We had contacts with situations with persons exhibiting an outer facade of nice guys. Behind there were inner abysses, aggravated through the use of drugs. Here is not the place to go into details, but these situations showed once again: If your “pursuit of happiness” goes against laws of nature, the “ropes of life” are inevitably tightening you down. On the “downward slope” your understanding gets obscured and your discrimination twisted. Restlessness keeps you busy and obstacles after obstacles heap up on the path, holding you away from your inner self. No way to escape.

Nature isn’t gingerly in its teaching methods.� It is “bent or break”. Either you learn or the suffering increases. Fear, pain, ill health, conflicts in the surrounding life are just some of the methods used.

The experiene is, the will to right action has to awaken, and before that the readiness to learn what is right. When this good will is still in an infant stage and vacillating, the help of a friend, a guide is inevitable. On the upward path, this guide giving guide-lines is necessary. He is somehow an outer “substitute” of your own self and will. However, he should never infringe upon your own will, but only help to strengthen it.� This way the path to one’s own “inner fountain” can slowly be regained.

Finding one’s inner fountain

The Globe. A sculpture in the building of the United Nations in Geneva.

The teachings of timeless wisdom tell us, that there are traces of the teachings found everywhere on the globe, expressing through the Scriptures and spiritual teachings of many nations (see our booklet on H. P. Blavatsky).

Two days ago I got an e-mail from a friend living in Brazzaville, Congo, who wrote to me about fascinating parallels between the Eastern wisdom teachings and Kikongo, his mother tongue:

“All the material I receive from you helps me establish a link with the traditional religion of our ancestors akin to ancient Egyptian spiritual practices. Focus being made on positive aspects of course.

It is called “Kinzambi kia Kongo” meaning “Solar Religion”. Kikongo being my mother tongue it is also an ethnic group living in Central Africa: DRC, Congo, Gabon, Angola… and members can found in other areas of the globe: Southern part of African, Americas, Asia…

I also suspect some kinship between Sanskrit and Kikongo in terms of vocabulary and vibration. By way of examples the most sacred sound in kikongo is OMAKONGO (OM AKONGO think of the pranava OM). Again kundalini is to be found in kikongo too. Kunda is like the base or springboard from which the spine (kilini or lini in kikongo) can be activated.

In the same connection, KONGO is a sacred sound in kikongo meaning the Sun, Universe, God, Power , Love, Wisdom… is the highest title in Japanese Buddhism. Its equivalent in Sanskrit is Vajra.

As for Shamballa, traces of its origin can also be found in kikongo. Sha = city in old kikongo; mbala = name of a tribe with relations to divine power.

Melekisedeki. Mele = targeted towards, Kisedeki = Heart of the Sun.

NGUM & NZA in Kikongo means Solve & Coagula in Alchemy, Yang & Yin for Chinese wisdom. Ngum = Spirit and NZA= matter. In pronouncing this mantra you can feel similarities with HAM SA…

The sound NGUM (I found in some Buddhist texts that GUM is used to correct negative aspects of someone’s life) was vocalized by our ancestors to fight, clear negativity. The following mantra is OM GUM GANAPATAYI SVAHA dedicated to Ganesha is revealing enough.

A Six-rayed Star is said to be the symbol of Kongo people. One triangle represents GOD with his three attributes: LOVE, WISDOM and WILL; the other one three divine ancestors of kongo religion. Be it said by passing that Ne KUTUMI (similarities with Master KOOT HUMI) is one of the great divine ancestors in tradition.

In Avalokitesvara’s mantra OM MANI PADME HUM there is the word Mani. The same word in kikongo is regarded as the title given to an initiate who has attained enlightenment. Hence the term MANI KONGO given to the old king of Kongo Kingdom in the 13th century. He was said to have a divine consciousness while living on earth.

In Kukai’s mantra is NAMU DAISHI HENJO KONGO (Homage to Maitreya). we see the word KONGO. Kukai is the Highest Priest in Shigon.

In Bagavad Gita, Krishna says of letters: ” I am A”. In kikongo AKONGO (A KONGO) is the name of HIGH GOD. (AKONGO = OMAKONGO) .The first letter of the kikongo alphabet is “A”, just like in hebrew with Alef, latin Alpha. Kikongo alphabet has equally 22 letters just like hebrew. Think of the 22 chapters of the Book of Revelation in the Bible.

Maha in Sanskrit means Great; it is the same thing in kikongo. Hence words mahatma, MahaLowa in kikongo (Great Sun = Vairocana).”

He also gave me a text where he is going a bit more into details. I sent it to some friends who were very much touched by it. A friend from Argentina replied:

“Thank for sharing the African e-mail with me. It made my imagination fly to the planets interplay and Shiva’s dance. It is so joyful to find our common origin that we can hardly realize how the diaspora took place among the human beings. Everything has to be experienced, I guess. This reminded me when Roberto got in touch for the first time with Celtic music. He was astonished to find out that it contained even tango as well as tarantella in it. Going backwards, if possible, we should be able to trace the OM…
So many sounds have lost their significance, … that’s why the Master says that the degradation of languages shows the degradation of people. The pulsation, perhaps?”

Statistics sometimes suggest much more precision than the facts are. If you have a look at “Worldometers“, you find world statistics updated in real time. At the moment I’m writing this the statistics give the following numbers, which are continuously increasing:

You get the impression, that a horde of brownies is running around all over the planet collecting data, even in the far-off jungles and deserts. At the bottom of the site, however, there is the warning: “Please note that demographics data is based on census data reports and projections. Do not use for exact calculations.” But where does the projecting of data lead us? It appears like magic, with the semblance of great precision.

Another mathematical “magician” must have been Leonhard Euler, (1707-1783) who is celebrating his 300th birthday today. He is one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived. I yesterday read an article in the “Bund” about this “totally normal genius”. In the average he has done an important discovery every week. He had a tremendous overview and immediately saw the inter-relations. In everything he directly saw a mathematical structure. He solved many problems, not only mathematical ones, and he created the basis for the sudokus people like to solve nowadays.

In spite of losing most of his children at an early age, losing one eye with 31 and losing sight at a later age, he was very content. Born in Basle, Switzerland, he later lived in St. Petersburg and Berlin and was tremendously productive until the end of his life. A colleague, Dieudonné Thiébault, wrote about him: “With a child on his knees and a cat on his shoulders he wrote his immortal works” – by dictating them, because he was getting blind. He must have been one of the rare cases who can concentrate on difficult subjects while playing with children.

You find his portrait on several stamps and it was for a while even on a Swiss bank note. Here is a stamp just published on the occasion of his birthday:

Numbers are strange phenomena. They are considered to be creative forces by the ancient seers and used by some people for meditation. They are innate parts of our being. The embryo inherits the numerical potency and germinates the parts of the body in terms of number. You find more about this in the book on Spiritual Psychology by Dr. E. Krishnamacharya.

There were some situations my wife and I came across the last times, where people were living in a state of fear of failure. Fears of disappointing others, fears, others could see some weak points in them or think bad of them. And above all: fear that others might do a job not sufficiently well. Seen from the outside, there were clouds of fear, cultivated for quite some time. The fears didn’t declare themselves as such, but showed up under the cover of over-identification with a task:

When someone comes from the outside and says, you’re o.k., this doesn’t take the fear away, but he’s going on with his fears. The clouds work like a blind spot: What you have inside is seen as problems outside. You see the fears you have inside with situations in the outside. So when an impulse comes from the outside, it is being reflected by your cloud and projected outside – as a criticism about a situation or how others do a task:You are convinced that you know what is right and might want others to act in your way. Or you get angry about others that they have another approach and don’t act according to the way you think it’s right. You might start making prescriptions to others, because they don’t correspond to your way of acting – or you don’t to their’s.

As long as you stay on the level of argumentation, you remain stuck in the blockage of mental conceptions: “I (you) have to do this because…” You are pressing the other with arguments, and the other is pressing back. This way you don’t get out of the cloud of fear. (see the blogpost on “Communication or Riding a Bicycle“). You can observe this very well in politics.

When you come to see what is common between the standpoint of the other and yours, you are already about to overcome the obstructions and resistances. Focusing on what is common and not on what is separating lets you see that there is much more in common that separating. This way you come into a mutual exchange and flow:

With this vision you come to understand: “I do my best, because I love doing it – and it’s the same with you.”

This blog-post has been translated into Spanish, together with some other posts of this series.

I yesterday got an e-mail from a Canadian friend with impressive photos said to be from Hurricane Katrina hitting the US Gulf Coast in August 05. “Googling” the source of the pictures quickly lead me to “Snopes.com“, a site about web rumours, telling that these were genuine pictures, however, not of the Katrina hurricane, but of series by storm chaser Mike Hollingshead taken in Nebraska and Kansas in 04. On his site “extremeinstability.com” you find extraordinary shots of tornados, as well as wallpapers, links to videos, DVDs and more. Here is a photo of the May 28, 2004 Highway 12 Nebraska Supercell series. Thanks Mike, for the permission of using.

It looks that chasing storms isn’t that easy. Mike Hollingshead writes that he is driving long distances in hope of seeing cool clouds, often all for nothing: “It is a bit depressing being so far from home and seeing crap storms or nothing at all, then having to start that long drive back, often while extremely tired.” Since 2004 he’s doing it with no other job outside this…

A “tornado” or “storm” is also a metaphor for turbulent situations in life. Normally people don’t like going through these storms, for crises aren’t that cosy. But often these intense times of change bring about the most important transformations.

Here is a fascinating video from YouTube of a talk of Steve Jobs from Apple to graduates of Stanford University. It just came to me via an e-mail sent by a friend, though Steve Jobs gave the talk already on June 12, 2005. He is speaking about his biography, his way he met with failures, love and death. He never graduated from university, dropped from college, met with great crises, when he was fired from Apple, the enterprise he founded, was confronted with cancer.

He learned many things like calligraphy (beautiful writing) which revealed only many years later what they meant in his life. He was following his intuition and fascination and came out of great transformation processes:
“Don’t let the voice of others’ opinions make you decide”, he told the students, “stay hungry, stay foolish”.

A beautiful inspiration for openness towards life and striving.

Here you find a transcript of his talk.

You might have read many times in the media, that a terrible genocide is going on in Darfur, Sudan. To date about 2,500,000 civilians, targeted because of their ethnic or racial identity, have been driven from their homes, more than 300,000 people killed, and more than 1,600 villages destroyed by Sudanese government soldiers and government-backed militias. Nevertheless the public reaction of governments is still quite low.

Google and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum have just started an unprecedented online mapping initiative to visualise the systematic destruction of tens of thousands of homes, schools, mosques etc. by using satellite images: All users of the free Google Earth™ can now download a mapping layer prepared by the museum, which gives detailed information on the situation.

Here you find suggestions of the museum what you can do with this mapping and also other ways to help rising the awareness for the atrocities going in in Darfur. So you can add placemarks on locations in Darfur and Chad identifying destroyed villages, refugee camps, or other evidence that helps people understand the crisis. An innovative approach to collect, share and visually present to the world critical information on emerging crises and to sensitise the public!

Google/USHMM

See also the online-game “Darfur is Dying” as well as the blogpost on “Computer Games against Disasters“.

I yesterday got some invitations to a conference end of May, of the Maitreya Sangha, to be held at the University of Redlands, Southern California. It’s a bit far away and I’m at an other event at that time… The title of the conference is: “A Cultural Renaissance. The Dynamic Power of Right Human Relations in Solving the Problems of Humanity“.

I appreciate activities furthering good will – if they lead to a practical commitment and not get stuck in talks about lofty ideals. For the invitation stirred up old memories:
I once met the initiator of this Maitreya Sangha, Keith Bailey, 12 years ago at a conference in Santa Fe, USA. He is a musician – drums and percussion – and he gave an impressive concert. He has a masonic background and is also founder of the Grand Lodge AUM.
The conference at that time was full of lofty talks “about” spirituality, and I myself had given a toplofty speech. Since then I have come down into into the “valleys” of a much more practical spirituality, casting off much ballast of spiritual concepts.

This conference seems to be based on more sound grounds: In the invitation it says:
“The questions of motive, purpose and group usefulness determine the spiritual nature of an activity. To work for the good of the whole, to be cognizant of the One Life pulsating through all forms, and to work in the consciousness that all men are brothers are the initial qualities which a citizen of the spiritual kingdom must demonstrate…
Goodwill nourishes the spirit of understanding and fosters the manifestation of the principle of cooperation…
A sense of personal responsibility – for group, community and national affairs…
Serving the common good – through the sacrifice of selfishness. Only that which is good for all is good for each one—one for all and all for one! These are spiritual values, inspiring the conscience and the consciousness of those who serve to create a better future and way of life.”

May this conference – and these thoughts – be an inspiration for the work for “A Cultural Renaissance”.

From the website of Maitreya Sangha.

As per Maitreya you might like to read the Lunar Messenger on Lord Maitreya.

I just came across the Fractal World Gallery, where you can find many beautiful images created with Fractal Flames. The gallery is run by Cory and Catska Ench, who have done many interesting paintings, also big wall painting.

Fractal Flames are algorithmically generated images and animations. The shape of each image is specified by a long string of numbers – a genetic code of sorts. You can create your own flames for example with the Apophysis interactive designer. Or you can download the Electric Sheep, a free, open source screen saver which can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac.

P.S.: Here you also find beautiful images of fractals.

(c) C. Ench

There are so many impressions and impulses from nearby and afar arriving in a single day. Observing them by close gives you a field of a multitude of flowers.

Spring flowers on the garden lawn

Calls and e-mails from friends living overseas, requests, answers, notes. What is distance, what is nearness? An attentive awareness takes in and transforms into presence.