Yesterday we flew via Geneva to Barcelona, where group members of the World Teacher Trust from different countries were arriving. Several buses then transported the people to the Pyrenees. At the feet of high mountains we entered into a mountain train. Through a beautiful rock scenery we went up to about 2000 m height to Núria, an old pilgrimage centre, where the group living is going to take place. in a valley surrounded by high mountains, at a location without cars.A group member made a quick shot of the scenery with his iPod and posted it on YouTube.

Here are some lines from my notes of Dr. Kumar’s opening words yesterday evening:

Apart from living our individual lives we are developing the consciousness relating to humanity and the planet. A part of our being shall be dedicated to the well-being of humanity as a whole. Individual welfare no one needs to tell us how to work for it, but it has to be in tune with the bigger centre called humanity. Humanity is one centre, individual is another centre. The correlation between these two in terms of activity is what is to be worked out. Personal conveniences, personal profit, personal growth can have to be subservient to the well being of the surrounding beings and the group. The groupal welfare shall have to be in preference to the individual welfare, only then there is the related initiation of transformation.

Thinking of self-good only is no good. Common good and cooperation for common good makes the individual attune to a greater plan. Man has always been self-centred, he has to orient to the bigger centre called humanity, and next step into it. That is the path, from individuality to group consciousness and from group consciousness to that of humanity as a whole.

When we read or listen, it looks so nice, but when it comes to action we are worried about personal health, personal economics and personal growth. It is all just self-centred. The self-centred person cannot grow. Sacrifice of self-centredness is what is seen as sacrifice. Not worry too much about oneself, but towards those who are around oneself. Group in preference to individual growth. This cooperation can be expanded from the individual to the family to the group, to the bigger group and then ultimately the one group called humanity. There is a gradual expansion through release from self-centredness. The circumscription shall have to be obliterate. We remain ourselves and move forward. Let us have this basic recollection which is the basis of the group activity…

This morning started with a fire ritual and then we had an inspiring start of the seminar. For me these group livings are always like family reunions. The main purpose, however, is to go into deeper levels of silence and to come more into contact with the energies of the subtle worlds and aligning ourselves to them.

I today was at the annual meeting of a group of web people from Swiss NGOs. The meeting was at the offices of Greenpeace in Zurich and about 30 persons from different NGOs attended. This year’s topic was the use of Social Media / Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook and Twitter for NGOs. Some of the organisations were quite active in this field, while others observed with a certain scepticism or did not become active due to missing personal resources.

After the presentation of some campaigns run partly on Facebook there was a lively discussion about best practices and difficulties with the work. In general it was observed that it is quite difficult to get people becoming active besides click-activism in a social media campaign. It is also sometimes difficult to reduce complex situations to 120 letters – the language has to be very concise and pithy.

In the afternoon there was an input of Peter Hogenkamp, a person who is professionally working since years with blogs and social media, as a publisher and consultant. He started with a video: What the hell is social media? summing up in a frantic way ten reasons why you should get involved with Twitter and the like. He encouraged the use with many examples, but his style was frantic like the video – the nervous style of this media-junkie

A similar input in this NGO group made me start blogging 4 years ago and discussions let me to start a Facebook page for my office and for the Circle of Good Will. Now I just launched a Twitter account, only to reserve the address, as the speaker had proposed – what I’m going to do with it time will show.

What the hell is social media – from the video

We yesterday used the beautiful weather for a walk in a nearby hill area about 15 km away. The spring over there was still a bit back in comparison to the full bloom down here. Enjoy the impressions.

Sign post to the little village surrounded by tulips – the point of departure of our walk.

Mini-pigs enjoying the warm weather

Panoramic view over the hills to the skyline of the Alps

Sheep with its lambs

Two lambs in the sun

A green valley

Marguerite field

Flowers in the meadow

Sculpture of a cow with a little calf in front of a farm

Old timbered farmhouse with beautiful paintings on the wall.

Pigs sleeping in the sun

Gnomes working in a garden

The dog likes being ruffled

An old “Stöckli”

A friend sent me an amazing TV commercial video from Honda, done already in 2003. It shows a domino-effect of things moving and is a symbol of the inter-relatedness of events. It is done without digital tricks, happening like this. It took the team 606 time to try and 3 month before it was ok – just for this 2 minutes video. The recording costs were 6 million dollars, but it was a great success. Enjoy.

Photo: From the video (c) Honda

Today the sun enters into Gemini. In Gemini the energies received during Aries and Taurus are being distributed to humanity, to be used for activities of good will. The picture below shows this reception of energies from higher spheres and distribution. Gemini is a mental sign with a lively energy, and its ruler is Mercury, whose glyph you find on the right side. On the left sign is the glyph of our earth, which is specially related to Gemini and the development of a right use of mind through humanity. You can download the painting here in a high resolution in case you want to print it. And here you find the Letters on Spiritual Astrology, where there are some on the deeper meaning of Gemini.

15 May 2010: Gemini – Distribution

The Native American NPO “Golden Eagle Ceremonies” are doing today a day of conscious healing of planetary waters, also especially for the healing of the Gulf of Mexico waters spoiled now by the oil. A very good initiative.

Today was Ascension Day and Taurus new moon, standing for dissolution and new beginning. It was a good day for dispersing the ashes from the cremation of my mother-in-law. We went with our family to the place we had found last Sunday. It was again a cloudy day, the right ambiance for this occasion. It was a very solemn and enchanted ambiance, when the camphor fire and sandalwood incense were burning and the ashes were dispersed on a rock, while we intonated some mantrams. Here are some impressions from the place, the ceremony and the surrounding.

I today was at the headquarters of Microsoft Switzerland, where there was the launch of MS Office 2010. They had invited me and a few other representatives of organisations, companies and agencies, who are “early adopters” of MS Sharepoint 2010 (here is a video, not from our meeting, but a later one today.) At my office we are about to introduce a document management system for better collaboration, which will be done with this new technology and I’m the responsible for the project. An agency working for Microsoft had done an interview and a video with me for their product marketing presentation a few weeks ago (it should go online next week). That’s why I got the invitation…

The meeting was in their solution and innovation center near Zürich, one of 6 such centers world-wide and of 3 in Europe.

They presented a number of new features and their reflections behind. The keynote speaker showed some interesting slides, one of them showing that in our society more and more people are knowledge workers and it will increase in the future. How to work with knowledge and what challenges come out of this development. There is a profound impact of the demographic shift to less births and less people in the productive age, who have to be more productive. And the way the different generations work and live changes profoundly: the “boomers”, born from 1946 to 65 have different attitudes to work than the “generation x” from 65-80 and again a shift to the “generation y” from 80 to 2000…

After a discussion of the people present about their experiences with the new technology we were invited to have a tour through the headquarters 4th floor. There we saw a fantastic interactive computer with intuitive handling,  just touchscreen and impressive ways of dealing with visual objects. I typed a bit on a virtual keyboard and played with the finger-zoom. It is really getting the imagination substantiated and working like with etheric manifestation on a screen – by the way the opening screen was like a water pool: the whole surface of the screen was full of little ripples, and you had the impression to put your hands into water, when touching the screen.

The “magic” was coming out of this “box” under the screen…

We then walked through the offices, where there were no more individual workspaces, but different kinds of rooms, for silent concentration, group work, small exchanges or relaxing. The lady who lead the tour explained how working and leisure time are more and more intermingling – people work during the weekend, but take off time during the week for private activities. Their teams meet less physically and people coming to virtual meetings are spread over different places or even continents. Aquarian waves of living expressed through high-tech surroundings, and not at all in a context where they would consider this as Aquarian…

Last Sunday my wife and I went to the feet of the Bernese Alps to look for a place where, together with some close family members, we could disperse the ashes of her deceased mother. In Switzerland you can do so in nature. It was a rainy day and the clouds were hanging deep. We went to a valley at the feet of high mountains, next to a place where we had been with my mother-in-law and a clairvoyant friend two years ago. We walked a bit into the valley along a little river and came to a place where huge rocks were scattered over a slope, close to a forest.

We climbed on several rocks and felt a profound energy at the place. It was like space opening around us.

On the last of the rocks, a bit hidden in the forest, there was a magical ambiance, like a fairies’ world. We knew, this place would be most suited to give the ashes back to nature.

On the other side of the valley, the mountain tops of the “7 Stallions” looked down into the valley through the forests and the clouds. It reminded me of sceneries in paintings of a Vietnamese artist and refugee I had once taught German in an integration centre about 18 years ago. He gave me one of his pictures which is now hanging in my office.

The enchanted atmosphere accompanied us all the way back along the river. Now we are waiting for a good day when we can go again to the place with the family for the good-bye ritual with the ashes.

The 8th May is celebrated as the day of the White Lotus, in memory of the great initiate Helena P. Blavatsky. In the new book “Golden Stairs” by K. Parvathi Kumar she is described as being “as tender as a freshly unfolded white lotus”, but at the same time “as fiery as she is tender”: “Her being is essentially and naturally tender and extremely motherly. But at work she is an embodiment of fiery Will…. She was the chosen darling of the Hierarchy to inaugurate an era of enlightenment. She is regarded as the white lotus that unfolds afresh the beauty and fragrance of new age wisdom.”

You find beautiful thoughts on the symbolism of the lotus in Sri Kumars booklet “The White Lotus“. And the booklet “H.P.B. – Trailblazer for the Aquarian Age” gives a short outline of her outstanding life.

“The Great Ones”. Painting after a photo: H. P. Blavatsky surrounded by 3 Masters, 26-03-2010