The last weeks there had been several contacts or situations, where couples were separating, divorcing or going through a crisis, some of them after long years of marriage. Everywhere there was a process of becoming aware that there wasn’t anymore basis for the relation. They had drifted apart or realised that it would be better so end the situation by one of the partners leaving the common flat.

My wife observed: “Over years they had suppressed emotions or closed the eyes to certain situations. It is like putting them into a storage room, or rather putting them into a safe, locking them thrice and then loosing the key.”

But you cannot cut away by means of surgery parts of your life, they start leading a life of their own: In some of the cases unwholesome forms of behaviour had developed, in another there was an emotional ice age freezing certain parts of perception.There remains a more or less subtle feeing of sickness of the situation, and like with cancer, emotional metastases develop. The origin isn’t the metastasis which you perceive somewhere in the relation, but the underlying blockages of life energy.

My wife said, that in the talks with the persons she feels like a mining rescuer going down into the mine with a headlight and bringing miners back to light: “I had to learn not to interfere with the concrete situation by way of giving advices, but by helping them to align to their soul, to the light. When this alignment is gained, they themselves find their way.”

And even if the way seems to be painful at the first look, it is like re-integrating long lost parts of life back into the greater whole. And this has a deep healing impact.

Figure of a troll in a Norwegian museum. Blocked emotions sit in us like in a cellar.

A bit over a month ago, at a seminar in Montserrat, our spiritual teacher, Dr. K. P. Kumar, made to me the proposal to start going out and to speak to interested people about the wisdom teachings, about meditation or other topics.

In the meantime I pondered on it, also in our local group. The impulse worked out to the idea of a series of 4 evening themes on “Meditation – Experiment and Experience”. The title was the outcome of a group discussion.

We then looked around and found a nice seminar room in a nearby hotel. Next was to prepare the announcements, then to structure the content and put it into a good form. Luckily over the years quite a number of topics had been dealt with in our monthly publications of the Good Will newsletters. I had collected photos, also from friend, which I use for illustrating spiritual subjects. So I prepared a number of powerpoint slides on different subjects such as the relation between soul and personality, dealing with thought, the use of sound. It was for me a fascinating experience, a synthesis of many things I had been occupied with since many years. 30 years ago I had participated in a meditation teacher training course, and then taught meditation for some years, before leaving that movement and stopping speaking about meditation.

Looking back, I feel that it was much too early, with too little experience of my own. In the meantime my understanding has deepened over the years, and I’m now looking forward to next week, where there will be the first evening.

Buddha teaching – Ajanta Caves, India, photo of a friend

At the online marketing forum I attended a few days ago a presenter spoke about the phases of turning people into customers: 1. Awareness, 2. Interest, 3. Consideration, 4. Purchase. At the steps 1-3 many persons turn away, especially at the moment of ordering or payment.

This funnelling of people to customer sometimes takes long time and has to do with the channelling of attention and focus. It reminds me of the long process on the spiritual path, where an individual very slowly awakens to the inner direction.

It might take many years between the awakening of a general awareness of the existence of subtler dimensions and the focused commitment. Many people get stuck at phase 2, where they are interested, but don’t step on to a regular, rhythmical practice. And even then only a few go on from considering many ways to the way and dedicating themselves to focus their energy in one direction.

At one point or the other you have to overcome the split attention, sort out the side-ways and set forth in one direction. This has nothing to do with getting blind towards other things, but with the inner urge to grow in depth. As long as you are fascinated by the many side-tracks, the main track remains vague or veiled.

There is an increase of joy related to the increase of focus, and this is independent of outer situations. You stay in tune with your self even in the onrush of other impulses.

Road in Iceland, a photo of my brother

Normally during the day many different strings of themes and activities are inter-weaving. Some are more on the side of the ongoing activities, others touch deeper chords of relations, still others go to still deeper areas of attitudes, ideas, existential questions. Most of them come and go in a certain movement, a rhythm – daily exchanges, incoming mails, household, children, etc. Some are coming in a subtle, nearly imperceptible way, but nevertheless give a change to the tinge of the flow. It needs attention to recognise from which sources the streams are coming, and this is sometimes not easy.

My wife and I have observed the last days several situations where there were clouds of moods coming in, which weren’t originating from ourselves, but from other people. Here I can give only a rough outline of the stories.

I had a phone-call with a person, where afterwards I felt somehow depressive, questioning myself. On the surface the phone-call had not at all been moody. But the life situation of the person isn’t easy, and I suppose there were deeper undercurrents of irritation, which had come to me via the phone without my realising.

My wife just told me that she yesterday was for some time in a room, where some hours before a friend had been working, who has gone through a deep crisis and is still not well settled. Without realising, my wife had picked up the mood cloud and somehow felt very tired, exhausted, when she came home. It took a night with some strange dreams to digest. This morning after meditation and some yoga exercises she felt being herself again and the weariness was gone. She realised that some “mood infection” had gripped her, and that it took some time to dissolve the clouds again.

The wisdom teachings say that psychic energies get stored on articles or in rooms through the thoughts and the quality of character of a person. Also places get impregnated through the thoughts that are being cultivated regularly there – think of banks, supermarkets, psychiatric hospitals, meeting places of druggies…

You create an aura which is impregnating the surrounding. And when you are in a passive, receptive attitude, you more easily get influenced by others. When you are active or focused on something higher, there you are immune to lower influences. It is recommended to take a shower or at least wash your hands when you have come into contact with energies which dragged you down. It is also good to wash the food you buy in a supermarket to clean it from etheric impregnations. You find some hints about it in the Lunar Messenger on Symbolism and Use of the Hands.

A subtle net of influences

The last days there had been several encounters and exchanges – at the office, via e-mail, at home – where the topic was something about the spiritual path and spirituality in life. Reflecting on them gave an image how varied the individuals shape their paths.

Some gave the feeling of groping their way through a foggy cloud of aspirations, being attracted by various themes and teachings, but only hazily committing themselves to a routine and a task. There is something like a diffuse light, which has not yet taken shape.

Others seemed to be focused on a path – it was practising and teaching yoga exercises – but somehow with a mental conception learnt from a teacher and a tradition. There seemed to be a rigidity – trying to maintain a purity, which at the same time seemed to lack suppleness and inner connectedness. Their light was like being crystallized.

Again others were taking to commitment and an active search to shape their path. Though still not all-round chiselled, contours could be seen and an inner fire felt. Their path seemed to be in a process of clearing and the inner light to be ready to shine forth with the development ahead.

My wife said that the last days she often had the image of a circle with a point before her inner eye, when she was dealing with people. The point – the inner core, the I Am, or the soul – is like the focus of a lens. It has to become centred in order to gain strength. The fire has to be kindled. This can be done with the help of different means like dedication to a task, the support from a spiritual teacher, a meditational discipline … – or a combination of these.

The purpose remains the same – strengthening the fire, the radiance, the magnetism. In the image of the circle with the point, you go from the circumference to the centre, and then again from centre to circumference.

Photo of a sunspot seen from the side, from the Japanese satellite Hinode, by Nasa Astronomy Picture of the Day, April 2nd, 2007

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

A friend from California sent me today the following story with pictures, which I also found on different blogs:

“The following pictures are of the same place but taken in different seasons…

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.

The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise.

The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.

The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfilment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in the tree’s life.

He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.

If you give up when it’s winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfilment of your fall.

Don’t let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest.
Don’t judge life by one difficult season.
Persevere through the difficult patches,
and better times are sure to come some time or later.

Happiness keeps You Sweet,
Trials keep You Strong,
Sorrows keep You Human,
Failures keep You Humble,
Success keeps You Glowing,
But Only God keeps You Going!

My wife said to me this morning: I have now come to understand the difference between entering into a confrontation with someone and taking my own stand.
In the past I used to avoid taking a stand, because I didn’t want to confront with the view of others and start quarreling, so I often kept silent.
In the last time I came to declare my standpoint in an open way. This isn’t confronting the other, who might have another standpoint. I can accept it, and when I declare my view, we can enter into an exchange.

When you insist that your standpoint is right and the other’s is wrong, you are entering into an opposition. Then you try to convince or manipulate the other to take your view. Political party ideologies are making their mark through partiality and not by synthesizing. This carries in itself the seed for conflicts with the opposing opinions and for aggression.

If, however, you are centered in your self and express, this is the way I see the thing, you can be open to the other’s viewpoint, accepting it as another facet of the whole. This way the picture of truth gets rounded up, and you can open up to new vistas of understanding.

Stones on a beach at the Gulf of Bengal

A friend wrote me that she just experienced a shock, because a close family member had tried to commit suicide. Normally a suicide or an attempt is a cry deep from the soul, which is not finding the right way through life, not knowing how to find a good solution to face the tasks it has been committed to solve in this life.

From a spiritual point of view, there is the knowledge, and sometimes also the experience, that we as inner beings are immortal, and death does not exist, only for the body. So there is no end to our work, even if we commit suicide. It is important to understand that when someone commits suicide, he doesn’t solve the problem, but will be confronted with more problems in the future – the present ones and the problem of having gone away too early.

Inner research says that those who commit suicide land for a while in a state of a clouded consciousness, which is very incomfortable. Later on they have to face all the consequences of their doing. For life does not belong to us, we belong to Life. It is not our decision to enter into life, nor is it up to us to decide when the time for passing comes. Transgressing the rules of the “play” has its consequences.

You might like to read the text from Good Will in Action on Dying and Deathlessness.

A painting from a Swedish friend

Two days ago I got the newsletter of Alertnet, a humanitarian news network of Reuters Foundation. Alertnet is aiming at keeping relief professionals and the wider public up-to-date on humanitarian crises around the globe. In the newsletter there was a link to the World Press Tracker, that shows which emergencies the media limelight grabs and which are “forgotten” by the press:

(c) Alertnet

You can select different conflicts and time sections and see how much these areas are captures by the media, like Iraq or Afghan turmoil, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon crisis, AIDS pandemic, Bird flu, Somalia troubles, Kashmir dispute, Sri Lanka conflict, Darfur conflict … Out of a database of 10 000 media sources they have selected 108 English-language print publications from Europe North and Latin America Africa the Middle East and Asia. So it is a selective view, but nevertheless an impressive synthesis.

Grabbing the attention of the media is important for the flow of money and often decides on whether or not people react on a crisis. There is quite a business around the craving for attention. And the media are mirrors, instrumental for attracting and directing the attention.

Attention and focus are most essential for directing the focus of our life. Easily we get side-tracked from our genuine purpose by distractive influences. Ads, main-stream opinion, belief systems, only to mention a few. But the most important is one’s own mind. In any meditative practice it is most vital to learn focusing ones energies of attention, expressed through our thoughts. The power of habit is very strong, but with a regular training and attention to your motives you will grow in inner awareness.

Picture of the “eye of divine attention”, from a fountain in Berne, which formerly was the facade of a house.