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.

A friend today sent me a link to a YouTube video about the Health Freedom News Report (preview) of the Natural Solutions Foundation, an NGO that educates national and international decision makers about health freedom and natural solutions to healthcare issues. The association was created to protect, promote and defend Health Freedom. They give information about activities towards forced drugging and mass compulsory vaccinations.

On their site they write: “We looked at the current legislative climate and personnel and their stance on health and health freedom and then counted up the votes needed to push back the deadly incursions being made by CODEX ALIMENTARIUS and domestic health freedom threats. We felt that we had no moral and ethical choice but to close our medical practice of Advanced (pharmaceutical-free) Medicine to new patients so that we could tend to the body politic which was sick and suffering.”

I came across a very similar site, with similar claims, but it seems of another organisation, the American Association for Health Freedom. Their link lists don’t mention each other, nor the names of the leaders mentioned – but just like there is place for more than one restaurant in a town, there is certainly place for many to work on different levels.

You might also have a look at the website of Paracelsus – Health and Healing. We are actively supporting the Paracelsus magazine (available in English, German, and Spanish), which is run solely by volunteers, and all is done on a free basis. An astonishing project synthesing new and old knowledge about medicine and the healing arts of the East and West.

Why are we afraid of touching taboo issues like one’s own mistakes or bad feelings, such as guilt, shame, shyness, embarrassment? They have got an aura around them, some kind of a cloudy mist. It is often not the subject we are afraid of, but the feelings woven around:

A friend of our teenage son has to sing a song before the music teacher tomorrow to get a better mark. He openly told my wife that he is timid and that it costs him a lot to overcome his shyness. She answered: “A young man being able to confess that he is shy is the most courageous man I can imagine.”

When we dare talking about unvoiced things, we get in touch with that aura, and it needs quite some courage to pierce through. We feel tense, not because of our inhibition, but because so many people have a complex about a certain topic, that they built an aura of “don’t touch me!” around it.

When we talk about it, we address this aura. The subject as such is not frightening at all. However, you might feel the clouds of the taboo topic with the other – and thus don’t dare proceeding. So you help increasing the unapproachability.

My wife likes playing with this and pierces softly through these forbidden themes, knowing that this “ban” is but an illusion. Usually the surprise of the people is big, accompanied by the feeling of liberation. The blocked energy is being released.

Astonished white dog at the Aare river, this afternoon

Yesterday there was an article in the Swiss newspaper Der Bund about an esoteric fair in Berne, which is going on at the moment. There was a quote about the organiser saying that “esoteric is slowly getting adult”: He had cleaned-up the kinds of exhibitors and didn’t want to have people who are trying to manipulate others: “I don’t want to have here all the guruism” – instead he wants to show that “spirituality can be rooted to the soil” and must not be aloof. So at the fair there is now a number of spiritual craftspeople, besides healers, channels, tantra-or Reiki teachers… Of course the article writer doesn’t miss to out herself as “sceptic”…

The commercialisation of esotericism results in funny products. When you consider that originally esotericism was a way to explore one’s higher self, it now is a field for all kinds of psycho-softy’s gadgets.

What the fair organiser, together with many others, dismisses as “guruism” is maybe the pivotal point on the path. Just like you need a teacher in school or when you study an instrument, you need a guide, a “guru” to be able to advance beyond a certain point. You need a role model for orientation, monitoring and correction. Of cause the number of pseudo-gurus and sectarianism have caused a phobia in our society. But what you fear is often where you have a sore point – the absence of reliable guideposts. This lack makes many people even doubt their existence.

In the East the guru or teacher is compared to a magnet, an his presence – not the physical – helps with meditation: “The presence of the teacher transforms the student, as a piece of iron is magnetised in the proximity of a magnet.” This presence is neither an external influence nor the personality or the physical presence of the teacher, but his inner realisation. You might like to read the Basics of Spiritual Life on The Teacher-Student Principle.

A guidepost in the Emmental, Switzerland, November 2007

Yesterday at my office a colleague gave me an article to read. It was a talk which one of our heads of the Red Cross had given on the occasion of the release of a book about Professional Solidarity on the World Volunteer day of Dec 5. The book has been financed by a Swiss association of fire insurances. The talker, a theologian, presented a brilliant association between volunteer work or donations to a good cause and fire insurance:

Volunteers help other people, often with the perspective of getting something good in return, at least a good feeling. Also people giving money for a good cause mostly do it with the perspective of getting a better feeling. They are hoping for a better hereafter, so that they don’t land in the purgatory fire. Thus doing good-will work or giving donations is in a way some kind of a fire insurance.

The wisdom teachings tell us that the purgatory is not a world hereafter, but the plane of unsolved emotions, desires and reactions on our doings. You can experience the effects now as well as in the time between the passing and returning. There is a beautiful passage on the purgatory fire in the book Fiery World 3, § 69, from the Agni Yoga series:

“There is no mightier purgatory than earthly life, if all the potentialities of the spirit are intensified. Likewise there is no mightier hell than the earthly infections of the spirit. To affirm purgatory on Earth as a beginning leading to the Subtle and Fiery Worlds is a problem of the purification of consciousness. All strivings of humanity for knowledge of the Invisible World should impel the consciousness to take up the thought of purification, which will continue the earthly path to the Fiery World. Only the concept of oneness of the path will impel people to live in beauty, and to depart this life as wayfarers continuing their journey. When the World will apprehend this indissoluble bond with the Subtle World, purgatory will then take its rightful place in Eternal Truth.”

Picture of a Fire Ritual, Delphi, Greece, May 2005. Fire rituals have a purifying effect on the subtle bodies, see the book on Agni – The Symbolism and the Fire Ritual“.