A friend from Geneva forwarded me this nice story of an unknown author about gratefulness.

A Full Glass of Milk

“One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay for his hungry stomach, decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. On the way through school, he found he had only one thin dime left and he was very hungry. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water. The woman thought he looked hungry, so brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, “How much do I owe you?” “You don’t owe me anything,” she replied. “Mother has taught us, never to accept pay for a kindness.” He said…”Then I thank you from my heart.”
Year’s later that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation.
When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room. Dressed in his doctor’s gown he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to the case.
After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. The woman feared opening it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words…”Paid in full with one glass of milk.” Signed, Dr. Howard Kelly.
Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed: Thank You, God, that Your love has spread abroad through human hearts and hands.”

A friend from Munich send me a link to an inspiring sildes-movie by Kate Nowak: “May you be blessed“, if you like to see it. See also the text of it.

Yesterday morning I had a conversation with the collegue from the marketing section with whom I share the room in my office. I explained to her how I was evaluating the different issues of corporate blogging for our humanitarian NGO by screening the web, talking to different persons in charge, clearing technical questions, pondering over relevances… Levelling the ground for introducing blogging into the organisation has a lot of different issues involved.
She asked me if I were not sometimes getting confused and lost in the many influences. When at home she is surfing a while along topics of traveling, she feels like getting out of herself. I told her that only by keeping the connection with the inner through the regular meditation I stay in contact with my Self and thus remain in balance. It is like doing a defragmentation on a harddisk and bringing the different bits and bytes back to order.
During each day there is such a great shifting between worlds. Yesterday I was quickly at an Indian grocer’s shop buying ingredients for my wife, thus suddenly entering into the Eastern world of smells and impressions – fish, calamari, crustaceans, pastries, spices, perfumes. At home from noon on – clearing educational questions about the balance between computer and school for the children with my wife, e-mailing, studying, group meeting for the full moon meditation. Maintaining the inner connection is absolutely essential to experience the underlying unity and not to fall apart into many different identifications with the outer.

Today we are entering the full moon phase of Taurus full moon. Since ancient times this day is celebrated in the East, and also today with many groups in the West, as Vaisakh (or Wesak) Full moon. On this full moon day about 2500 years ago Gautama, the Buddha, was born, and also on Vaisakh full moon he gained enlightenment.
However, it is not just since these times that the Vaisakh festival is celebrated. The name of the festival related to one of the 27 constellations of the Eastern lunar zodiac, the Visakha constellation in Scorpio. The moon is in this constellation around Taurus full moon, when the sun is in Taurus, thus giving the name for the festival.
Like many groups we will be celebrating this date tonight with a full moon meditation. The nodal points of the monthly lunar cycle are of great importance to be able to gain more easily access to subtle planes of consciousness, especially the full moon and the new moon, as explained in the lecture by Dr. Ekkirala Krishnamacharya. For this full moon I have chosen as a topic of the “Lunar Messenger” “The Buddhic Plane“, hinting at another deep relation with the full moon of Taurus and the name of the Buddha. Some months a go a friend had send me a beautiful picture of a Buddha statue in Bhutan, which I used as the Picture of the Month and add it to the monthly newsletter.
Since four years I am chosing each month a picture related to the qualities of the zodiacal sign of the month. For this month the commentary says: “Golden-yellow is the color of the Buddhic plane, the supra-mental, the light of wisdom. Buddha is seen as the embodiment of wisdom, and statues that depict him are often golden. Contemplation upon this helps the observer to move beyond the boundaries of the mental and to move into the higher light.”

I yesterday read an article in the Swiss Coop consumer-magazine about the film “Our Daily Bread” of the Austrian producer Nikolaus Geyrhalter (pdf). It is a shaking, award-winning documentary film, without voice-over commentries, about food production in Europe. You can see pictures or trailers from the website. It is a ilm about why the food today is so cheap, whil in other fields the prices are rising. He shows how plants and animals are instrumentalised and integrated into a production process in a totally dehumanized form. While the hygiene in the enterprises is high and the production processes are very efficient and standardized, they are entirely inhuman, just oriented towards keeping the costs low.
They have filmed in about 20 companies in many countries of Europe, but don’t mention the names, since the processes are similar; many companies had refused to cooperate, while others were proud to show how they work. The film is not judging, but just showing the actual work situation, providing enough space for reflection and sensibilising for where our food is coming from.
Some time ago I had published an issue of Good Will in Action about “Food and Drink” to show the importance of a right dealing with food on the spiritual path, hinting at the dimension of the food production. I think it is of utmost importance to be conscious of what we are doing and which are the consequences thereof. Through our individual decisions which food we buy and how we consume we can contribute a bit for a change.

Yesterday a friend from Canada wrote via e-mail: “I enjoyed reading your Weblog. It goes on and on. Very nice daily reflections. For how long are you planning to do that? quite a commitment.”
I answered: “I have no idea how it will evolve, the idea to do it came in a split-second on March 30th, and I started the next day with the weblog. I think it will go on as long as there is the impulse and the ideas. Up to now every early morning before meditation I write one thought, which is fit to be shared with a public. There are so many things which go on, but better are kept back. Fine, that you enjoy reading it. It is a great joy writing. I am astonished myself how many situations pop-up to be seen in the light of the wisdom teachings.”

Yesterday’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day” of the NASA showed a new rock slab that is growing at more than one meter a day on the Mt. St. Helens volcano in Washington, USA and now extends about 100 meters out from one of the volcano’s craters. A fascinating sight of a birth from the womb of Mother Earth. Earth is quite lively.
An American friend of mine sent me yesterday a photo from a visit in Yosemite National Park, showing a bubbling geysir in function.
Yesterday’s headlines in the news here showed pictures of the volcano Merapi in Indonesia, where the people and the reporters are waiting for its eruption. There are a lot of websites just dedicated to the eruption of volcanos.
Some days ago the news said that a big part of southern Italy is rising and falling in a rhythm of about 1-2 cm a year….
For most of us these phenomena of earth’s pulsation are hardly going below the sensational kick. It is below the consciousness line. Earth seems to be stable, reliable, and its unshaken existence is take for granted. Fact that it is running with high speed through the cosmosbut this is not perceived at all. Also the reports or legends about the rise and fall of islands, even continents, don’t touch us unless something like a Tsunami happens.
However, with many people the awareness that our Mother, the Earth, is a living being, with a life cycle and an evolution is growing. It demands another awareness: Though of another level Earth is a conscious being, a unique individuality, giving us the basis for our journey of lives and of experiencing. With this awareness a feeling of gratitude and thoughtfulness arises, which expresses in an ecological sensitive attitude. The materialistic mind sees in our Mother just matter, a heap of stones, and in man an intelligent device of nature made for no higher purpose or or maybe business making.
But the awareness of the greater life into which we are integrated is slowly rising.

Yesterday was the White Lotus Day, the day for the commemoration of the passing-over of Helena P. Blavatsky (H.P.B.1831 – 1891). Since many years I have been fascinated by this extraordinary women so much disputed until today. In 1996 I wrote a little report about her and published it last year: “H.P.B. – Trailblazer for the Aquarian Age” (Engl./Ger./Span./Fre., you can download it as a pdf). I have read several times her major work the Secret Doctrine, and also other writings, and done 2/3 of the German translation of her fascinating and volumenous travel reports “From the Caves and Jungles of Hindoustan“. The biography of Sylvia Cranston about “H. P. B.: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky” gives a very good insight.
Through her work, H.P. B. caused violent reactions, which ranged from fervent admiration to libel and slander. Her most resolute enemies were from circles of the church as well as of spiritualists, who both felt questioned to their very foundations by the teachings of Blavatsky. The goal of Blavatsky was nothing less than to deliver the death blow to the prevailing scientific materialism and religious dogmatism by pointing to the spiritual truths of the immortal wisdom teachings and by making them available to a larger public.
I don’t know of any cinema film made about her life, I think it would be a most thrilling subject, not only because of her adventurous life, but also because she is a living example of the spiritual awakening of humanity, which today has greatly increased and of which she was a vanguard.

We yesterday had our monthly Mithila-meeting with our youngsters and those of a close friend (age 13 – 17). To impart our children a spiritual education is very important to us. Since neither the education system nor the churches are doing this, we started some years ago with regular sunday morning meetings with our children and to speak about spiritual topics, inspired by the book “Mithila – A New Age School Syllabus” of Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar. We do a short meditation, speak about basics of spiritual life, or some experience-related topics. We have also read some books together, such as Jonathan Livingston Seagull, or now a renarration of the Ramayana.
Though the youngsters are still participating with interest, it is not easy to cope with the strong currents coming from the society in which they are growing up. They are intend not to be regarded as “strange” by their comrades, and they lead a very normal life. They won’t follow our footsteps in their lives, but we feel they have the strength to follow their own paths into a good direction.
Friends of us are running a website called “Jugendforum Mithila“. It is a good impulse of giving children access to spiritual values via the web.
We observe with our children and their collegues, that again new qualities are ripening in them. They will unfold with time and start shaping the next generation’s wave.

Two days ago I got an e-mail from a friend from Minnesota, USA. She is a graduate student in the English program of St. Cloud State University studying creative writing. Since several months she is doing the English translations of the Good-Will “Lunar Messenger” and cooperating with the editing of the Paracelsus- Health and Healing magazine.
She now wrote that she is just celebrating her first publication as a managing editor with the Kaleidoscope, a literary arts publication with a multicultural theme It is annually published through the Write Place at St. Cloud State University, and now for the first time in print and hyper-text. Each year, a graduate student takes charge of the publication, and this year it was her turn. She has contributed some poems and the editorial.
Though German by birth, a few years ago she went to the States. Her shamanist affinity and her reflects her deep inner bond with nature and in part of her poems or the editorial – echos from previous incarnations?
She is an intense searcher and worker, striving towards a sensitive, soul-filled attitude in life. For a long time she has been working to overcome shadows of the past – this motives are also echoing in other poems. On the spiritual path, when the light of the soul is growing, these graffiti-like imprints on the walls of the inner nature are slowly being washed off, so that the pureness of the original state can start shining forth.