Friends from SouledOut, California sent me an e-mail encouraging people to participate in the Global Peace Meditation/Prayer Day, also known as World Oneness Day, during the 24-hour period of Sunday, May 20, 2007, along with groups and individuals worldwide.

It is an experiment on the power of directed thought. People around the world join in special ceremonies, praying and meditating on the theme of planetary peace and harmony with nature.

The day’s effect on consciousness will be measured at Princeton University by the Global Consciousness Project GCP. The GCP is an international effort involving researchers from several institutions and countries, designed to explore whether the construct of interconnected consciousness can be scientifically validated through objective measurement. So they are collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998, with about 65 host sites around the world for field measurements of group consciousness, which show that resonance and coherence of focus can produce structure in the random event generators (REG) data.

During yesterday’s study group, while reading a transcription of a seminar by Sri K. P. Kumar on the Secret Doctrine, we came across a caption that there were failures on the subtle planes with the creation of the earth by the creative intelligences (devas), just as there are failures with what human beings are doing. We shouldn’t understand the devas as infallible. And just like people with power try to hide their mistakes or even justify them by making or manipulating laws in their favour, the same can be observed with these intelligences. However, in the long run they are getting into other cycles of adjusting and learning.

I like this idea. It is so very human and common in day-to-day life. You can also observe it in your own behaviour. I’m talented in creating excuses, also before myself, and observe the same with others:

Yesterday, a “low energy day”, I grew angry with my wife that the children hadn’t cleared their mess in the kitchen. With this simmering anger I got them do the washup.

For me, I was sure my growing angry was because of the mess of the children and that they had preferred gaming to cleaning up. Only later I came to see that already before that I felt a bit imbalanced. Out of this, my dealing with the kitchen situation came much more from my predisposition than from the actual situation.

A friend yesterday sent a link to a movie which just started in German. A little search on the web showed that the film was out in English already since beginning of 2006: ONE – The Movie. A Contemporary Journey Towards A Timeless Destiny. It seems to be a fascinating movie. Here you can see some trailers.

And here is an extract from an article by Sita Stuhlmiller about the production of the film:

“What happens when a middle-aged trial attorney and father of three wakes in the night with an idea to make an independent film about the meaning of life? Ward M. Powers, with no experience at all in filmmaking, mail-ordered a video camera and set off with his best friend and a cousin on a two-year life-changing experience. Inspired by Joseph Campbell’s maxim: “Follow your bliss,” and with no budget or training, they took to the streets to film ordinary people responding to life’s ultimate questions.

They started with twenty questions, among them: Why is there poverty and suffering in the world? What is the relationship between science and religion? What are we all so afraid of? How does one obtain true peace? Describe God. What is the meaning of life? What is your one wish for the world? Eventually the filmmakers got up the nerve to ask their questions of spiritual teachers, philosophers, authors, artists, priests, rabbis, yogis, imams, monks, nuns, medicine men, social architects and scholars, including Robert Thurman, Ram Dass, Thich Nhat Hanh, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev, Father Thomas Keating, Hasan Qazwini, Deepak Chopra, Riane Eisler and many others.

“And so, about three years ago, we set out on this odyssey with nothing but a DV camera, twenty questions and mantra—We Are All One. But what began as kind of a lark amongst friends to try to make an independent film, somewhere along the way turned into a life’s journey. And what started out back then as a kind of Kumbaya notion of Oneness also grew into something much greater. Somewhere along the way, Oneness became more colorful . . . more intense . . . more inclusive . . . more internal . . . richer and more beautiful than we could have ever imagined.” -Ward M. Powers, Director

“On the last day, in the final minute of the last interview, Father Thomas Keating summarized the journey: ‘The spiritual journey is the realization—not just the information but the real interior conviction—that there is a higher power or God. Or, to make it as easy as possible for everybody: there is an Other; second step: to try to become the Other; and finally the realization that there is no Other. You and the Other are One, always have been, always will be’.”

Yesterday a friend from Sweden sent me a text with a call from Don Alejandro Oxlaj, Grand Elder of the Maya, for Global Meditation on May 22. I found it also on the web, posted last Saturday. Don Alejandro is head of the National Mayan Council of Elders of Guatemala, Day Keeper of the Mayan Calendar, a 13th generation Quiche Mayan High Priest and a Grand Elder of the Continental Council of Elders and Spiritual Guides of the Americas.

There are some touching thoughts in his call. It’s worth while reading the whole text. Here are a few extracts.

“We all are children of the Earth, we are flowers of the garden of our Creator coming in different colors, in different shapes, in different sizes, with different aromas; speaking different languages, and each one worshiping and meditating in their own way to the same Creator who has different names according to their own culture….”

“Let us talk now about our present times. We enjoy new advances in technology, inventions that make everyday life easier for us, we all use them, but the negative side is that we are finishing up our forests, and contributing to the contamination of the planet, the rivers are drying out, the waters are being contaminated. Our crops are affected by plagues as well as plagues killing our animals. We are threatened by contagious illnesses, incurable illnesses unknown in the past… Very harmful are the use of chemicals, the insecticides, transgenic seeds, etc. …”

“Now lets speak about the future. We, the traditional Mayan elders, and all indigenous peoples in the world, meditate on the future. We don’t think only for today, the present, we think for tomorrow, for our children, grand children and future generations. We see a dark shadow approaching, a shadow that will cause a lot of harm. It is the great contamination. All this is due to man’s creation… We don’t want any more wars, no more death, no more nuclear testing, no more chemicals, because the warming up of the planet is unbearable to Mother Earth. If we don’t change, sooner or later, she will strike back with millions of lives lost…”

“Our Creator created us here over the face of the earth to worship him, to love and respect each other. We all are equal, we are flowers of the earth, in different sizes, of different colors, with different songs, with different smell, but all looking at our Creator, honoring him with different dances, different music, different ceremonies. We all plead to him, we are his children, he is the creator of all that exist, all that we see and all which is beyond our senses. He has given us our life with an intelligence to do well…”

May 22nd 2007 is 5 Ajpu, the Day of Grand Father Sun, he shines upon all of us equally, he doesn’t know discrimination, he doesn’t get lost on his path, he doesn’t get ahead or behind of himself. He gives us warmth, he gives us life. One Sun, one Air, one Water, One Mother Earth. May 22nd 2007 day of Grand Father Sun, Grand Mother Moon.

The Maya Prophecy says: “Arise, all arise, not one nor two groups be left behind, together we will see once again the place from where we have come from.”

Mayan Tikal Temple, Guatemala, © Leonardo C. Fleck, Wikipedia

Last week my eldest son (16) had to write a paper in high school about computer gaming addiction. For this he made an interview with a social education worker, a friend of my wife. They talked about different forms of addiction and from when on you cross the point of gaming for joy to gaming out of an addiction.
For him it was important to see that he himself doesn’t fall into the category of computer addicts – though he is gaming quite a lot in the multi-player online game Guild Wars and this since about 1.5 years. With the fighters of his clan he is running for hours through countries of digital magical imagination – forgetting dinner or anything around. But he is still having other interests in the “real” world as well, and school is also demanding its tribute.

There is such a pull of the pictures and action into these digital fantasy worlds, where the entire inner imagination is captured by the spell. It is like a more physical effigy of the worlds you enter through drugs. Also in meditation you come about strata of subtle imagination where you can lose yourself in esoteric fancies.

The awakening in life towards responsibility and commitment to some purposeful activity often takes a long time. Some people seem to evolve only parts of their inner flower of life, and petals remain closed till later years or never open. In my life the process of discovering the thread took quite long and was partly painful. But the pain pushed forward to change: “Change cannot happen, unless one yearns to change.” (K.P. Kumar: On Change)

My wife said to me this morning: I have now come to understand the difference between entering into a confrontation with someone and taking my own stand.
In the past I used to avoid taking a stand, because I didn’t want to confront with the view of others and start quarreling, so I often kept silent.
In the last time I came to declare my standpoint in an open way. This isn’t confronting the other, who might have another standpoint. I can accept it, and when I declare my view, we can enter into an exchange.

When you insist that your standpoint is right and the other’s is wrong, you are entering into an opposition. Then you try to convince or manipulate the other to take your view. Political party ideologies are making their mark through partiality and not by synthesizing. This carries in itself the seed for conflicts with the opposing opinions and for aggression.

If, however, you are centered in your self and express, this is the way I see the thing, you can be open to the other’s viewpoint, accepting it as another facet of the whole. This way the picture of truth gets rounded up, and you can open up to new vistas of understanding.

Stones on a beach at the Gulf of Bengal

A friend wrote me that she just experienced a shock, because a close family member had tried to commit suicide. Normally a suicide or an attempt is a cry deep from the soul, which is not finding the right way through life, not knowing how to find a good solution to face the tasks it has been committed to solve in this life.

From a spiritual point of view, there is the knowledge, and sometimes also the experience, that we as inner beings are immortal, and death does not exist, only for the body. So there is no end to our work, even if we commit suicide. It is important to understand that when someone commits suicide, he doesn’t solve the problem, but will be confronted with more problems in the future – the present ones and the problem of having gone away too early.

Inner research says that those who commit suicide land for a while in a state of a clouded consciousness, which is very incomfortable. Later on they have to face all the consequences of their doing. For life does not belong to us, we belong to Life. It is not our decision to enter into life, nor is it up to us to decide when the time for passing comes. Transgressing the rules of the “play” has its consequences.

You might like to read the text from Good Will in Action on Dying and Deathlessness.

A painting from a Swedish friend

Two days ago I got the newsletter of Alertnet, a humanitarian news network of Reuters Foundation. Alertnet is aiming at keeping relief professionals and the wider public up-to-date on humanitarian crises around the globe. In the newsletter there was a link to the World Press Tracker, that shows which emergencies the media limelight grabs and which are “forgotten” by the press:

(c) Alertnet

You can select different conflicts and time sections and see how much these areas are captures by the media, like Iraq or Afghan turmoil, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon crisis, AIDS pandemic, Bird flu, Somalia troubles, Kashmir dispute, Sri Lanka conflict, Darfur conflict … Out of a database of 10 000 media sources they have selected 108 English-language print publications from Europe North and Latin America Africa the Middle East and Asia. So it is a selective view, but nevertheless an impressive synthesis.

Grabbing the attention of the media is important for the flow of money and often decides on whether or not people react on a crisis. There is quite a business around the craving for attention. And the media are mirrors, instrumental for attracting and directing the attention.

Attention and focus are most essential for directing the focus of our life. Easily we get side-tracked from our genuine purpose by distractive influences. Ads, main-stream opinion, belief systems, only to mention a few. But the most important is one’s own mind. In any meditative practice it is most vital to learn focusing ones energies of attention, expressed through our thoughts. The power of habit is very strong, but with a regular training and attention to your motives you will grow in inner awareness.

Picture of the “eye of divine attention”, from a fountain in Berne, which formerly was the facade of a house.

I just got a from a Californian friend a link to a fascinating videotape with� Portuguese subtitles of a child eloquently appealing to adults, delegates of the United Nations Environmental Conference to act upon what we teach children in kindergarten: to share, to clean up our mess, to care about others. My friend wrote:

“Three 12/13 year old children have dared to form an environmental children’s organization to be the change they hope to see in the world. Looking into children’s eyes and seeing 7 generations hence we can re-examine our values today, and change our habits. As Marshall Rosenberg observed, things we do habitually are not necessarily natural. We sometimes assume that and confuse the two.”

“Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market.”

Today, 8th May, is not only the annual World Red Cross Red Crescent Day (the birthday of Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, this year’s motto: “Together for Humanity”), but also a more silent commemoration day, the White Lotus Day, the day of the passing of Helena P. Blavatsky (HPB) on May 8, 1891.

One year ago, I wrote already a blogpost about it, mentioning the little booklet I published two years ago: “H.P.B. – Trailblazer for the Aquarian Age” (free download). There is also an inspiring talk by K. Parvathi Kumar on The White Lotus.

The Lotus symbolises the life of man and also that of the Kosmos. The symbol stands for the principle of unfoldment and it is recommended for meditation. If you follow the right steps, the inner energy centres called chakras (: wheels) transform into lotuses. You might read more about it in the Lunar Messenger on Chakras and Lotuses.

Cover of the book The White Lotus, by K. Parvathi Kumar

HPB has let quite an impact in my life. In the 80ies I was fascinated over several years by the title of her opus magnus, The Secret Doctrine, without buying it. When I finally got it (5 volumes, nothing for casual reading), I had a dive through it, without understanding much. In the 90ies I studied the volumes for a second, and in the last years for the third time. (now in English). I like reading a little passage every morning after meditation, its great panorama of life opens up the view, before entering into the daily hustle and bustle. One sentence from this morning’s reading, Vol. I, Cosmogenesis, p. 56:

“No man is conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge that happens to have been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of languages that we have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget is synonymous with not to remember. How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms to describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or differences?”

Helena P. Blavastky (1831.1891)