This afternoon I went to a talk announced as “Guerilla Marketing in the Web – Affiliate-, Viral-, Blog- & Buzz-Marketing etc.” from a group called “Internet-briefing.ch – Where Web Pioneers Meet”, on the site of the Topsoft software fair. Was it already guerilla marketing announcing this title to attract people and then change it to “Web-woven promotion” (a word-play in German) at the presentation?

Though basically well-known, but astonishing again – all these tricks marketeers use to channel the waters of attention to their mill-wheels. Such a great human creativity used to catch people’s awareness and get them into the desired direction – and this by giving them the feeling that they act by their own free decision: Viewing YouTube-videos or down-loading desktop gadgets with ads, or, even more important, getting into the talks of the people.

The presenter quoted from the Cluetrain Manifesto, that markets are conversations (“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. These markets are conversations. …”).

This is a very important point, and it is also true for non-marketing purposes. You can also use it for spreading ideas and concepts of spirituality. However, this is much more difficult than to work will mass-consciousness, as the marketeers do.

In the East the power of the word is called Saraswathi, the goddess of speech and of wisdom. Going into wisdom, however, is not just that what marketeers are interested in.

Markus Gabriel, CEO Angelink, preparing for the talk

After the lecture I strolled along the stands of the Topsoft exposition – a fascinating world of hopes and promises, with dark-clothed smart salespeople or a bit more freaky open-sourcelers. I had nothing lost in this ambiance and left the fair again.

The Topsoft-flag lying on the floor at the entrace, and people leaving.

An Indian friend sent me today the following excellent story (and then I saw that it is posted in many blogs…):

A giant ship engine failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure out how to fix the engine.

Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars. “What?!” the owners exclaimed. “He hardly did anything!”
So they wrote the old man a note saying, “Please send us an itemized bill.”

The man sent a bill that read:
Tapping with a hammer $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap $ 9,998.00

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference!

Knowing where to tap… Statue in front of the BEA Fair building, Berne, this afternoon

Today I was on the annual networking meeting of Swiss NGOs. This time we met at the office of Amnesty International, and the group was larger than the years before. It is a fascinating group of web communicators from about 20 NGOs such as Greenpeace, WWF, and others active in the fields of social, health and environmental groups.

Several members (me too) gave a review of what had been going on with their site during the last months, the highlights and challenges they had encountered and the new ideas or campaigns they had realised.

It is always very refreshing to see that others fight with similar problems or get inspiration from good ideas. One started with a quote from Homer Simpson (“security inspector of the Springfield atomic power plant”) : “The internet – does this nonsense still exist?”

In the afternoon we had a workshop with Sophie Graf, a consultant from the communication agency Bernet PR, Zurich: “Texting in the Internet”. Though many points mentioned were essentials of web writing, it was good to hear it from another perspective. On the cover of the hand-out there was a quote of Mark Twain: “If I had more time, I would have written less.”

We worked with a long text from the Clean Clothes Campaign to see how it should best be prepared for a web solidarity campaign: Get the central message into the title and the header, discuss what should be done with the rest of the text. A quote from the exposition: “The first 15 words are more important than the next 15’000 words.”

It was a good exercise, training to see the essentials and focus on a clear, short message. This is also very important for working with spiritual ideas or in other communication situations.

Web texting: guiding the attention of the visitors. A scene in front of Bern Central Station this afternoon.

In our observations about interactions with other people my wife and I frequently observe what we call “test thoughts”. It is a concept she has found in the novel “Night Train to Lisbon“, by the Swiss author Pascal Mercier. These thoughts are not meant for action, though they seem to be. Often we find people saying: “I would like to do this and that” – but they never would. A friend of my wife produces a lot of test thoughts, especially in the form of advice for other people: “You should go for a walk one hour a day for your swollen legs.” – She never would do the walks herself, for she doesn’t like walking.

My wife first was very much irritated by all these proposals and didn’t know what to do with them, until she realised that these were test thoughts, just empty proposals without anything behind. She now replies: “Oh, that’s a very good idea, that would do me good,” – without even thinking of doing it. So there are no discussions and peace is ensured. Next time her friend has forgotten all about it.

Substantial thoughts are a solid basis for action, but test thoughts just are by-products of an over-active mind.

Test thoughts are just passers-by. Travellers on the platform of the Lauterbrunnen railway station

While the rest of the family went skiing today, I stayed at home. Since the sun tinged everything in a soft, misty light and brought back a spring feeling after a few days of a winter backslide, I took my bike and went to the nearby Elfenau park in the afternoon. There was a beautiful spring magic around, which I tried to capture in a few photos.

Crocuses heralding the approach of spring

A meadow full of violet and white

The fish of a fountain – is he drinking the waters of spring light? – The right ambiance of the present Pisces time.

Statue of a maid in a meditative mood enjoying the rays of the sun

Statue of a child playing with a fish -another symbol of the Pisces time

Some elves playing in the bushes of the Elfenau (the name meaning meadow of the elves)

Promenaders enjoying the sun, with view of the Alps and the Aare river in the valley

A totally different magical world in the greenhouse of the botanical garden just 50 meters away.

Water dripping into a little pond

Fiery flames of vibrant life

Violet flames of radiant beauty

Depth of the heart

View into a cactus – creative unfoldment

Beauty is a profound expression of spirituality. In the beauty of nature you can discover depths of your own soul.

Two days ago when I came from the office in the evening, there was a fantastic view of the Bernese Alps. When there is foehn, the air is sometimes extremely clear and the mountains, about 50-60 km away, seem to be close-by. There was no wind, but the whole day the weather had been below freezing point.

View from the Elfenau via Muri to the Alps, March 5th, 08

Seen from the same place with zoom: My Himalaya

Sometimes in meditation there also seems to be foehn: The mind is calm and transparent, and the subtle worlds very much present. But just like with the weather, mostly there is haze, or clouds of thoughts are blowing by, if not some rain-showers are obscuring the scene. You might like to see the powerpoint-presentation on “Recognising, Understanding and Overcoming Obstacles” for understanding more about the reasons for these “internal weather changes”.

P.S.: After reading the blog-post a friend sent me the following photo she took last year. The left mountain on the photo is the right mountain on the photo above. The right mountain on her photo in the Jungfrau (: “Virgin”, the “Top of Europe”), it shows a shadow like a giant cross, which can only be seen at a special time.

Today I came across a hint to the website about the “water footprint” and the “Virtual Water Project“. Virtual water means the amount of water used in the production of a good or service. The water footprint is generally expressed in terms of the volume of water use of an individual or a community per year. The concept has been developed in 2002 by Arjen Hoekstra from UNESCO-Institute for Water Education IHE. You can calculate your individual water footprint (or that of a nation), based on your country and your consumption pattern, to get an idea of how much fresh water you consume. Or you can see here, how much fresh water is being produced for the production of an apple (70 litres), a glass of beer ( 75 litres) or a hamburger (2400 litres.

Designer Timm Kekeritz from traumkrieger Gmbh, created a double-sided poster, where he visualised the findings of the Virtual Water Project, “to make the issue of virtual water and the water footprint perceptible”, as he writes. Have a look at his impressive visualisation, which you can also order online.

Poster (c) Timm Kekeritz, traumkrieger GmbH.

A few days ago my wife had a “direct meeting with Jesus”: In the context of a healing situation for a close friend, a healer and channel (my wife got into contact by chance) transmitted her Jesus’ blessings. He made the proposal to visualise golden light in form of a tetrahedron or a triangular pyramid with Jesus at the top of it and my wife, her friend and the healer as the basis.
By the way, this is an age-old visualisation technique for healing.

My wife tried her best not laugh about the channel and to stay neutral; she even managed to comment with “wow” during the talk. Inwardly she still asks herself if she is totally pig-headed or if the channel is spacy.

The friend of my wife goes to a healer who channels Jesus and tells her friend what to do, and uplifts her. At the end the friend is happy, at least for a while.

We rather prefer the unspectacular way of sitting on a chair and of looking inside. The result is the same, though the “wow-effect” is not there.

For most people the unspectacular way is boring, for us it is pleasantly serene. The “spectacular spirituality” is very fascinating for many, to us, however, it seems to be superficial and to make people addicted to the next “kick”.

You cannot take it for granted that people have a relation to their own inner self. It is much more common and easy to look to the outside, to others, for guidance. There are others who try to look inside, wanting to hear voices and experience phenomena. It took us long years to understand that this, too, kept us away from our own self. It is just an inner cinema, an adventure movie, not the experience of the self. The latter is like the experience of the sun in a clear blue sky.

The Sun behind a mountain – last Sunday afternoon.

Two weeks ago our spiritual teacher, K. Parvathi Kumar, started a meditation network initiative in the groups called “Networking The Global Diamond Temple for Social Justice” (since yesterday the program and structure are online): The plan of a triangle network was conceived by Master DK, and it started after the Second World War as an inner work. Now this initiative is a continuation of the work, but with a new accent.

The idea is to see that social justice, as conceived by the Masters of Wisdom, is brought nearer to the minds of those who are in the governments through prayers and meditation. Justice from this standpoint is to find a common point where the seeming oppositions merge – neither extreme capitalism nor extreme communism or any “ism” of extremity. Through the meditational work we try to work to supply more light. The light knows where to go and what to do. So this way we are not taking sides and not directly getting into the politics of the governments, but stay away to bring nearer the social justice, to see how to include the welfare of all.

Three members residing in a nation form a triangle. The chosen triangle members will conduct the temple building meditation at 6 AM on Sundays, thus building a Diamond Temple. They are integrating nationally to constitute a national Diamond Temple, then such temple is visualised to integrate with the temple visualized for a continent and the continental temples are visualized to form a Global Diamond Temple. It is offered by the networking groups as a humble contribution to the Masters of Wisdom for their appropriate utilisation to inspire the global, continental and national governments with a view to manifest the plan of social justice.

People might be sceptical about such work and its effect. Of course everybody is free to join or not, and mental scepticism is a sure block-off.

It is my experience that there are few who join, for it requires an understanding beyond intellectual taking note, and also quite a commitment of inner determination. I like such meditational work together with friends, and I am sure that the power of combined focus of beneficial attention has a tremendous influence and is an effective work of good will.

I got today an interesting powerpoint-presentation from a friend in Mysore (which I converted to PDF), about Warren Buffet, said to be now the world’s richest man. Warren Buffet has given 31 billion US$ to good-will activities, especially to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Have a look at the inspiring presentation. It ends with the words: “The happiest people do not necessarily have the best of all. They simply appreciate what they find on their way.”

A statue of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of good luck, from Augusta Raurica, Switzerland.