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“.

We are living in speedy times. If you like to speed it even up, here is a tip, from a newsletter which I received today at my office:

If you want to read long texts faster than before, you can try Spreeder, a free onlinie speed reading service. You just have to copy the text into a field, put the setting of the WPM (Words per minute) on a value between 250 and 300 and click “play”: Spreeder now sends the single words of the text one after the other onto you screen and you can read the text without having to move your eyes through the lines. With a little concentration you can thus read the text faster.

Whether you also understand faster, or even deeper, remains a question to be solved. Depth doesn’t come from speed, but from growth of consciousness, inner silence and a good balance in life.

In the cockpit of a glider, April 2007

This morning, when I came into my office, there was a big parcel lying on my desk, sent anonymously from a town near Zurich. I didn’t expect any packet. When I opened it I saw a chequered bag filled with nuts and sweets, sent by a web-marketing agency with whom I’m working. I thought, nice greetings from Santa Claus and distributed the content in our office (of course I took also some sweets and realised again that I’d better not…).

Then, in the afternoon, I even caught a short glance of Santa Claus: He was walking through the church garden past my window, followed by some people. I quickly took a shot of him.

Beyond all commercialisation – his inspiration of sharing with others is a genuine message of good will.

I sometimes get English e-mails signed “Love and Light”… Now a South African friend sent an e-mail with a signature, which pleased me very much: “Love, light and laughter” 🙂

A photo of a friend, from Bali: The elephant-headed god Ganesha wishing you good luck !

A friend yesterday sent me a video which I also found at YouTube and others on the web. There was the following description in the e-mail:

“This woman in the video found this lion injured in the forest ready to die. She took the lion with her and nursed the lion back to health. When the lion was better she made arrangements with a zoo to take the lion and give it a new and happy home. This video was taken when the woman after some time went to go visit the lion to see how he was doing. Watch the lion’s reaction when he sees her.”

This heartiness is really a true leonine quality!

My wife yesterday said that she had observed something like a “love leakage” with several persons: They seemed to be unable to go into a nearness to a friend or a partner, and it seems that it had to do with a feeling of not being accepted themselves. With some there was a problem with their father or mother in the past and one didn’t have a father. Though many years since their childhood had passed they tried to avoid closeness or expressing affection. This strategy of avoiding somehow spills over into different areas of life.

My wife described how some “miraculous” changes happened, as soon as they started establishing a conscious contact with their soul, the higher self: On very deep levels there were transformations happening, and they started coming into a flow. In one case the changes were quite dramatic. Psychiatrists and psychologist who had been involved in a related crisis hadn’t been able to reach to the point. The “magic” of the soul, however did.

It needed accompanying and guiding the persons to themselves, to get confidence into their own inner essence. The problems couldn’t be changed from outside, but from within.

Master EK says in his Spiritual Psychology Meditations: ““Have a friend in yourself, be a friend to others.” And Master KPK beautifully describes the power of love, which is the power of the soul, in his booklet On Love: “Love heals. It needs no intellectual techniques… Love transforms… Love is the sleeping energy in every being. When Love awakens, there is no self-control! The SELF flows…”

White-waters in the Pochtenschlucht in Kiental, Switzerland

Last week I had at my office an online demonstration with telephone conference of an international web-analytics enterprise: They wanted to convince me to implement their tool (up to now we have another solution). One person had prepared the contact (and he was a bit pushing), two others were on the phone showing me all the advantages of their system. I nearly had no time to say anything nor did they enquire what our needs were. They showed me many features of their tool in all details – the only thing was, that these weren’t relevant for us.

After over an hour the presentation came to an end. Before the second person could go on with some more explanations, I found a second for objecting, “Our situation is different from that of a business enterprise, and the tool has so many possibilities of web tracking, which nobody in our office would be interested in.”

They were a bit consternated, then excused and asked what our needs were. I explained. Indeed, their system could cope with these needs, and in an easy way. At the end they excused for not having asked in the beginning. I said, it’s o.k., only we have to meet each other’s understanding and requirements before we can proceed.

I don’t know yet if I want to change to this analytics-system or not.

Tubes without connection leading nowhere…