Yoga is in – at least doing physical exercises for training the body. The consumer magazine of the Swiss store chain Migros published in their latest number a photo of “New Yoga York” – Silence in the chaos – over 800 people practising yoga on the Times Square to realise inner silence in midst of cars and staring passengers:

And Swissmilk, the marketing organisation of the Swiss milk producers has just launched a summer campaign: “Swiss Yoga“, about wellness and enjoyment with the cow “Lovely” doing yoga exercises and thus promoting “milk gives you strong bones”…

(More pictures, also as screen-backgrounds you find here.)

The marketeers of course want to promote their milk – but do a humorous promotion for yoga as well. And people might not only get to the wellness aspect of yoga as some trendy body culture, but find a way to the inner world. For yoga means union – experiences the oneness with the Divine, the eternal existence. Thus practising yoga is an inner technique of alignment to the higher self and thus for transformation of one’s life. You may like to read more in “Yoga – the Path of Synthesis” of “Basics of Spiritual Life“.

Yesterday a friend from Canada sent me a powerpoint presentation about the extraordinary story of Shelley Yates and her son. I found it very inspiring. Since the presentation was in French, I inserted the English text from her website. You can download it here, or, as a PDF without music.

Shelley Yates and her son had an aquaplaning accident and drowned in a flooded marsh. She and her son were “dead” for fifteen minutes. During that time she was told by beings of light how to save herself and her 4 years old son. And she was given a message on how to heal the Earth.

On the suggestion of the beings of light she is making a appeal for a global healing meditation on July 17, 2007, at 11.11 Greenwich Mean Time, to come together to be as One and heal the planet just as her son had been brought back to life.

She says about this excellent initiative:

“The time has been set for July 17, 2007 at 11:11 Greenwich Mean Time. I have been given no indication about why this date and time have been chosen, but this date has been told to me over and over again. I have been asked to bring together as many humans as possible, throughout the world from every corner of the globe, to simply sit and pray or meditate for one hour during that time. Hopefully, with your help, we will amass a union of humans, such as the world has never seen. Loving humans with one intention – to heal our planet and awaken our souls to our true propose to become one with our Source of Light.

The light beings use the term “fire the grid” when they speak of the energizing of humanity with divine power, on July 17, 2007. They say firing the grid will accomplish two things. First, it will pulse healing energy into the center of the earth and second, regenerate the core, or the heart of the planet. This planned sitting of the people of earth will demonstrate the love and faith we feel for the goodness of our world and her inhabitants. We are the catalyst to the healing of earth. A true believer has the power of ten fold, so if you only think you may believe, know that the faith of the others will boost your own faith and the power will be intensified.”

You can also read the story and more on her website, which has been translated into many languages. Or you can see some videos with her telling her experiences on YouTube.

Some artists contributed beautiful meditation music (MP3) for free, and there are many groups world-wide who will join.

How big an initiative might be – the spiritual work of inner transformation is an ongoing effort and not limited to a unique occasion. A special occasion, however, might give us inspiration for further aspiration and growth.

Yesterday I participated in a staff forum from my office at Swiss Red Cross. After some staff general information about latest organisational reorganisations – the waves of it will touch me a bit in the next time – we had the occasion to see some “market stands”, where parts of the organisation or affiliated entities presented their activities.

I first went to a presentation of the Humanitarian Aid of the Swiss Confederation, which has its central warehouse in the Red-Cross building. They showed us the activities of the Rapid Response Teams, which has to be prepared to react very fast in emergency situations world-wide such as earthquakes, droughts or floods. Besides natural disasters they have facilities for all kinds of technological disasters such as nuclear, biological and chemical incidents or other man-made conflicts. There is quite an infrastructure behind these rescue activities you normally just see on TV, and a number of trained volunteer specialists is ready-to-go within a short time to assist victims of disasters.

Afterwards I participated in a presentation of the ERU (Emergency Response Unit) of the Red Cross, where the Swiss Red Cross is closely collaborating with a number or European Red Cross societies in their network for Disaster Preparedness. At the beginning they highlighted what they just are doing, while the media report about the monsoon floods, which aren’t in the limelights yet, but have caused about 1.5 million people to leave their houses and have destroyed about 0.5 million homes. Specialists from the ERU have immediately left towards Pakistan to evaluate the situation on site and what and how can be helped. In case the situation is clearer, the members of the different teams immediately start organising the help with a complex network of specialists. They showed pictures of their mission during the floods in Mozambique and explained how they have to set up infrastructures in a situation where the local structures have collapsed or can no longer cope with the situation.

The last “market place” for me was a presentation of the Ambulatory for Victims of War and Torture about group therapies with children in the age of 6 – 18. Many children of victims, who haven’t gone through the experiences their parents had, are highly affected by the effects of the traumatisation of their mother or father. It was impressive to see how in the therapy they are using elements of meditation and rituals together with techniques of building up trust and inner security with the children.

I like these presentations where you can get an insight into working conditions which normally you don’t come much into contact, even if you are working in the same organisation.

Statues in front of the International Red Cross Museum in Geneva, symbolising victims of war

A friend just wrote me:

“I have experienced today something special and would like to share it with you. Our oldest son (he is 8 years old) is quite special, he is challenging us very much. … To some extend it can be very difficult with him. Yesterday was again a difficult day: He kept on quarrelling with his brothers, was teasing them all the time and didn’t feel like doing anything. I gave him a book with a short report about Gandhi and told him to copy it on a piece of paper and take it to school the next day.

After reading the content he started asking many profound questions. Today he took the paper to school and it was put on the wall of the classroom. Since then his disposition has totally changed, very strangely. In the evening I looked with him a short passage from the film “Gandhi“: He hardly could breathe because of his concentration: It was a beautiful sight. I will order the autobiography of Gandhi and read it with him every day during summer holidays. I never experienced something similarly with him. His intensity, his affection were nearly frightening. Tonight he nearly didn’t go to bed and wanted to keep on discussing about it.”

The lives of great men and women, especially of initiates like Gandhi, are inspiring examples, which can awake in the soul the aspiration towards the ideals they incarnated. Therefore it is good to read such biographies to give an orientation to the soul.

Statue of Gandhi in a seminar centre near Hyderabad, India, Jan. 2004

Yesterday a friend from another country informed that he had to withdraw from the presidency of a voluntary aid organisation, which is doing substantial good-will activities for people in difficult social conditions, especially immigrants. I was fascinated by the way they had been doing a great scope of service activities since I came to know about the project some years ago.

The organisation had been created 10 years ago and grown quite a lot since. The founding members, however, who had been committed to the project in the beginning, had dispersed with the time. He had now been the only one who had remained for running the management of the organisation, with several helpers in the activities.

He told me some months ago that it was increasingly difficult for him to keep on running the activities. He wrote now he had tried to cope with all the deficits, to do the work that nobody else wanted to do, but had reached his limits: “We all have had other things more important to do or we have found some reason to avoid it.”

Burnout – even with a lot of good will you have to see and respect the limits of ones forces. Sometimes, however, a phoenix might come out of the ashes.

The news touched me, for I felt how much my friend had been committed to the work and the pain of his decision. It needs courage to say no, when a certain limit is reached, even with a good cause. And even if one work disintegrates or collapses, there is the hope that other people take up the challenge or start something new. You should never fall into the trap of thinking that you are indispensable or that a good activity which exists now will go on forever.

See also the blogpost on “Burnout or Burning” with some thought about compassion fatigue, your the beautiful little booklet by K. Parvathi Kumar”On Change“.

A new tree growing out of the stump of a cut tree.

We yesterday had a walking-tour with our little local meditation group to the Kien valley, a beautiful alpine valley about 30 miles from here. Following the river there were some art sculptures dispersed between the rocks and bushes, forming a beautiful accentuation of the natural ambiance. Like nature spirits they were hiding along the river.

After a lake we arrived at the valley basin where waterfalls were coming down from different sides. We went up the “white water way” along some roaring rivers and cascades. At times the water went through very deep gorges where you could bridge the gap from one side to the other, but didn’t see the river below, because it was lost in the depth.

Above the cliffs we arrived at the Griesalp, where a few houses at the foot of still higher mountains. One of the houses built in the traditional chalet style was decorated with calligraphic decorations of wisdom aphorisms, which reminded me of Paracelsus or of Eastern teachings like those of the Bhagavad Gita:

” The purpose of action is not the result, but to become the eternal bliss of God.”

“Everything perfect in word and deed comes from the depths of eternal silence.”

“Everyone of us has still a million lives on earth ahead – so why this haste, this noise and this impatience.”

“In God’s providence there is no evil, only good and its preparation.”

Our youngest son (14) yesterday evening dyed his hair. He tried a chestnut brown Henna colour on his blond hair, but it turned out to be patchy and quite red, and he didn’t want to appear out of the bathroom nor go out in the evening. My wife had to save him by rushing to a nearby supermarket to buy a dark brown colour, and so he did a second turn. Afterwards all over the bathroom and on some of the clothes different colour spots were spread.

Not only we, but also he felt at first a bit irritated with the result of his change of appearance – brownish black hair. After returning home in the night he told my wife he would like to go to a barber to undo the dying. He himself is quite cured of dying his hair on his own. We quickly got used to the new outlook, and it’s not bad, but he isn’t very happy with it.

This way he is making his experiences with presenting himself in changing outlooks – in search of “Who am I?” and “what is my effect on others?”

Water Spirit – Artwork in the Kien Valley, photo from today’s excursion

A friend wrote me today:

“An investigation in USA of the most successful companies run by well-liked leaders showed that out of many questions there was only one to which they gave the same answer: they had all in the past experienced bad bosses! So, to become good on something you should first ask the Universe for the negative experience of that.”

A stone in a waterfall, picture from today’s excursion into the Kien Valley, Alps

It is a deep biographical truth – the so-called negative experiences with superiors in my life as well have given me an impetus what not to do in my life. And going through times of torrential changes and standing in them like the stone in the waterfall, just from one day to the other keeping the head high, gives a fruit of deep experiences. What was most important for me was (and is) to keep the link to the inner, through daily times of withdrawal within. If you don’t root yourself firmly, the tides will wash you away.

I today got a German powerpoint-presentation entitled “Reap as we sow”. When I had a look on the web to verify if there is an English source and if the content is genuine, I saw it had been posted in different versions on many sites since 2001, with and without comments and different titles. Here is one post from the BBC-website (“Where was God on September 11th?”, the text isn’t from the author mentioned there…). Though it is also not just genuinely the text of Anne Graham, the daughter of Bill Graham, as it is claimed, its worth reading. Here a small appetizer:

“For years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman that He is, I believe that He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand that He leave us alone?”

And where the text on the above site ends, it goes on in another post with:

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.”
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace. Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

(followed by “Pass it on…”)

Reap as we sow: Cacao fruits from a floral art exposition

Following today news-posts on the Climate Savers Computing initiative, which brings together industry, consumers and conservation organizations to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers (Intel, Google, Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, WWF and many others have joined it by now), I came across a website called Things Are Good: good news.

They are trying to inspire change by celebrating all the good in our world. They started the site to bring the attention to news that benefits people – that encourages people: “Negative news is easy to find, we aim to make positive news easy to find. Don’t stop reading those other news sources, just remember not to get bogged down by them.”

Anybody can write for ThingsAreGood. You have to register here and you can publish with a web text editor: ” What’s good? Anything that looks at the news with a positive spin and doesn’t contract our list of categories. Here’s the full list: Direct Action / Energy / Environment / Equality / Freedom / Fun / Health / International Events / Mind Space / Peace / Random Act of Good / Spin da News / Technology / Tolerance / Transportation.

So if you want to read some inspiring news or get active yourself, have a look at the site.