Do not believe in something because you are told to.
Do not believe in something because a holy person said it.
Do not believe in something because you read it from a book.
Follow and practice the teaching without prejudice.
If it brings happiness to you and others and does not
encourage self harm or harm to others then follow it.
A worthy topic for the 1000th blogpost of Flowers on the Wayside:
USA Postage has published a series of 7 stamps with pictures of Hindu gods. These spiritual designs are targeted to the Indian community in the United States, which makes up 1% of the total population. For the first time, USA postage depicts Sri Krishna, Shiva-Parvati, Sai Baba, Murugan, Lord Venkateshwara, Vinayaka and Lakshmi on beautiful 20-stamp commemorative sheets.
Changes are natural for life – many we don’t notice, some come as thresholds and some bring new directions in a drastic way. This year there were a number of challenging situations of transformation where I was / am learning to go through in balance – surgery, friendships, job – without clinging to something when its time is over. A little observation:
Cars get older, and ours got a gearbox malfunction after nearly 200 000 km. A repair would have been too costly. Yesterday we got a new car and gave the old one away. A change without pain. Leaving the old vehicle to take the new one is like changing bodies: We depart from the old body with its malfunctions to get into another one. We continue to exist as solar principles or “the soul”. When we identify with the body, we “lose” our existence at death. When we maintain continuity of identity we will be able to consciously withdraw and enter into the next body, realizing that we live eternally. This is the main purpose of spiritual exercises. Have a look at the book “Venus – The Path to Immortality” by Sri K. Parvathi Kumar. The fundamental wisdom teaching in the present time is to realise that there is no such thing as death.
I’m reading at the moment two books of Michael Newton (Journey of Souls / Destiny of Souls), a hypnotherapist who over more than 35 years has done clinical research and practice about regression into prior lives and especially into episodes taking place between them, such as spiritual progress reviews and the planning of future incarnations. Quote Wikipedia: “Newton describes that during their continuous visits, a great number of his patients regressed beyond this life and passed through the spirit worlds; through ongoing age regression sessions, these subjects have recalled and revealed their past life experiences and their journey through the spirit world.”
A Canadian friend just sent me the link to this great video of kids speaking about oneness and unity. About love and what you can do, power with, not power over… Children of the new age – inspiring! The video was done by the Center of Spiritual Living, Dallas.
Last Tuesday I had the good chance to meet Sri Kumar for some hours in Hergiswil, where he stayed a few days on his way from Spain back to India. He was relaxing a bit after an extensive tour to groups in Europe. For an hour we watched a video of a new film together and afterwards he took time to talk with me. I told him about the turbulent weeks and months I had gone through and he gave me valuable hints and suggestions for the time ahead.
He explained to me that when you speak to people they take it with their personalities. This automatically gives a twist to the situation. Though you might speak with innocence and without ulterior motives, but the world isn’t like that: The other persons normally don’t take things as such, but colour them with their own motives and tendencies. In their critical attitude they interpret what they hear according to their understanding. They judge about the situation and talk about it to others. Gossiping thus creates rumours.
He pointed out that especially in the groups there is a lot of gossip about others going on. He said that he is continuously confronted with this gossip, which he neutralises by taking it in and not letting it out. He absorbs it and doesn’t let it stick to him: “Even in my family I do like this, so in our relations we don’t go into these matters. Keeping silent is the best.”
He recommended me to keep away from a certain situation and to learn to look for the motives of people: “Things normally aren’t the way people present them to you, for they have their motives. You have to learn to see behind and to understand the motives, but not act on what the people present.”
He said, “Many come and look what the WTT does and then go away again. Others come, look and spit at it and go away. Neither way affects me. Without any doing from my side, when somebody spits, it comes back to him. Nature does it. The WTT is open for all to come and to go when people like. The doors are open. Did you ever notice that I insisted on anything for you?” I replied, “No, and I highly cherished this freedom when I first heard about these open doors.” – “I’m like a reflector, I reflect the way people approach to me. If they come with a critical attitude to the WTT, they will encounter critical points, devotional people meet devotion, others make experiences according to their disposition. So some are disappointed when their expectations aren’t met.”
I told him that I regularly practice in the morning visualising the double pyramid he recommends for protection, especially during the times of attacks. “You can visualise the double pyramid surrounded by flames of fire, this will strengthen the protection”, he suggested. In these periods it is particularly important to stay aligned inwardly.
When speaking about my professional situation he proposed not to rush but to wait and to let things come. He explained that in his life he observes rhythms of 7 years and he gave me some examples. He explained the importance of observing the movements of Saturn, Jupiter and the north and south node: “Whenever aspects are touched by the nodes there is an obscuration. The effect of the south node is like Saturn, the effect of the north node like a double Mars.” And he gave some hints as per my present situation: “When Saturn returns to the birth position, a big cycle closes and new opportunities open up.”
(These notes are made from memory and aren’t literal statements.)
The outside as a reflection on the mirror of our consciousness
Once a disciple went to his teacher for a consultation. The teacher warned him – ‘I just answer three questions, my friend. So think carefully before you ask them.’
After a moment of reflection, the disciple asked: ‘What is the deeper truth?’
The teacher said: ‘A tree in the garden.’
Then the disciple asked: ‘What is enlightenment?’
The master replied: ‘A tree in the garden.’
Shocked the disciple asked: ‘What is wisdom?’
The teacher replied: ‘A tree in the garden.’
Wisdom can be everything, yet is invisible to the mere conceptualization of our brain. Teachers avoid getting caught by the questions of their disciples, because if they respond in a conceptual way they won’t achieve that the disciples abandon the confinement in their little minds.
The reflection of the sun confined to a small puddle
Thursday evening my wife and I went to a public lecture of Clemens Kuby, a German film maker, author and founder of the German Academy for Self Healing Processes. He has done a number of films on interesting topics such as Living Buddha (rebirth of the Karmapa), the Todas in the Nilagiris, South India, The Old Ladakh, Tibet – Resistance of the Spirit, On the Way into the Next Dimension and now he is giving talks on self healing – being himself a living example: In 1981 he fell out of a window from 15 m height and was diagnosed paraplegic. For a year he was in a hospital and couldn’t move – he calls it a state of “forced meditation”.
In his talk he very humorously explained how he insulated himself from the diagnosis of the doctors who called it a refusal of accepting the reality – lifelong living with a wheelchair. He went through a deep inner transformation, he decided to totally change his life and cut nearly all links to his old life. Through his inner work a so-called spontaneous healing thought impossible by the doctors happened – nerves which were cut grew and he could start walking again. For this an inner vision developed of a place which he did not know but which turned out to be Ladakh. So he started a new life guided by the soul.
He spoke very well (in German) and I made some notes which I would like to share:
“We are mostly working with the left brain, the whole education is left-sided. Or do you know of a professorship for intuition? We think the intuitive half of the brain is of no use. Intuition is a private matter.
If I have pain I’m not on the way to God. People think that disease is the will of God, a punishment by God. I would change this God. If I want to become happy I have to take my disease seriously. If I’m not doing well I have to learn something. Suffering is easier than learning. If I don’t want to learn the pain becomes stronger.
You have to regulate your life backwards but also develop a perspective. Life after a disease has to be different from the life before the disease. There must be a cause for the disease in the biography. If you want to return to your old life there is no learning. A disease, an accident doesn’t happen accidentally. I have the disease in order to gain a new knowledge to find my happiness.
We have intuition to find the inner compass. The most important instrument for intuition is musing. Without an idea nothing happens. Everything that materialises needs an idea. In the beginning there is spirit, not matter. There is no phenomenon without an idea. The idea of pain was a bad idea.
On the intuitive plane everything is NOW, so I also can change it NOW. People come to the cinema to experience something, that is NOW. I experience it even if it is not true. We are not here to perceive the reality but to create the reality. A documentary film is a creation of reality. I can imagine the reality, it is always a subjective view. So we can re-shape our experiences. Only when I had found a real perspective in hospital why I had become sick I had an idea what-for I want to become healthy again. Existential fear screws up every vision. The shamans create a new truth for their patients and thus heal them. We imagine the new reality in the presence.
We cannot argue away the symptoms, but if I describe the content I can reshape it and create new images. The subjective reality counts. So you can describe cancer as cells which have dropped out of Love. We have fallen out of the love.
We can write down what good luck has happened to us in a situation instead of focussing on something bad. I can retroactively re-write my biography. How I think so I am. Every thought has an effect. I am the only responsible for my thoughts. So I can break the chain and re-write the scenes I have gone through. This way I don’t pass on the old concept to my children.
The one who has gone through a severe illness has become greater. We can retrospectively re-create facts. In this we have to be careful to whom we lend our ears. If we talk to a doctor we must know that he sees things from a physiological perspective, he won’t accompany us on the way of our soul. The scientists have even erased the word soul from their world view. We cannot expect apples from a pear tree.
The spirit is the boss, I can re-create a healthy childhood. I can explain it to every cell of my body and communicate with the organs, so that they are healthy.”
Normally shadow is seen as the absence of light, having a negative connotation. In the fascinating works of the Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita he is sculpturing shadows to create “objects” through a single source of light. The objects just exist through the arrangement of other objects creating the form seen through the interaction with light. On his website you find a number of objects where the form he created is the shadow.
Here you see shadow persons talking:
In a Japanese video of a show you see some of his installations, fascinating:
You find more on YouTube.
In spirituality the shadow is the symbol of the personality and the soul of the inner Light. The self-conscious personality is but a reflection of the universal soul. Sri Kumar says in “The Aquarian Cross“: If we are after our shadow, we cannot reach the light. The shadow is nothing but our own personality. In so far as we continue to fulfil our personality needs, we are only running after our shadow. “When we are running after our own shadow we have no direction”, says Pythagoras.
So shadows is a topic for this time of Cancer, where the Sun starts its seeming southwards journey again and the shadows start getting longer.
Morning light shining on the Krishna statue in my work room
This night at 01:09 CET the sun enters into Cancer and we celebrate Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere. It is good to attune to the energies of this time. The wisdom teachings say that it is important to be vigilant during the first 20 days of Cancer, otherwise you will get slowly more imprisoned in the outside during the months to come. If we have a good inner alignment we get a reinforcement of the energies to be functioning more inside, not to go into over-actions in the outside.
Here are some thoughts from a lecture of Sri Kumar at Summer Solstice 2010 in Königswinter, Germany:
The first 20 days of Cancer are said to be the great serpent, the dragon called Aslesha. It is the great dragon or great serpent. If you miss to align you fall directly into the mouth of the great serpent and get out only through the tail. At the end of Scorpio and the beginning of Sagittarius there is the eagle, the mula, you are released out of the deadlock of the year. This solstice not only gives a possibility of the purposes of the day, but also the purposes of life. When we have to follow into unknown ways, it is better to follow someone who knows the way. Finding it oneself can be a waste of life, energy. That is why there is the help of the teacher.”
The wisdom teachings say that the solar God of fire comes to the lunar mansion of the Goddess in Cancer. Cancer is the cardinal sign relating to the Mother, where there is the reception of the Father into the Mother’s house. Cancer is also known as the sun sign related to the birth of the souls into the bodies. This I tried to illustrate in the picture on Cancer: The Moon is the reflective principle receiving and transmitting energies from higher circles. The lunar energies help with the descent of the souls and building the layers of the embryo in the mother’s womb. The earth is the mother which nourished us – we must take care not to spoil the basis of our life. You find more pictures on the symbolism of the zodiacal signs in the series Images of Synthesis.
Cancer – The Mother and the Birth of the Soul into the Body
