NASA has just published pictures from the Cassini spacecraft, which has captured never-before-seen views of Saturn from perspectives high above and below the planet’s rings. Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.: “Sailing high above Saturn and seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we’ve never seen before. It just doesn’t look like the same place. It’s so utterly breath-taking, it almost gives you vertigo.” Here are photos and movies from Saturn.

Quite other perspectives from “inner views” you find in spiritual astrology, where Saturn is described as the deepest of the 7 planetary principles. In the Indian Scriptures he is called “the Old Man”. Through him we receive the things that we don’t like, because that which we don’t like is nothing but our limitation. He gives a small dose of dislike and sees how we work with it. The time sense of man is governed by Saturn. So we are made to wait by our own limitations.

Read more about it in the book on “Saturn” by Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar, it gives deep insights into the way this principle of Saturn is working.

A friend from Spain sent me a link to the YouTube video on “Spiritual Reality” by Basically Shetai. It is a film about the journey of spiritual evolution through meditation, a journey towards the self. They are visualising with computer animation inner experiences of meditation, healing, pyramid power, astral traveling (out of body experiences) and going through the different stages of life and beyond.

A fascinating attempt to give an understanding of subtle realities. However, you have to use your discrimination not to take it as a 1 : 1 representation or guideline. Otherwise you get the wrong impression that the spiritual path is just “meditation” as a miraculous magic wand. Don’t space out and forget your practical day-to-day activity and doing something useful to others 🙂 . You might like want to read the Lunar Messenger on “The Journey Inside“.

Yesterday a friend came for a visit to clarify some misunderstandings. My wife has developed a way of visualising communication processes and blockages, which proved to be very helpful.

This shows two individuals.

When you want to communicate something, you want to reach the other, so that he/she can take it inside:

You give something, a thought, a feeling etc., then you have to let go.

For a living exchange, the other has to take it up. He/she lets it in, thinks about it, creates associations, and then gives something back, also letting it go, giving it free.

Thus a flow can come about, a mutual exchange, enriching both.

You feel the other has understood you and you have come in touch with the being of the other. It is a movement like a lying eight, the sign of infinity.

Often however the communication is blocked. There are emotions and fixed ideas, within you, within the other, or within both:

They are obstructing the free flow, you and the other feel frustrated, hurt, irritated. Often you don’t understand what has happened, create your own ideas about it, which mostly aren’t the same than those of the other. Both sides might start building up walls, rejecting what comes from the other side.

In this situation you have to know clearly what you really want, what is your need. You have to communicate it in a clear way, not roundabout. And you have to work through the “roundabout-messages” of the other trying to understand his/her original intention. Thus you have to work through the layers of thoughts, fixed ideas and emotional reactions.

When you realise what you have in common, it creates a triangle between both of you, meeting at the higher meeting point, which is above the emotional and mental: The higher self or the soul. This releases the blockage.

I call this “to ride a bicycle”.

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

This morning a friend mailed me a link to a video on Google France entitled Earthlings (with French sub-titles). The film shows how animals serve mankind and how man is dealing with animals. The entry to the film says: “The images you are about to see are not isolated cases. These are the Industry Standard for animals bred as pets, food, clothing, for entertainment and research. Viewer discretion is advised.” And a comment besides the film says in French that the documentary is not recommended for children under 16 years or for sensitive souls.

I had a look into the 1.36 h film, which left quite an impact. The speaker brought a quote which summarises the message: “We need a wiser, more comprehensive and maybe a more mystical concept of animals.”

For this topic see also the blogpost on “Vegetarianism – A Contribution to Fighting Climate Change“.

A friend sent me the link to a good UN-initiative for children:

As part of the activities to celebrate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and the end of the First Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, the Division for Social Policy and Development at the United Nations invites children from all over the world to participate in an art competition on the theme “We can end poverty”. The competition aims at raising awareness about poverty and inequality in the world, in particular among children.

The best 6 designs selected by the Panel of Judges will be presented during the commemoration of the International Day on the Eradication of Poverty, on 17 October 2007, and will be issued as stamps of the United Nations Postal Administration. In addition to the best 6 designs, another 20 designs will receive special commendation. The total of 26 winning entries will be displayed in a special exhibition at United Nations Headquarters in New York in 2007.

Flyers containing the rules of the competition in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. The flyers are also printable from the web. Further information can be obtained from Renata Kaczmarska, Associate Social Affairs Officer Division for Social Policy and Development, UN-Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, kaczmarska@un.org

Some days ago a friend wrote me and told me about experiences at a sensitivity training seminar. There they were asked to see into the “chakras” of other participants and describe their experiences with sensing these energy centres in the human body.

The interest in subtle experiences is spreading, and many people are experimenting with the chakras. There exists a huge amount of books and courses in the “esoteric supermarket”. Though this field is very fascinating, the wisdom teachings caution very much about such “playing with fire” and advise not to focus on the chakras. It is like trying to open a flower which is still in the bud-form. It needs time and light, the flower will unfold by itself. Using force or techniques to open the flower will destroy it. I have come across people who have experimented too much in these fields and caused psychic damage to their lives. You’d better leave the development of these centres to nature and focus on doing something useful for life.

When the energy centres blossom naturally, they are described as lotuses. They give rise to a beautiful development of consciousness. You probably won’t cut them off and sell them like the merchant in a road in Pondicherry, India, January 06:

Today I read an article in the Heise.de newsticker about the “Free and Open Source Developers Meeting FOSDEM” helt last weekend at the Free University of Brussels. The article characterised the participants as follows: “Long-haired male developers with t-shirts were the majority of the participants, followed by short-haired developers with t-shirts, who were built a bit more bulky. Two developers in tailor-made suits really attracted attention. They turned out to be Russian software engineers … ”

It is fascinating to observe the dress codes of different social groups. People might think they are free to dress as they like, but it is like strict dress regulations: Whosoever oversteps the unwritten rules of a peer group is irritating the social classification system. You observe this with professional as well as with leasure time dress codes, not to speak of special social group codes.

At my student times I used to play with the code when I was going with short hair, tie and suit to the university where the style of the co-students was quite otherwise. A few years before I used to wear long hair, an echo of the hippie times. According to the outfits the reactions were very different…

Seen from a spiritual standpoint, dresses are wrappings around the body and the body is a wrapping around the soul. We normally identify ourselves with the habits and forget that they are just envelopes. You might read more about the “envelopes” in the Lunar Messenger on “Body and House“. See also the blogpost on Dress Codes and Normalcy.

Sadhus in Northern India – imagine them sitting in a western bank.

In an article about work efficiency of managers in the Swiss-German newspaper “Der Bund“, Heike Bruch, professor of Leadership and Human Resources Management at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, stated that their research has shown: “Normally a manager just works seven minutes running.” Only one out of ten managers has enough energy and focus to do effective work.

Often when difficult decisions have to be made they tend to do substitute acts. Many lose themselves in daily business and as a consequence their focus is suffering. They entertain many interactions with co-workers and customers instead of concentrating on long-term or strategic tasks. They prefer working like fire extinguishers. Although they often have the choice of setting their priorities, many find it difficult to do so. The very efficient ones mostly show a predilection for one or two projects on which they focus with all their will-power and leave other things aside.

At St. Gallen university they have done energy profiling for different sections or whole enterprises: There is a direct correlation between the measured energy level in an enterprise and its economic success. When the energy level is very low, a short term strategy is “killing the dragon”, basing on the fact that an external menace releases energies. If an enterprise is in a crises, the heads do well to show to the employees how serious the situation is. If all are pulling into the same direction, a turnaround can come about. But “killing the dragon” doesn’t work as a long-term strategy. For this leadership and innovation are needed on all levels, not only at the top.

Killing the Dragon – Scene on the wall of the Münster at Basel, Switzerland.

In spirituality the dragon is a symbol of wisdom or energy enchained in matter. Killing the dragon means, overcoming the conditioning of personality to get back into contact with the soul. From there the energy will flow in. Through a re-alignment of our lives towards higher goals we get energy and inspiration. In management language this is taking to the “leadership” of the soul and the “innovation” of a re-oriented direction of life. As per the symbol of the dragon see the Lunar Messenger on “The Mystery of the Serpent“.

The problem of not being able to focus on one thing for a longer time or getting lost in daily business has to do with an overactive mind. It is an experience that people used to regularly exposing themselves daily to periods of silence by meditating calm down the “overdrive” of mental activity.

Two days ago we were at the concert of the school big band of our son, where he is playing trombone – an impressive performance entitled “Noche de Salsa”. One of the two conductors mentioned that for the orchestra there are life cycles like waves, with ups and downs, and this was just the crest time, having been built up over months of rehearsals. A wave trough will follow in summer, when over 10 students will leave the college.

This is a very common movement of living systems going through time cycles, be it a product life cycle, a trend, periods of an individual life or on a bigger scale of enterprises, of nations, of cultures. When you are experiencing the top you easily forget that the drift might change and other currents come in.

On the spiritual path it is most important to observe these subtle changes in the quality of time cycles and watch out for favourable or crosscurrents. It is very useful to combine this with an observation of the changing planetary rhythms. You can read more about the way to deal with time cycles in the Lunar Messenger on “Working with the Key of Time“.

Waves at the Gulf of Bengal in India, January 07.

A friend from Reno, Nevada, US, sent me a copy of a little article on the lessons learned from the “Donner Party.” The Donner’s were a German family who helped organize a wagon train to travel to California 150 years ago. Of the 90 souls who set out to go West about half of them died in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at a place that is called Donner Lake today. The story of the Donner tragedy is very familiar in the Western USA. Some of the party, in order to survive starvation, ate the remains of those who had died.

Frank Mullen, author of the book “The Donner Party Chronicles”, writes: “They were like us because we make the same mistakes. Nothing has really changed. They are us in every way. Their hopes and dreams. Their desire to be heroic. Their ‘watch out for number one’ attitude. In a sense we haven’t learned anything from history. I think we seldom do. We make the same mistakes. We allow the same divisions of class, race, national origin, and wealth to keep us apart. We act the same way, except maybe in a big flood like the one we had in Reno last year, where we saw homeless people filling sand bags beside casinos bosses downtown. But you see it in most cases of adversity in general life and in politics especially, where people blame each other instead of working together.”

“It’s really a human story. And when you see the human personalities in the Donner Party, when you see how people reacted to adversity, you realize you know people like Donner, Reed, Breen, and the others. We really know these people because they haven’t changed much in 150 years. … You see this with environmental problems and what to do with the homeless… Prejudices tend to lump people together and say, ‘Let’s get rid of all of them.’ But there’s something wrong with the logic of that. It doesn’t work.”

Read the article if you have time.

Gobi Desert