I just got the following story from a Canadian friend:

One evening, an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside all of us. One wolf is EVIL… It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is GOOD…it is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked the grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” and the old Cherokee answered: “The one you feed.”

Not just wolves: 2 painted dogs in front of a farmhouse

Christmas is the time of presents – this is also the case in the business world. A number of Christmas presents popped in at my office. It seemed that the agencies and partners want to outdo the others in originality – and not necessarily in beauty and style. In some case there is a subtle material “aggression” behind – a kind of an endeavour to gain favours to get another order or contract. I don’t assume bribery ambitions, but there is some kind of this tendency.

Last week however, I got a very original small gift from an agency which has developed a media management system we use for administering our photos. It is a very good system, and I appreciate the executive director very much – he has an enormous commitment, not only for his enterprise, but also in social activities. Over the last decades he has built up in Andhra Pradesh, India, a mango cultivation and distribution system, which helps hundreds of farmers to have a good job. And then he built up several clinics, and also opened an office of his agency in Hyderabad where they do development and distribution of their media managing system.

The last years he sent always very creative little presents: Once a little granite stone with moss from a pass in the Alps, with a little booklet on how mosses survive in most difficult surroundings, showing parallels to our lives. Last year a stone with petrified little fish from South America, and a small booklet about the evolution and power of life. This year he sent an old Intel Pentium (c) chip, which people from a prisoners rehabilitation centre had opened and prepared, together with a booklet on silicon – how silicon, a material second-most spread on the surface of the earth has become the pivotal point of or technical development. By using the qualities of this semiconductor we are now able to reach technical heights unthinkable of only a few decades ago. The booklet mentioned that for the first flight to the moon the Nasa computers had less capacities than nowadays every cellphone has: We have entered into a silicon age. Now silicon starts even to emit light, through its use in LED light emitting diodes. A real step into the sublimation of matter.

The chip – a little work of art, with a beautifully reflecting centre

Today I got an e-mail from a person who receives our newsletter. She wrote:

“I am hoping you will take an interest in the content of the following website: www.leesrecovery.com. I have been advocating for the mental health treatment needs necessary for my brother, Lee, over the last twelve years. The result is that we finally made a breakthrough this year, 2007, in obtaining some of the vital services needed. What remains is an intensive program of head injury/substance abuse recovery and I do not have the funds. Without this specific recovery treatment Lee is probably without an option for a healthy, stable future; with it he is very likely to fully succeed.”

She wants to reach 5000 people to donate $ 10/each. I am impressed by the commitment of the lady to help her destitude brother. She has realised a high-tech flash website to promote her concern about her brother, with a lot of creativity. However, collecting donations is not the way I would go, but trust in support when going into the direction I understand as right. So I’m not going to send money – my “localised” focus of help attention is elsewhere. I am confronted daily in my work with so many situations of urgent need and initiatives of collecting money. But maybe someone of the readers feels being touched by this cry for help, especially at this time of the year.

Water flowing into a pont for extinguishing fire

I just have published the powerpoint presentations of the series of public evening themes we had from October to December. Friends helped with the translations, and so they are now available in English, German, French and Spanish, as powerpoints and pdf. They might be useful to get an understanding of the wisdom teachings and make them accessible to interested people. So here you get to the presentations.

I used a lot of photos for the slide backgrounds, from spiritual spots in many parts of the world – from Mongolia, Tibet, India, Jordan, and of course of different countries of Europe. I didn’t travel around, but collected the photos from friends – that’s more comfortable (though I like traveling 🙂 )

Making these slides fascinated me very much: How to visualise inner realities with “outer” photos? How to explain in simple words mechanics of subtle experience – to newcomers without any special background. This is a topic which deeply interests me. I think sometimes writing big books is easier than saying the essence in a few words. It is a process of condensation, “essentialising”. In this, I learned a lot from my spiritual teacher, he is really good in expressing sublime and complex thoughts in simple, understandable words. The “motto” is KISS: Keep it simple and stupid…

Here is a picture I took some years ago inside the Planetary Healing Centre, a beautiful spot near Visakhapatnam, India. I hope I will have time to see it again, when we are going to India in January 08.

Everywhere in the city little forests are sprouting – fir trees, often carrying little electric candles – christmas trees (and this in spite of the Bali-decisions to fight deforestations 🙂 ) The powerful impulse of seeking the light of the soul, the birth of the Christ within, is like being diluted and scattered into many reflections all over: Not only all the shop displays are in the Christmas ambiance. People are busy with preparing gifts or decorate their houses with lamps – an outer  reverberation of the inner light. The main streets of the city with their garlands of lights are in a festive outlook.
There is more impetus behind this gigantic activity than just a traditional commemoration date.

I wrote for the text of the Circle of Good Will Christmas Card: “The light of the higher mind is described as a flame of Manas (the mind principle) which comes down into us and which is called the birth of the saviour in us. The five-pointed star symbolises this light. It can transform us into an enlightened being, if we prepare ourselves appropriately.”

Last Sunday at the afternoon walk at the beginning of the Emmental, we saw some nicely decorated farm houses. The Christmas-wake has got them all. Here are a few impressions:

The five-pointed stars “landed” near the entrance door.

A painted stone with some Christmas scenery in front of a house

Another painted stone with Christmas motives

And on the windowsill some snowmen

Wooden candles burning

A collection of 6-pointed stars, wooden squirrel and a Santa-Claus lamp

An arrangement of 6 pointed and 5-pointed stars

And finally a Christmas tree with 5-pointed stars next to the entrance door

I wonder whether they know about the deeper meaning of this symbol of the stars…

Today I came across the site FreeRice, an online English vocabulary learning game to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on the site. By improving your vocabulary your donated rice enables hungry human beings to live and be productive. The sponsored money is given to the United Nations World Food Program.

Though it is a marketing instrument for the enterprises advertising, the game is serving a good purpose. There is a database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors.

There are 50 levels in all – I quickly reached level 49, though the vocabulary was very difficult – not because of an excellent knowledge of English, but because I had in a second window the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, which found the meaning of the different search-words. FreeRice is making no profit, all the rice “won” goes for sponsoring food. It is a sister-site of Poverty.com, where you also can see how much the different countries gives as international aid.

Last Friday we had the last evening of the series of evening topics on Meditation – Experiment and Experience. 11 Persons had come, and again there was another quality of atmosphere: Somehow a kind of group spirit had formed, there was a familiarity which had not been there before. I spoke about The Importance of a Teacher on the Path:

Without guideposts or a map you can easily get lost on the way. (See the blogpost on Guru Phobia or the Need for Guideposts.) The wisdom teachings give us an itinerary of the journey. And a teacher helps, gives information and support.

A teacher who knows the way and can explain it to others is called „Guru“ in the East. Today the term is totally distorted. For us, a guru is a wrong teacher and a deluder. That is why many don’t accept any teacher and prefer making their own experiments; out of ignorance they make many detours. Some therefore pretend that teachers or masters of wisdom don’t exist.

A teacher or a master becomes visible for those who are seriously seeking to realise the self. Many are searching in vain, since they are not willing to take the first small steps to right living. We spoke about true and wrong teachers and how to distinguish between them, about guidance from within and about experiencing the presence of the Great Ones. This can give us help from sources which we cannot touch by ourselves.

It is important to get an outline of the journey and understand the goal, but then work with the next step lying ahead of us:

“Man can overcome all hindrances if the goal of his journey is clear to him. When he sees the Light in the distance, he will pay no attention to the hardships of the journey. He will not count the steps to this Light, for it shines also in his heart.”
(Supermundane III, 634)

Dawn on Mount Rigi, Switzerland, Summer Solstice 1999

I discussed with my wife the observation of encapsulated feelings. We have met several persons where there seem to be locked emotions, which block the free flow of energies (see the post on “Filling the Love Leakage“). It seems that losses of dear ones, hardships of destiny or severity against oneself are at the roots of such encapsulations. Seen from the outside there seem to be walls in certain inner areas, where you cannot touch the core, or the person is trying to evade situations of contact with deeper feelings. So it is difficult to come into a flow of exchange.

At the same time there seems to be some mirroring of these blocked energies or fears: In the contact with the person you might get similar feelings out of a momentarily reflection, and you might feel irritated, not realising from where this vague cloud of discomfort comes. In retrospection you might realise that it wasn’t from yourself, but from the atmospheric ambiance. When you are in a receptive mood you are more prone to such infections.

As soon as you link up again to your higher self, you get out of this contagious mood and back into the flow. By linking to the inner awareness, the soul, you also help the other person to break through his or her encapsulations and come again back into the flow of life. My wife remarked she witnessed that this opening up of encapsulations might lead to overwhelming feelings, but afterwards normally a new balance is found.

A friend sent me the link to an incredible interactive movie of The Story of Stuff, that explains very well and simple how life is organised and consumerised on this planet. The presentation shows that

“all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.”

Have a look at :

Two days ago I went buying a new laptop with my eldest son. Through a colleague from the scouts who works at an electronics discounter, we got quite a reduction and my son was looking forward to start gaming at home. My wife is going to inherit his old PC… Unfortunately his old mouse didn’t work with the new laptop, so both of my sons went yesterday evening to another nearby electronic discounter, one with his bike, the other with his moped. Half an hour later we got a phone-call with a cry for help: “My moped lock is blocking, I can’t open it again.” He had tried again and again, but it didn’t unlock. So I went there by car, tried myself, without success. I wondered why the key didn’t slip in, but thought, it’s because of some deformation.

We packed the moped into the car and arrived at the last minute before closing at the motorbike shop of our village. The mechanic took a power saw and cut open the lock. And then we had to buy a new lock…

At home we hardly had told the story to my wife and showed her the broken lock that she found, my son had tried to use the – identically looking – bicycle key instead of the moped lock key…

It reminded me of the many times we are looking for a solution with a fix idea in mind and try to go into the “locked” direction. Sometimes it helps that a friend, looking from the outside, gives us a hint to see that the easy solution is very close.