A friend sent some beautiful photos about Tippi Degre, born 1990, who grew up in Namibia, Africa, as a child of French photographers in an incredible intimacy to wildlife.

This is a trailer from a documentary made on her returning to Africa, and bridging two completely different cultures, meeting old and new friends.

A beautiful hymn, though it probably is a modern interpretation.

A Spanish friend sent this  beautiful story about Shamballa, which I put into English with the help of automatic translation:

“Shamballa is a sacred kingdom hidden in some remote corner of the Himalayas. The Tibetans believe fervently in the existence of Shamballa. In this paradisiac place reigns beauty and kindness, because their residents have reached the illumination transcending suffering. Many consider that it is even possible to arrive at Shambhala, but the road is long and full of dangers. He who has the luck to arrive at its doors – often by chance – should take advantage of the opportunity to penetrate into the Kingdom.

If he doesn’t go it and leaves it, it will stop later on; perhaps he will never again find it. The doors of Shamballa open up a single time in one’s life, and if you don’t cross them you are outside forever.

This myth teaches us something very important that we often forget: “Life doesn’t wait”. Therefore, if we have an aspiration, we should try to make it a reality. If we don’t take the initiative with the first enthusiasm, perhaps we don’t make it again.

It is sad to allow the days and the years to pass by without anything important happening. Those who never take a risk for anything are the first ones that complain about being bored by life. They wait that the change, happiness, arrives like a gift for them.

If the door of Shamballa opens up in our lives, let us enter without doubting. It is preferable to make a mistake several times than to fall into routine.”

The painting “Shamballa” by Nicholas Roerich shows the glacier peaks of the mountain range of Thang-La which reminds of the White Island. The painting stems from Roerich’s expedition through the Himalayas, Tibet, and the Desert Gobi in the 1920s. Many thanks to the Roerich Museum in New York.

Every year the World Teacher Trust-Global publishes an Astrological Diary running from Aries to Pisces. You can use it to go into the qualities of time and to work with them inside.

The Astrological Diary 2011/12 contains the daily positions of the planets, references to important events for the spiritual practice, information about the moon phases and constellations of the moon (Nakshatras) as well as an aphorism of the day to meditate and ponder upon. You find some short information about this inner work in the booklet on Time.

A friend from Canada sent me the link to this inspiring video of a flash-mob singing a Hallelujah. It was a surprise for the shopper having their lunch in an Ontario shopping mall food court. The recording was arranged by a photo agency to wish a Merry Christmas.

Last Wednesday I received a mail which seemingly came from an Indian friend. When reading it in the evening, I had a short moment of hesitation, but then I got “trapped” by the story and the fact that certain points in the mail seemed to be authentic – but it was faked. My friend told me he came from India to Madrid to help a niece in health troubles. She had to undergo surgery and since the operation would be too expensive in Spain he decided to bring her back to India. He now asked me for financial help with a substantial sum in Euros, and said not knowing about our financial situation even if I just could help with some part of it would be warmly welcome and he would pay it back as soon as he is back home. He indicated an address in Madrid, with his full name (which isn’t part of his e-mail ID) and “confirmed” to me the e-mail was “really” from my friend and he asked me to transfer the money via Western Union.

So I looked up in our Euro account and saw that there was just enough. I tried to transfer it via Western Union with online banking, but since the opening of the transfer section takes 24 hs, I phoned to the support hotline and a very kind lady told me that I also can transfer the money via Cash International, which would even be cheaper. She then guided me through the process…

Early next morning I woke up with a certain suspicion why my friend had greeted me with “hello” and not the usual “Dear Brother …” Maybe he was under stress, I thought, reminding me that my wife suspects me often to be over-critical.

Later in my office I had a quick look into my private mail account to see if anything had come in from my friend. There it was. He thanked me for the quick response and asked if I could let him know the Western Union code for identifying. I wrote him I had sent the money via Cash International and didn’t get a code but suppose that he will need to identify with a passport.

Only then I saw another e-mail from a Spanish friend who is in Visakhapatnam, India, at the moment, with the header “Urgent”. I opened the mail and read: “The email ID of hotmail xxx has got hacked, and they succeeded. Please don’ t respond to any mail coming from that email ID hotmail. It’s very important that you inform everybody who can be concerned….” I answered, thanking her and telling: “It is already too late, I reacted on the e-mail.”

Since I couldn’t access to the Postfinance account from my office I phoned to my wife and she immediately contacted the support. They said, it’s already too late, the money is out. But they told her to contact the police, and this my wife did. The police then contacted again the security service of the bank and they could stop the transfer process. So virtually “in the last minute” the money was saved. It was only some days ago that I read about the hacking of hotmail and other accounts from big providers, but I hadn’t imagined that I would become a victim and I thought I knew their tricks, being in touch with such questions also professionally.

I sent an information to the mailing list of our group members informing them about the hacked account, and another Indian friend replied: “The hackers always do that and try their luck. But I’m glad the transfer was duly stopped and saved yourself a lot of trouble. There is a blog some victim wrote. Very informative.” And later he wrote: “The fraud e-mails have good language to convince and catch victims. They present the picture beautifully. Quite a few of my friends’ mails have been hacked that way – same – asking for money – stuck in some city! They send them out to contacts in the address book and look for any unfortunate victim to respond! It is really lucky that your transaction was thwarted. I delete such mails and then their address in my book so that I would not forward any mails to that hacked one unwittingly, later on.”

In the evening I heard from an IT-specialist how he got tricked online and lost some money, though he knew very well of possible tricks. And yesterday another friend told me how she got trapped very intelligently through a skype chat contact and lost some money.

We have to be very alert.

A way in the mist leading “nowhere”

This morning I heard about the passing-over of the mother of Sri K. Parvathi Kumar and a friend asked me to translate an information about it. This made me think of several situations I had met her in India – a silent, deeply spiritual old woman. I remembered a passage mentioning her in the book of Sri Kumar about his father: Sri Sastri Garu – Story of a Disciple:

“Sri Sastry was married to the lady Ramalakshmi, who hailed from yet another family of good lineage. Her father too was in the path of Kundalini Yoga and was also a great Rama devotee. He recorded in a book 30 million times the name of the Lord, as a penance during 30 years! The marriage was an arranged marriage by the elders. Sri Sastry’s father, Sri Jagannadha Sastry, admired the prevalence of yogic path in the family of Smt. Ramalakshmi and therefore decided that the marriage be conducted as between the two. Sri Sastry was 20 years of age and Smt. Ramalakshmi was 14 years when they were married in the Vedic style, at Vijayawada. They set up their family life at Madras, where Sri Sastry was working at that time. As per the job requirements they lived in Salem, Visakhapatnam, Eluru, Rajahmundri, Vijayawada, Anantapur, Cuddapah, Nizamabad etc., the various district headquarters. Smt. Ramalakshmi was a highly co-operative wife in fulfilling the noble aspirations of Sri Sastry; besides, she was also a keen follower of Sri Sastry in gaining comprehension of the Scriptures. Sri Sastry used to explain to her every night the profound concepts of Sri Bhagavatha, after their daily duties were done with. They daily recited the recommended lengthy citations of Sri Bhagavatha for a minimum of an hour.
They were blessed with 7 children during the course of their family life, six sons and one daughter. All were well conceived. There was not a single miscarriage. They lived like friends, with unity in thought, in speech and in action.”

August 2005

Also this morning I came into contact via a blog-comment with a lady living in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland who had been visiting the family in 1980. She sent me two photos and wrote about her deep relation with Master EK who passed over in 1984. It is interesting to note the karmic links leading people together.

The last weeks my wife and I reflected about several situations and one’s own projections. The way you see a story is coloured by your emotions and past experiences. You project your understanding upon others and upon the related situations, and mostly you aren’t even aware that it is just your personal perspective which gives you the way you experience. “How it is for me” I see as the truth but it can greatly differ from how it is for others. The different facets of interpreting lead to very different ways of experiencing. Especially when emotional wounds or convictions are involved the view gets strongly impregnated.

My wife is doing a coach formation in the Tipping method of Radical Foregiveness, and they work with understanding one’s projections. It is astonishing to see that when you overcome your victimhood you also get out of the related pain. You start understanding the situation “as it is” and see it as different from what you have thought it to be.

The following is not a direct example of projection, but of misunderstanding out of the personal perspective out of the inability to recollect, but the effect is quite the same – two stories of Sri Kumar told at the seminar in Altheim / Heiligenberg, Germany last June:

“The ability to recollect is a facility the mind uses. In olden times when there was no recording system and when there is no pen and paper to write people registered what is said much better. Today the ability to recollect is very little. To recollect and to renarrate is not easy unless the mind has the required facility of remembering. What is recollected is generally a distortion of what is said. When there is an improper recollection what is left out is what is filled with ones wrong perceptions. Therefore when it is renarrated it comes out in a different manner. There has been an experiment in management students in relation to communication. In a group like this one student told another a small story and it goes from mouth to ear, and when it comes to the original it is totally distorted. When the original story was related to the heard, it comes at the end totally distorted. The danger of distortion comes from a wrong perception. Mind suffers from inability to recollect. It hears what is not said. The one who said says, I did not say so. Such is happening through mind.

A person asks another person, “Would you like to have a cup of coffee?” If he says, yes, the second persons tells the third person, he wants coffee. Liking is one attitude, wanting is another attitude. If I say, “I like this crystal”, it will come back as he wants that. There is a great difference between what you like and what you want. And what is received and given out with the speech is a distortion. Many times groups invite me to speak to them and what comes out is that I want to speak. This is related to an improper recollection to what is said. There are many things I like, but this does not mean that I want them. This is improper recollections to what we have received. Likewise there are improper inferences from events. I also have such experiences with even very educated persons. I give you two stories to give you the point.

I and my guide Krishnamacharya, we used to go every weekend to a remote place, since we had an idea to develop a model village. Almost regularly every weekend we were there, and later we heard in the city that the two go out to drink alcohol. They thought that others do the same what they do. In our group there was a good friend by name Jesus Diaz. Once I had to go to a group in the north of Spain, where there was one bed to sleep and we were two persons. The group members suggested to my friend Jesus to sleep at a place one kilometre distance to that. It was not practically convenient, so we decided to sleep together in one bed. Six months later I heard that we were gay boys.

How do you deal with that? Today we have so many media which keep on spreading such gossip. When two men sleep in the same bed they infer that they are gay. You develop the wrong logic relating to the two persons. All these inferences they have no basis, number one, and they are unnecessary. If you buy a cuckoo clock, they ask, did you buy it in Switzerland, but you can buy it in Spain or in Germany. These general inferences come when the mind is not clean…”

Mount Kailash, Tibet, reflected in the Manasarovar lake. Mount Kailash is a symbol of Spirit, Manasarovar a symbol of the planetary mind. The distortions of the mind give a distorted view of reality.

Yesterday morning the sun was rising behind the bushes in our garden, and quite a strong wind had swept away most of the leaves. I put a vase with amaryllis flowers onto the grass, to take a photo against the morning sun. However, the wind blew it down several times, so that I fixed the vase with a stone. Here you see the pics.

Morning sun behind the vase with Amaryllis flowers

Red sunrise

A titmouse in the bush

Muri Castle behind the bushes

Withered sunflower in the pale sun light

A last rose in the pale morning light. The strong wind made it dance up and down. It needed a number of shots,

Sun reflection in the window of the living room

Today at my office I received a link about a very fascinating campaign which run in the City of Frankfurt / Main (Germany) from October 1st to 31st, 2010: FRANKFURT TEILT (:) (Frankfurt shares). The project with the motto “Sharing makes happy” encouraged citizens and business-people from Frankfurt to share part of their money, their ideas or their time with people in need. More than 100 corporates and thousands of people joined in. Every participant could decide himself what he wanted to share. A beverage company gave away a bottle to people in need in Romania and in German flood areas for every box of mineral water sold in Frankfurt, another citizen sold old things on a flea market and bought with the money nursing cushions and child’s seats for a child hospital in Frankfurt. Not only money was shared, One person offered to work for a week at a reforestation project in Switzerland.

On the website frankfurt-teilt.de, a blog Sharety.org (play on words with share and charity) with the motto:  “Sharety is the belief in Tomorrow” and “We love to share” as well as in social networks like Facebook everyone could make is commitment visible to others and thus encourage friends also to share something from their lives. On the website Spirit of Sharety.com there is an online book about “Spirit of Sharity. Eine neue Philosophie des Teilens” (Spirit of sharity. A New Philosophy of Sharing) – also with a “Register of the most important expressions”, explaining why sharing is a good means against egocentricity.

The campaign was very professionally organised and the organisers limited the project on a month. Thus they reduced the pressure for the participants not to bind themselves with long-term committments, and at the same time they increased the pressure for those who did not yet participate. This way the campaign became a discussion topic all over the city. Here you can read in German some lines about the project – making sharing visible.