A friend sent me the link to the Newseum in Washington DC. It is a huge museum about 500 years of news history, with very modern technology to let the visitors experience how and why news is made. Since news shape very much the way we perceive the world – and this is being constructed – it is a very timely initiative.

Most of us won’t go there, but they have a fascinating map of about 800 “Today’s Front Pages” (yesterday, Saturday, July 30, 2011 they had 785 front pages from 81 countries.) where you can just put your mouse on a city, almost anywhere in the world, and the newspaper headlines of the day pop up… Double click and the page gets larger…you can read the entire paper on some if you click on the right place. This site changes every day with the publication of new editions of the paper.

On their site they say: “The front pages are in their original, unedited form, and some may contain material that is deemed objectionable to some visitors. Discretion is advised.” 🙂

You have also a section of a number of European papers. So when you want to have a quick overview of what the world is talking about…

There are also a lot of exhibitions, about such “important” topics like: “First Dogs: Presidential Pets in the White House” (images of dogs belonging to 23 presidents, including the newest addition: Bo, a six-month-old Portuguese water dog), “Pictures of the Year” and “The President’s Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office“.

The Newseum, Washington DC, Photo: James P. Blair/Newseum

This afternoon we made a little walk and had a pause in the café of the open air bath at the nearby river. An elderly lady came and sat down at our table, a friend of my wife’s late parents. She immediately spoke about the shock she experienced through the events in Oslo, the horrible terror killing of last Friday. She told us details of what she had read in the Sunday newspapers. We just knew what had been in the Saturday paper.

Later she asked about our family, about what my wife is now doing. Cyrille told her that 1.5 years ago she had stopped teaching piano and that now she is doing a formation as a coach in radical forgiveness. Like others of my wife’s friends the lady felt a bit irritated: For them making music is somehow a dream, for my wife it is something of the past, a thing she had learnt and practised for years but which no longer interests her. The lady wanted to know more about this kind of coaching and it turned out that she is a psychologist and first seemed to be a bit sceptical about the coaching. I mentioned how the work with radical forgiveness had done good to me…

She then started speaking of a journey last year to a place of her childhood and an event that took place in 1945 at the Danube, where Hungarian Nazis had collected all the Jews of the town, led them to the river and killed them there. She wasn’t there, but members of her family had been among the victims. Her father’s side was Jewish, her mother’s side Christian and she grew up as a Christian, but has always been in contact with Jews. She had been again at that place and read the memorial plate with all the names of the persons killed, and there was written the sentence:

“If you are a human, you have to learn to forgive, but not to forget.”

She continued speaking of her father who later went to Israel, whereas she came to Switzerland. She became a psychologist and in spite of her high age she is still working, for victims of mobbing.

There was a magic spell in the air, a feeling of souls touching each other, beyond words. My wife stood a while at the river and looked at the flow, reminding her of the times passing by. On our way home we reflected about the scene, and my wife said: “I didn’t know anything about her before, we only had exchanges on a small-talk level. I felt that she still carries  a heavy load of past experiences and was very grateful to open up and speak a bit about it and to feel that we listened with an open-heart. Just listened, and this opened her feelings. I felt love coming from her side. And there was a flow.”

A Norwegian flag on half-mast in the neighbourhood

My sister just sent me the link to this beautiful video:

On the 2nd of June 2011 strangers gathered at 6:30 pm in Trafalgar Square to share a peaceful half an hour meditating.

Our friends have a linking enterprise where they make carpet borders – and hundreds of coloured threads are stored there. And in the same enterprise the husband also works as an Ayurvedic masseur – complementary activities in different fields. He invited me for a massage and I enjoyed this offer.

The massage table for oil massage

While he was massaging my entire body with different warm oils deeper and deeper relaxation pervaded me and vitalised the body cells – a great experience.

A poster with a blue medicine Buddha in the massage room

And another Buddha observing and guiding from a corner of the room.

A Lotus flower stone at the little altar

A 20 minutes drive later brought us to the “Gulab Garden”: In a corner at the border of a forest overlooking the Münsterland, near Havixbeck our friends had transformed a garden they got from his parents into a rose garden and a  meditation retreat place. The name of the garden is inspired by the pseudonym H. P. Blavatsky used in Caves and Jungles of Hindostan for her teacher, Master Morya – Gulab Lal Singh. And in the H.P.B.-biography of S. Cranston she tells how once Blavatsky was brought by a driver to a place near Bombay with a rose garden of her master. She had directed the driver to that place, and he was sure he would re-find it. But no matter how much he tried to find that place again, he could not, though he knew the area quite well. Sri Kumar told this story to the group assembled in the garden during his visit together with his wife in 2009.

It also was not so easy to reach this Gulab garden; behind a farm a field path led along some fields to the corner of the forest, where the garden lies hidden.

A little Buddha surrounded by flowers meditating in the garden

They had worked very much to create this garden – cutting many pine trees which had hidden the house for years to allow light coming in and to open the view over the countryside.

The vast horizon. Our friends told us that early morning in summer you can see a gorgeous sunrise.

A little lamp surrounded by flowers

A rose tree in the middle of the garden. They have planted different kinds of beautifully smelling roses.

The little house had been constructed in metal in the 1930ies by an industrialist who used it as a lodge.

View from the little room under the roof where there is a place for 2 beds and a meditation room.

Three other friends joined us for evening meditation and some cake. Sitting there in the peaceful garden, observing the clouds pass by and the far horizon was a beautiful close of our 3 weeks’ journey through Belgium and Germany to visit WTT group members and to exchange about the paths we are walking. All these cordial experiences were only possible because of the network our teacher, K. Parvathi Kumar, had woven over long years of work. While I’m writing these words, just a short moment before leaving the house in a village near Münster which our friends had left to us, before heading back home to Switzerland, I feel very grateful for all these deep experiences.

Yesterday morning we left the coast of the North Sea, passed Hamburg and Bremen and went further south to visit my eldest (younger) sister. In the way at a stop on a highway parking I saw a radio tower and two persons were working there at the top. It reminded me of clearing the communication and thus making the connection between human and human better. And a nice symbol of the work of our inter-connection

Clearing the communication

At noon time we arrived at the house where my sister is living since 24 years, a small cottage nor far from Osnabrück. Her children are now big, though the 2 boys are still living with her

A room in the rebuilt stable, where she has hung her paintings she did years ago

A statue in the garden, symbolising friendship

A Buddha in the garden….

… and also in the house

A place in the garden inviting to enjoy the ambiance

While my wife had a long nap (she passed nearly the whole night finishing a novel…) I had an intense talk with my sister. She also had just been in North Friesland, for a week, a yoga course with an Indian yoga teacher. And in the last years she had done meditation courses in an Osho centre in Cologne, which had done her very good and helped letting go old emotional blockages. We talked about the difficulties our parents had, after the war and the difficulties we had with our parents, fighting our ways out of a setting where we felt our potentials were blocked. All of us 5 children had worked out their ways in different, but intense ways. She told me what this had done with her, and I could very openly speak with her had this process had done with me – the discipline and ideas our parents tried to inculcate and the ways we tried to find our own paths. My sister helped me to understand some facets which I hadn’t seen before, and it was a very enriching encounter.

Later in the afternoon we continued our ride to Münster, where we met a couple, friend we also know since years. Again an intense talk. We passed the night in their home in the surroundings of Münster, while they stayed at the place of their company More about it will follow.

Athene, Goddess of Wisdom, contemplating on the window sill

The circle of the Zodiac on the wall – the wheel of life is rolling on

Yesterday had been a calm day enjoying the beach of Stankt Peter Ording and the little village. Here are just some impressions .

Dawn seen from the window of the guest-house in Tönning

The wadden sea during low tide – just a vast field of mud – an Unesco World Natural Heritage area

At the beach – children playing, sun and water bathing

Girl playing at the beach and a kite surfer in the background

An old thatched roof house with mirroring windows, now used as a museum in Sankt Peter Ording

A beautiful thatched roof house surrounded by an ocean of flowers

Bicycles everywhere

Yesterday morning we left the house of our friends in the high north of Germany and went a little south to the coast of the North Sea. Since a friend in Hamburg told us that she will be away when we will be near, we decided to pass two nights in a guest-house at the little harbour in Tönning and to enjoy a little visit pause.

The red guest-house in the background at the harbour.

I noticed that when you see the surrounding with an open eye, you find spiritual symbols and meanings everywhere. In the night the moon in its 4th descending phase shone through the window, and in the morning the water in the harbour was low – ebb time. The tides directly show the rhythm of nature. The little boats remind of the journey of life. Directly in front of the harbour there is the Eider river which is about to enter into the ocean – from boundaries to the boundless.

A boat passing the exist of the little harbour and going on the Eider river towards the sea. View from the window of our room in the guest-house.

There were rain-showers coming from the sea nearly every half an hour, bringing back the purified water from the ocean – re-entering into the cycle of water.

Dark clouds coming from the sea. At the far horizon wind turbines making use of the breeze to produce electricity.

The seagulls were enjoying the wind, nearly standing at a place in the strong breeze only slowly advancing.

The seagulls – symbols of the souls

In the little town of Husum you find a fountain with a statue of a woman with a row – a sign of working with the flow of life.

Next to the fountain there is a house with a white unicorn, another symbol of the soul:

The white unicorn observing the people below.

And in the shop window there was a poster with another unicorn.

The beautiful unicorn in the shop window, surrounded by some window reflections

In Tönning you find many small houses, often built in the 18th century – creating some individualised space from out of the large surrounding space. The gables are like steps towards heaven.

The Cosmic Law keeps all in a good balance. A figure of Justice with the balance

Our friends proposed to go with us to a Danish island, Rømø, an hour drive away. On the way we made a stop in a nice town called Tønder, where the son of our guest had gone to  high school – and where he wanted to show us the buildings. The town is several hundred years old, with small roads and beautiful houses.

Walking into the town

In the centre there was a wooden figure, the replica of an old figure now in a museum, a “shame keeper”, to “scare off criminals and floozies”, as the Danish inscription said. It is the only figure still found in Denmark.

On the wall of an old house there was a beautiful coat of arms with symbols of fights with dragons and serpents. The crawling serpent or dragon is a symbol of the soul fallen into matter (crawling on the belly); the spear stands for the human spine, through which the energy of kundalini rises; and the man fighting or the bird eating the serpent are symbols of the soul overcoming matter. On the crest there were two dragon fighters and one stork eating a serpent.

A long dam lead to the island of Rømø. The land around was totally flat up to the horizon, where land, sea and sky met. We drove with the cars onto the beach near the sea – a huge, long beach. Next to the place where we stopped a man tried to direct a kite. Sometimes the wind pushed him away or he fell down for a moment.

Directing the kite – like the soul taming the personality – flying high in life, but keeping the contact to the inner ground.

On the far end of one side of the beach you could see a great number of kites in the air.

The kites seen through the telephoto lense

Though it had rained several times in the morning and there was a fresh wind,the husband of our friends and me jumped into the sea and enjoyed the freshness of the waves.

I felt very much energized by the salt water. Later we had a walk along the beach towards the horizon.

There were lots of shells lying around, especially long ones like little sticks. I discovered a shell which looked different from the others. It looked like a little piece of art. Our friends told me that these ones are new. Friends of them had seen similar ones in Spain, and these shells have come with boats from the south and now also live here, since the sea slowly gets warmer.

The shell immigrant, looking like a little piece of art

Soon again black clouds quickly approached from the horizon. We went back to our cars. As soon as I sat down inside to clean my feet from sand a shower splashed against the windows.

Next morning after meditation and breakfast my friend told me about the difficulties of his work. He is the head physician of the regional psychiatric hospital, and he explained the challenges they have to face in finding a good way between medical demands, finance and the regulatory system. Each system seems to produce certain forms of absurdities and possibilities of abuse, when the focus is on the economic aspect. But without the economic “counterbalancing” (the law of economics, as the wisdom teachings call it) an intelligent organisation would not come about. May different interests have to be integrated to find a good functioning – forcing the structures to adapt.

After some rainy days Saturday started with sunshine – a warm day announced already early in the morning. Our cordial visit ended after morning meditation and a talk after breakfast. In earlier years our friend had worked as a diver. Married to a professional diver she could tell of a number of fascinating undersea experiences, with TV and research diving. After diving in the outer her life turned to deeper dives into the inner, from encounter groups to meditation and methods of healing….

A 1.5 hours trip brought us yesterday from Lübeck to Kiel, another harbour city at the Baltic Sea from where ferries go to Scandinavian countries and cruise ships to anywhere in the world. We had arranged a meeting with a friend in a restaurant next to the Baltic Sea Quay. Our friend had been living in Munich and had come to Kiel because of a job she had found there. She is a good astrologer, and so we took our charts with us and had a long talk about Saturn and Uranus, Lilith and Moon Nodes 🙂

In the background the ships were passing by – and a touch of far-away countries was in the air.

A view from our table at the restaurant

Walking along the Baltic Sea Quay

Later in the afternoon we continued our ride through North Friesland towards a little village near the North Sea where a family of friends is living.

Yesterday it was a cold, rainy and windy day. We went to Travemünde, a harbour town, where first I wanted to jump into the water, but then it started raining and was too chilly.

The beach was nearly empty and gray clouds were chasing over the sky. But it was a great experience to feel the freshness of the sea and the vastness of space.

Lonely Beach Chairs waiting for sunny days

An old lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour

The seagulls on heaps of mussels reminded me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and his striving for perfection about whom I had blogged shortly.

In the water and on the moisty beach there were jellyfish-mandalas. Our friend said, “From that state we have come, eons ago.” And I jokingly replied, “And our wobbling bellies still remind of it….”

We took the ferryboat to the other side where the former training ship of the German marine, Passat, was lying, a three-master. It is no longer sailing, but is used as a museum. I thought it must be boring for a ship just lying there and waiting… But when we approached the former grandeur of the ship with all the rigging still gave an impressive image of adventures and far-away countries. Are the ship-devas dreaming of valour and daring?

A pilot boat in front of the Passat

A mighty steering wheel: Can we navigate our boats of life well through stormy weather?

The pizzaria where we took our lunch was full of tiny lighthouses, sailing boat models and plates with sailor’s knots. How well do we tangle up the ropes of our life and how difficult it is to untangle them again….

The model of a three-master on the window sill, with the Passat in the background: Big dreams in a small world.