeting”, only much more cordial.

The seminar was about Summer Solstice and Meditation, and the lectures were filled with deep wisdom teachings interspersed with lively stories. Here is a short extract from my seminar notes:

“We should try to understand such times like solstices, new moon or full moon, the weekend, the dusk and the dawn. These are times for absorption into a state where there is the communion of the spirit and the matter, which we are. We are an optimum combination of spirit and matter. And the soul experiencing is through such combination. Spirit by itself IS, it has no experience. To experience it, you have to be out of it. A chocolate is not chocolate to itself, it cannot experience itself, it has to have some other to experience. So what emerges out of spirit can experience spirit. What emerges out of spirit only can experience spirit. We wrongly call it spiritual experience. Experience is not that of the spirit, it is experience of THAT as THAT, which we call spiritual experience.”

The main building of the seminar centre in the early morning hours at summer solstice last Saturday. The air was filled with a beautiful light of dawn.

Fire ritual in the early morning on solstice day

I frequently observe that similar topics come across my way at home and at my office. It is some kind of synchronicity, which superficially seen seems to be accidental. Of course it is not identity, and there are many strings of themes and activities quite different from each other.

In the last months the relaunch of the intranet system at my office kept me quite busy (I wrote a blogpost 14 months ago and another in October 07, when the project officially started). I’m the project manager and have to coordinate the internal processes with the external agency. At the moment we are in the process of finalizing detail concept, and the new intranet hopefully will be launched in October.

At home I’m working since some months – besides other activities – at the relaunch of the Good-Will website. My youngest son, 15, is helping me with the technical side, and I do the content migration and photo layout, scanning etc. It took a long time until finally the project started. My son needed overcoming technical, but also motivational obstacles. But since some weeks the fire has got him and we are making good progress. I hope that in a few weeks we are through.

I started the old site in 2000 and re-worked it a bit with the site layout 2 years ago. It grew over the years, but the coding, done by a WYSIWYG-editor, is full of mistakes. Since I’m a “layman” as far as the technical side is concerned and don’t have much time to go deeper into it, I wouldn’t be able to do the relaunch myself. Now we have a very good co-operation, where I can realize quite some ideas which my son is adapting into the techical side. You’ll see more of the results in the near future. Also the blog will be integrated into the layout and structure of the new site. Here is a screenshot of the English page on “good will”.

This morning my moped suddenly started to roar – the rust had eaten a hole into the mouth of the tail-pipe. With a lot of noise I continued to my office. On the way home in the evening I took the direction to a motorbike mechanic. When I crossed the bridge from the old town of Berne to the other side, I saw an old steam engine tramway going along, an extra-ride blowing white steam into the air.

The tram was quite slow, so I could easily double it with my moped. I stopped and took out my camera, but it passed by a bit too fast. I drove on and made some shots from the moped and then a last one from the side of the road, here they are.

On the plate of the engine you can read it’s from 1894. I thought about the incredible speed-up of technical evolution in these 114 years. In esoteric parlance this is a result of the starting Aquarian age – though in mainstream society they are laughing it off and give other kinds of explanation concepts.

A few minutes later I arrived at the motorbike shop, where just 2 ladies were returning from a test drive with latest models e-bikes – a new generation of city transport means getting quite frequent here.
And in the newspapers and on the web I saw today pictures of yesterday’s show of the “fusion man” – a Swiss pilot who, with small airofoils and little turbines on his back had given a demonstration for press people, flying at 300 km/h over the Alps – another air of the Aquarian wind.

Yesterday we went with a relative and her friend to the Niederhorn, a peak in the Swiss Alps in the Bernese Oberland near Beatenberg. The friend was a clairvoyant from Germany, who was for the first time in these mountains. Our relative had been at a geomantic seminar at Beatenberg some time ago and wanted to show us an energetic power place.

We first walked along a private road, through a series of tunnels, where the friend said she felt overwhelmed by the multitude of subtle beings in the rocks. I just felt a bit small under this huge mass of rocks. Afterwards the road went along the mountainside and after a few hundred meters we came at a place where a fault had cut a drop between the rocks. There was somehow a special energy around, which, when you paid attention, felt different from the part before.

We stood there for some time feeling the quality of the place. The friend started guiding us into a visualization of what she was perceiving. After a while I preferred not to go into the descriptions of her experiences, but to stay with my own experiences, and so I took a stand a bit apart. I tried to keep the stance of an observer and not to get into some fancies of imagination. Better just some small authentic experiences than a bunch which isn’t my own.

Afterwards we returned and took the gondola lift up to the summit of the Niederhorn. At the top there was still quite a lot of snow on the way, and a snowblower was cutting a new way. But it was warm and the view was fantastic. Daws were flying around the cliffs and paragliders jumped down into the valley, circulating over the precipice.

On the way back at the middle station we hired some scooters and rolled down through forests and meadows – a beautiful descent.

Daws observing the visitors

Paraglider with view of the Eiger mountain

Way down into the valley

I just got a beautiful powerpoint presentation in Spanish (El Arte de no Enfermase), and “googled” it on the web, where it can be found at many blogs. The text is from Dr. Drauzio Varella, a Brazilian physician, educator, scientist and medical science popularizer.

In English the presentation is called “The Art of Being Well”. You can see it here as an embedded slide show and also download it here as a powerpoint (with music).

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Two days ago I participated in the team attending to the stand of the Swiss Red Cross at the BEA-Expo, a big public fair in Berne, Switzerland. 9 hours standing in the midst of the passing crowds. For me it was the first experience of this kind, and I had volunteered to do so.

My job was to hand out leaflets and pencils for a competition with 5 questions about the Red Cross – the answers of which could be found on different posters of the stand. At the end they could get an instant price and qualify to participate in a drawing to win some prices. It was a means to get people into contact with different Red Cross activities and starting an interaction – and for the marketing a means of collecting addresses.
There were also other activities going on: At one part of the stand you could get your blood pressure measured for free, at another corner children faces were painted and they could also get a balloon. Films, puzzles, info leaflets …

Thousands of people passed by, and in the evening there were over 1000 leaflets of the competition handed in.

For me it was fascinating to observe the crowd – families with small children in buggies, teenager groups, lovers, old couples, handicapped, people from different national backgrounds and colours. The hope for a chance to win a price attracted most and kept them busy for about 5 minutes searching the answers for the questions. It mostly went on in a sequence of 4 stages:

Discovering the competition – some showed curious faces, rushing on in search of the answers, others rejected and passed on. Some felt irritated for a moment and then decided to give it a try. With a number of couples the woman started with the competition, while the man stayed behind, observing.

Then running around, searching, filling out the questions, followed by depositing the leaflets and getting one of the instant prices. Finally leaving again and passing on into the crowd, the short kick of curiosity attraction fulfilled. Only a few showed a further interest and asked questions. Some of them wanted to go deeper or asked for a way to give donations.

At so many occasions our commitment follows the same pattern. The point of attraction works as a funnel focusing the attention into a certain direction, but it is quickly spinning of to another goal, and then another, and another – an endless search for points of attraction to give a short satisfaction. In this craze you cannot find any longer lasting satisfaction, you only find it looking within.

At the stand. In the background the logo of the World Red Cross Day of 8th May, this year the 180th birthday of Henry Dunant, the founding father of the Red Cross. It is also the 140th anniversary of Swiss Red Cross.

Another project focusing on promoting the awareness of unity is “run4unity“, an initiative of the catholic Focolare youth movement present in 182 countries. The initiative calls itself “youth for unity”. “Run4unity” is a worldwide relay race as a sports event to promote and build peace together: On 10th of May 2008 they make the run at places all around the globe from 4pm to 5pm in the respective time zones.

They start at the time zone of the Pacific island of Fiji. At 5pm, by means of an internet link, they will pass the “baton” on to the next time zone. Over the course of the next 24 hours, the baton will pass through locations of every latitude and in each location personalities from the world of sport, culture, as well as civic and religious leaders will participate.

The sports activities will take place in locations symbolic of peace, or near areas of conflict and war, or in places of strong tension. The activities are linked together through the website “teens4unity“. May the awareness of unity find deeper roots than just an emotional feeling of a joint action for a short time.

They write: “We are Christians but also belong to other religions and cultures that do not profess a religious creed. We are united by one goal: to make universal brotherhood a reality by involving many other teenagers in the world in this project.”

They had done a peace race in 2005 with the participation of over 100.000 teenagers in 340 cities of 89 nations.

A flower arrangement at a fair in Berne, last Sunday

There are quite a number of initiatives all around the globe, which stand up to foster the awareness of unity. Yesterday I came to know about two interesting activities. I’ll present them in three blogposts

The “ONE WORLD AWARD – the Prize for ‘One World’ ” was launched recently by a German health food company Rapunzel. Its founders Jennifer Vermeulen and Joseph Wilhelm have sponsored the 25.000 Euro cash prize to honour the visions and achievements of individual persons. Their contributions and projects that have the goal to make the world a better place. People who give examples of positive globalization using innovative ideas and dedication, people who make the future worth living. The prize is awarded every two years. The jury is formed by Tewolde B. G. Eghziaber, Director General of the Ethiopian Environmental Protection authority, Vandana Shiva from India and member of the Club of Rome, and Alberto Lernoud, a journalist, poet, activist, trader and true pioneer of the organic movement in Argentina.

A very encouraging prize initiative

A flower globe at a fair in Berne, last Sunday