From another friend in California I got the link to a website called Architects of a New Dawn. It is a new social networking site by the musician Carlos Santana that is devoted to positive and transformative music and media.

On the site it says:

“Architects of A New Dawn is a project, born from the dream and vision of Carlos Santana, to create a new global network, driven by extraordinary music and powerful media content. It is designed to engage people of all walks of life to work together to create positive change in the global community where love can replace fear and where peace can replace conflict.”

Carlos Santana writes: “One of the things that has become very clear to me in recent months is that after carrying an idea in my mind and soul for decades that the time had come to bring my vision of Architects Of A New Dawn into reality. The world today is as deeply challenged as it is inspired. Never has there been a more profound time to harness the possibilities for positive change, especially in this era of mass communication. This is my invitation to you to join us in this transformational work.”

On the site you find a number of beautiful videos, and music videos, like “Sacred” (with scenes of Buddhist monks in the old Ankor Wat temple, Cambodia)

The site “is an invitation to join and connect with other Architects literally from every part of the globe to find ways to effect change and transform our world together.”

A friend from California sent me as a New Year’s greetings a link to a very inspiring video posted on the NASA-website (astronomy picture of the day). However, this one wasn’t about spacecrafts or galaxies, but of a man by name Matt Harding traveling around the planet and dancing. And animating people everywhere to dance with him.

The video is also on YouTube, and elsewhere. He has a website: Where the Hell is Matt?, where you can read more about him.

Matt got his journey around the world financed by a chewing gum producer, on the site of which you can also download the video in hi-res and different formats. Through his dances he is spreading joy and inspiration.

My friend sent the link with the words: “The video reminds us of the Tibetan’s quote ‘May the Love of the divine Self be shed abroad in our hearts, through our Group and throughout the World. And may the power of the spirit of Man triumph.’ And so it is…”

The recent bi-weekly newsletter of The Soul Journey (I have written a post about it before) on “Being Authentic and Telling the Truth” has very interesting thoughts on the ways how people present what they consider to be the truth – giving a specific spin to their presentation and leaving parts away when they don’t fit into the picture to be presented. This is a very common feature especially of marketing and of PR-campaigns, no matter from which field. It remembered me of the campaigns Swiss banks, especially UBS, are doing at the moment to regain the trust of the customers. An extract of the newsletter:

“We live in a world of communications – media of all sorts that reach around the world, into our work places and into our living rooms and bedrooms. People with agendas to serve, often self-serving, use these media to try to convince as many people as possible to believe the ‘truth’ they are presenting.

In recent times there have been elections in which candidates for high offices have held debates. The greatest influence of these debates has not been directly to people’s minds, because people don’t pay enough attention or use their own sense to understand sufficiently to make up their minds about what they hear. That is part of the problem. The other part is that politicians, like other people, do not always tell the truth, or they distort the truth, and most people do not know what the facts are. The result of all this is that people wait to make up their minds from what the media presents. The media tells them who won the debate, who was better, etc.

There are two things we need to be aware of when listening to others telling what they consider to be the truth:

1. The spin. Facts are taken and presented with a specific spin, a specific interpretation, to suit the one presenting them. The spin is determined by the agendas, the motives, and the goals of those presenting them. So the objective facts are seldom revealed as such.

2. Perception Management. This is similar but more insidious than spin. It is not just a manipulating of the facts, but a complete ignoring of the facts. Perception management, for example, presents greed masquerading as compassion and generosity; air pollution, water pollution and other forms of corruption are packaged attractively as social benefits; making war in order to establish peace, making up euphemisms like soft targets and collateral damage to hide the hideousness of immoral behaviour involving killing innocent people. Perception management involves falsehood and deception, the purpose of which is to get others to believe what one wishes them to believe, whatever the truth may be. It is no wonder that it has been described as ‘information warfare’ since the term was first used by the U.S. military. It is now widely used by whomever has motivation to influence many and the means of doing so, particularly through the media.

Always be wary of the propaganda you are exposed to regardless of where it is coming from. Always see through it to the motivations and heart of those presenting it. If there is power or money at stake behind the messages, you can be sure you are being exposed to spin and/or perception management. Once you recognize this, and understand what is going on, you can dismiss it and, if possible, identify the truth that is being distorted or hidden.

At the very least trust your heart, your soul, to know when someone is trying to manipulate the truth. And then stand for the truth as you know it. Be courageous and be authentic!

Exercises:
Make it a practice to examine at least one message a day that comes to you from others directly or through the media. Ask yourself to sense what the motivations are of the presenter, and what truth or facts are involved. Ask yourself to what extent the truth is being distorted or completely hidden. Then decide what you want to do – accept, reject, or stand for something else.

Go beyond just understanding and attain more perspectives, experiences and integration to enable you to heal the past and create the future.”

St. Michael fighting the dragon on top of the townhall of Brussels, with an airplane passing by like a comet

The last days I had been near Brussels in Belgium visiting members of the local WTT group. They had met over 25 years ago and formed as a group when Master EK came to Belgium giving lectures in the early 80ies. With his inspiration they had build some houses in a little forest about 30 km outside Brussels, to be able to live in nature and lead a life oriented along the spiritual lines outlined by the Master.

Each family has a house of its own, but they frequently meet for meditation and exchange. It was impressive to feel the deep roots formed through the common practice of living spirituality in daily life. Everyone has his own house / sphere, but significantly without fences in between, and this also spreading to the neighbours. In one of the houses there is a meditation room with a 12-pointed star on the floor, surrounding a 6-pointed star, in the middle of which there is a candle and little statue of the Buddha and pictures of the masters, as symbol of contemplation.

The ceiling is a white cupola with structures of energy lines meeting:

There is a beautiful white crystal singing bowl resounding in the space. And when you intonate the OM, it echoes from the wall and the whole space starts resounding.

On the beautiful old stove in the room there is the sculpture of a squirrel, reminding me of the story in the old Indian epic Ramayana, where a squirrel is blessed by Rama, because it is running to and fro on the beach throwing grains of sand into the ocean to help him building a bridge to Lanka to destroy the demon who has stolen his wife: A symbol of selfless service regardless of the eventual outcome.

The house with the meditation room at the first floor

Last week I visited my “old family” in Germany. It was the first time since the passing of my father 1.5 years ago, and things had changed quite a lot: My brother and one of my sisters had inherited the house of my parents and done quite some renovation work in the meantime.

I knew of these changes, but hadn’t seen it. It was a strange experience, being in a very familiar surrounding, where I had grown up, but which was no longer the same surrounding: The inner memory pictures and the outer didn’t match. Partly the scenery was the same, partly it had changed a lot: walls had disappeared, new colours, doors and furniture had appeared. Also it now was the house of my brother and sister. Pictures and feelings were overlapping, causing irritations and new experiences. Also the relations to the relatives were being partly re-defined.

My brother and sister who had mainly initiated or done the changes himself had lived the transition. For me it was a sudden change. It reminded me of the many situations where you live for a while with a concept in mind, which once was formed with an actual perception, but which hadn’t been updated since. When there is a new snapshot of reality, there is the chance of adapting the concepts. How many concepts in us need an update or don’t fit with reality? The new year gives a good chance of updating one’s  view of the world or at least of one’s major viewpoints.

Transition – sunset behind bushes, last Saturday

Last week I read an interview with the Swiss professor of art history, Johannes Stückelberger, about the relation between art and religion. He is teaching at two universities in Switzerland and will start teaching at the National Taiwan University in Taipeh (see link). In the interview he remarked that in the last years famous artists have started decorating churches with glass windows or art expositions are being held in churches in a way which was impossible some decades ago: Artists would have ruined their reputation: Religion was considered to be something private, and the churches were turned more to the inside. Now they go out again into visibility and understand their buildings as public places.

This thought is very fascinating: In other cultures religion or spirituality are much more part of public life. When traveling through India you see signs of the religious attitude of the people everywhere along the roads or in cars, at home or elsewhere in public. I have seen offices with pictures of gods and gurus in a way you would never show here in the west. Though at my office several collegues have little pictures of either a spiritual teacher or a representation of the Divine –  a little statue, a flower – it is quite uncommon at other places. The Christmas displays are more of a decoration value then of a declaration of one’s beliefs. The head-scarf, however, has here quite clearly a religious connotation, coming from a cultural background which didn’t go through the process of secularization.

I myself feel it is more natural today to speak about spiritual activities than it  it was some years or a decade ago. There seems to be a change towards a greater openness, and artists seem to experience this opening towards subtler spheres of perception, in their search for new ways of interpreting the reality. A sign for the growth of the Aquarian age?

An angel in front of a café / bar in Engelberg.

Christmas is the time for business partners to exchange standardized, automatic greetings, often void of any deeper sense. A few of these also arrived in my office. Some want to impress (or bribe?) partners by the value of their gifts, while others give their gift to a social institution. One card I got was of a different kind saying that instead of Christmas present they prefer giving the money to micro-credit institutions financing grass-root economics in developing countries.

Another agency sends every year very interesting small Christmas greetings. This year it was a little self-made booklet entitled “Money – Magic, Mathematics, Soap Bubble?”, together with a bill of “One Talent“, an alternative currency of the Initiative for a Natural Economic Order INWO in Switzerland, inspired by Silvio Gesell.

Besides some short sketches of fairy-tales involving remuneration like that of Mother Hulda or The Star Money, the role of money in different religions and the development of money and digital money, the booklet containes a very interesting visualisation  of the momentary financial crisis:

To save the UBS-bank, Swiss government has given 66 billion Swiss francs. As a pile of hundred Swiss Francs bills, this is a pile of 79.2 kilometers height. For fighting the crisis in the States, the government has promised 8 trillion US$. This is an 8 with 12 zeros, or a pile of hundred dollar notes towering to 9.600 kilometers height (or about 6.000 miles). This sum is without the recent money promised to the automobile industry… An incredible financial Tower of Babel.

Quite impressive, but not the height of the towers of money – the TV-tower in Barcelona, Spain.

This morning while doing some shoppings in the city of Berne I discovered some nice shop window scenes. I love these “kitsch as kitsch can”-sceneries. The Indian Gods on tour in Swiss shop window decorations – what a colourful meeting.

Reflections of reflections – passers-by and display dummies

Non-attachment in the shop display: The Buddha meditating

The child Krishna playing, accompanied with some Sarasvathis, and Durga listening in the back, on a tiger

Hanuman between some vases – ready to serve

Shiva and Parvathi with Ganesha between the storage racks

Shiva sitting on a lotus, with his drum and kamandulu (bowl), surrounded by serpents (symbols of time), blessing the photographer.

Krishna playing flute, with Nandi at his feet.

Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman in a boat, surrounded by white horses

Sarasvathi, the Goddess of the Word and of Wisdom, sitting on the white swan (symbol of respiration), playing veena (instrument with 7 strings, symbolising the 7 planes, the music of creation).

Another statue of Hanuman, in deep devotion

Enchanting Krishna, playing the music of the soul

Riding through the ocean of shopping illusions

Melancholic angel: When shall I be redeemed from this boring shop existence?

Harlekin pondering on the mysteries of commercialism

Yesterday friends sent me a powerpoint presentation called “Seasons of Life“, with beautiful winter scenes and music.

The story is about a man who sent his four sons to go and see a tree and come back to describe it. He sent them at four different seasons, and each one described a totally different tree. So you also cannot understand the life of a man when you just have a momentary view of a part of his life. Nice thoughts – a good digital present for Christmas…

Sunset glow, last Sunday afternoon

A few days ago an Indian friend sent me the following humorous story:

God was in the process of creating the universe. And he was explaining to his subordinates, “Look everything should be in balance. For example, after every 10 deer there should be a lion. Look here my fellow angels, here is the country of the United States. I have blessed them with prosperity and money. But at the same time I have given them insecurity and tension…. And here is Africa. I have given them beautiful nature. But at the same time, I have given them climatic extremes. And here is South America. I have given them lots of forests. But at the same time, I have given them lesser land so that they would have to cut off the forests… So you see fellows, everything should be in balance.

One of the angels asked, “God, what is this extremely beautiful country here?”

God said,”Ahah…that is the crown piece of all. INDIA. My most precious creation. It has understanding and friendly people, sparkling streams and serene mountains. A culture which speaks of the great tradition that they live. Technologically brilliant and with a heart of gold.”

The angel was quite surprised: “But God, you said everything should be in balance…”

God replied, “Look at the neighbours I gave them.”

The fountain of Justitia (justice) in the City of Berne, blind-folded and with the sword and the balance in hand.