The tour goes on, with many exchanges and impressions – deep topics, but not much to blog about.

Prayer flags in the kitchen window

I jokingly told some of my friends that we are on a Buddha-tour – everywhere we see Buddha statues, and it’s a sport for me to take some pics of the statues of Buddhas and other spiritual beings standing in the houses and gardens.

We also met various forms of the sign of perfection we also use for the Circle of Good-Will:

This is not a crop circle 🙂

Yesterday evening my wife asked me why I like this kind of traveling – since several of our friends told us that for them such visits would be very strenuous. I mostly don’t feel so. I love these exchanges. Normally at home I don’t have much contact besides work. So I find it very interesting to see how our friends are in life, how they integrate spiritual orientation with all the challenges of everyday life, how they deal with the ups and downs of the path, the inspirations and irritations. It mostly takes some moments to “dive into” the atmosphere and understand the specific rhythms and ways of organizing the daily routine, but we quickly find deeper issues in our talks.

The Sun Chariot drawn by seven horses, the seven rays

Some people, however, “hide” themselves behind smalltalk, or, worse, behind “logorhea” – talking without pause like a waterfall and thus cutting themselves from the flow of exchange. This works like an energy-vampire and leaves you depleted. It is some kind of egocentrism and blockage out of a dominant mind. Few were these situations, but normally not so easy to handle. In such situations I just keep silent.

A Ganesha statue in Bielefeld

This time one question particularly interests us and we ask it our friends: “What (deeper) issues occupy you at the present moment?” Several of our friends are at an age where their parents are getting old and in need of care, especially when they are sick or even suffering from dementia. The other side is, which ways the grown-up children take to – often orienting away from the parents and defining their own ways – basic questions of parents in our age. Then the balance between profession and health, stress…

Living together

One point which is very profound is the conflict between ideals – one’s own or others – and the way they might distort the view of how other people are. Many have gone through very enthusiastic times on the path and have become much more distanced, or have undergone deep reorientations. Some try to hold to an ideal but experience conflicts with others who don’t hold to these concepts or force them to modify.

Butterfly, symbol of transformation – shot taken yesterday in the garden of friends

Some have gone through deep inner crises, where inner wounds of the past had come up, causing pains and demanding attention and healing.

A yard of a little castle where one of our friends is living

Listening to such feelings in an open, attentive way gives relief, for empathy is a great healer. But it also mirrors one’s own stories, and I have to see that I remain centered in my self or quickly come back to it again.

Krishna statue with a crystal globe

My wife yesterday told again an event she had some weeks ago:

In June she was in Munich at a seminar about Radical Foregiveness with Colin Tipping. She took the “direct train” back via Zurich. However, there were railroad works near the Lake of Constance, and they had to change to a regional train and then to another train.

It was a hot day and when they had to leave the intercity train she saw a couple clad in black clothes, tattooed, both very obese and carrying big suitcases. Then man panted. A voice from the load-speakers said in a sharp voice: “Please hurry up to the other platform, the train is leaving soon. … Please hurry up….”

The man was furious: “Incredible, we have paid 200 Euros and this is such a bad service.” They had to cross the railways and walk on the other platform to the regional train. The voice from the loudspeaker kept on reminding, “Please hurry up, the train is leaving soon.” My wife entered the wagon together with the couple. The places were all occupied and so they remained standing at the entrance. She saw that the man was boiling inwardly. For a moment she reflected whether she should talk to the man or not. Then she said, “Inefficiency makes you angry, yes?”

The man looked incredulously and said: “Yes! At my work I cannot be so inefficient, we have to be very precise…” – And that is injust.” – Again he looked astonished: “Yes!”

His girlfriend looked at my wife and just said, “Validating?”. My wife, “Yes.” – Are you working in a care profession?” – “No, I’m becoming a coach.” “Ah!” Later they changed again the train to the next intercity. My wife helped to carry the luggage of the man who had calmed down, and later they sait not far from each other and exchanged some more words.

My wife explained that giving space to another person without trying to solve his problem, just giving presence, helps very much to comeinto contact with oneself.

A fairy bringing light – a candelabra in the house of our friends

Yesterday morning started with a beautiful fire ritual in the garden of our friends.

Fire ritual in front of the Krishna statue in the garden

After breakfast there was a group meeting where we studied some pages from “Esoteric Healing“, about how to deal with blockages in the etheric body.

Later we continued our journey and made a stop at a place at the countryside not far away from my old home town. There we met two friend with whom we had been together over a decade in a spiritual group, where, under the garb of esoteric studies and discipleship training, a lot of atrocities had happened. Those who had been in the group had undergone quite some inner wounds – merciless hurting others in the name of merciful living. The group had dissolved later, a number of them joined the WTT with which we are now associated. We had a deep exchange about these times and what had happened and the path we had taken since. All of us had taken to the work of healing inner wounds and trying to assist others in this.

A ceramic globe in the garden of our friends

Then we continued our journey to the home of other friends near Bielefeld, where we stay at the moment. Again some good talks till late in the night.

OM at the entrance of the house

A blessing Buddha on the other side of the wall with the OM

Yesterday after breakfast and a continuation of an interesting interpretation of my astro-chart our journey continued through Belgium to Germany, to the house of friends in Bonn where we spend some hours – with exchanges, but nothing for blogging 😉 In the evening we continued to Wermelskirchen to the house of our friends where the HQ of WTT-Germany is located. Relaxing talks, some work on the new Vaisakh Newsletter, strolling through the town to do some shopping. Here are some photo impressions from around the house and the garden.

Krishna statue in the garden

A holographic picture of Master CVV

A holographic picture of Sri Kumar in front of his books on Uranus

Miniature sandals, a symbol of the teacher principle

A relief picture of Mount Kailash

Symbol in blue

Symbol of the swan, Hamsa, the pulsation of life

In the morning I had a long talk with my friend about dealing with emotional wounds.

Dawn in the kitchen

All of us have encountered different situations from early childhood on where we have formed different convictions, like a feeling of being rejected by others, of not being loved by the mother, or many similar experiences. Later we interpret situations along beliefs formed on these experiences, and we create situations that confirm these beliefs. And we then believe that it is true, without recognizing that these beliefs are just there to teach us that we have to work on something in our biography. We become victims of our creeds and normally see the cause for the related situations in others.  We try to hide our uncertainties behind concepts and convictions. You have to consciously go through the related experiences to be able to let them go.

It is important not to hide behind facades, be it spiritual ones or other forms. it is a long process of self-discovery.

Later another friend had a look at my chart and gave me some interesting insights. After a beautiful lunch in the garden we had a walk through the nearby countryside, and then we returned for evening meditation followed by a water ritual.

The end of the water ritual

In the evening we met with the group of friends in the house of the daughter for dinner in the garden and a beautiful evening under a high sky.

The “Japanese Garden”

Some impressions:

Ganesha blessing from a corner

Buddha in deep contemplation

Krishna playing his lovely flute music

A Chinese statue of a disciple holding his teacher on the arm

Buddha meditating on world peace

Yesterday the morning started with a fire ritual followed by a beautiful breakfast in the garden.

Two of our friends told me how they discovered the place where they now have the healing centre Centre Caducée. Next to their house there was another house which one could not see. It was surrounded by many high fir trees. An old man who lived there had died and the house was for sale, but no one wanted to buy it. The lady of my friends had once an intuition about having something to do with that house, but there was no way how. After a year they again thought if the house was for sale, they searched on the web and found out it was.

They arranged a visit and saw it was in a bad shape, quite dark, low and dark rooms, but the place was attracting them very much. So they decided to buy. Together with some friends they cut all the pine trees so that light could enter, they renovated the inner and the man of my friends, who is since many years a doctor in Brussels decided to shift part of his practice here and to start there another kind of work.

They showed us the house which has been beautifully renovated. Surrounded by forests it is a very nice place for healing work.

The Centre Caducée

The rest of the day was filled with a lot of other inspiring exchanges.

Buddha meditating in the garden

The second day of our journey started with a little water ritual in the house of our friends. There had been long talks till late night, so we left a bit later.

Driving through hilly areas of Palatinate we saw beautiful old villages. At noon we stopped at the house of a friend near Saarbrücken. She had been for a visit to our house 3 weeks ago and it was only on a very short notice we decided to include this stop-over on our journey. We had some talks about coaching work and about the quality of rooms: She is living for the moment in the house of her late  parents and she described the work she did for cleaning the subtle space which was filled with quite some old and dark energies of the past.

Many people seem to be unconscious what kind of energies are being built up through our thoughts and habits, and these stay in the subtle realms over long periods. Master Morya in one of the Agni Yoga books even recomments that new cities should better be build on virgin ground….

In the garden we had a look at the vegetables – with a Buddha statue meditating among them ) and cherries (not only a look), greeted some donkeys and horses before we continued our journey.

The Vegetable Buddha

A salat mandala

Do you hear the sound of silence?

The highway brought us via Luxembourg – where we had another highway stop in some “no where land”, which reminded us of a motor rest in Southern France, they looked so similar…. – to the house of our next visit, near Brussels. Friends of us have some houses in a little forest where they are living already simce more than 2 decennies, a beautiful and peaceful place. We had our evening meditation together and then a hearty get-together with dinner…

The dog of our friends

Yesterday morning we started for a 3 weeks’ journey to friends and group members in Belgium and Germany. The first stage is near Karlsruhe in Germany. On the highway I had a strange experience:

At noon we made a stop at the motorway rest area near Freiburg. After lunch we had a short nap in the car. Since my wife wanted to sleep a bit longer, she asked me to go out for a short walk. Strolling along the parking area I saw through the bushes the windows of a nearby church. I left the parking, entered the churchyard and saw that it was a burial church, and in the back of it was a cemetery.  At the entrance there was a sandstone relief with the image of another church and a black marble stone with a text below, describing the history of the place: Until the 19th century another church had been at that place, which had been built  1000 years ago, and this church again at the place of a still older church. Over centuries the place had been a little pilgrimage centre.

I walked along the graves, some old, some of very recent origin, even some graves from this year. A strange mood filled me. At the end of the graveyard there was an old tombstone saying that in 1856 a lady had been buried there at the age of 73. From “out of the blue” I suddenly had to sob intensely. There was no object for this sudden sadness in my mind. I turned away, walked over to the other side of the graveyard. There I stopped in front of a round tombstone with an engraving of a relief of  ivy and two doves kissing each other through some leaves of ivy. There again the sobbing started, together with some feeling of situations I had gone through in the past years.

I went back to the church, it was closed, and the left the graveyard, feeling a relief (strange, the same word as relief…) and a liberation from some old emotions. Some thoughts from the morning meditation came to my mind, and suddenly it made sense to me what I had experienced there. I then entered the parking area again and felt like coming back from another dimension. Some minutes later we continued our journey on the highway.

At the house of my friends near Karlsruhe, this morning after meditation, I told them about my experience. They related of some events they had in their area where there had been some old Celtic ritual grounds and burial places, where people were living now and where a number of persons fell sick of cancer. A clairvoyant person came to that place and saw that a number of departed souls had been  hovering around that area which had not found the path to the light. They had done some rituals there to clear the space, and later people living in that reported that they felt much better. Maybe at the graveyard there was also the touch of some out souls hanging around. In any case, the experience carried a deep message to me.

Statue of Krishna in the house of our friends

A friend send me today the following story:

A wise man once sat in the audience and cracked a joke. All laughed like crazy. After a moment he cracked the same joke again and a little less people laughed this time. He cracked the same joke again and again. When there was no laughter in the crowd, he smiled and said

“When you can’t laugh on the same joke again and again, then why do you keep crying over the same thing over and over again?”
Forget the past and move on.

Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today. – James Dean

A flower on the wayside, seen while passing by

An inspiring prayer song by Maher Zain, a Muslim Swedish R&B singer, songwriter and music producer of Lebanese origin. The video also contains the English lyrics.