In a few hours we will be going for a week to Berlin. Many times I have been crossing the border from Switzerland to Germany. Each time I notice this strange change of qualities characterizing the national entities, this being so also when crossing other borders.
I know that some call it the national spirits, others say it is just an imagination or so-called cultural differences. For me it is a change of energy patterns, which I inwardly sense. They are also changing in smaller regional or geographical localities, towns or cities, but the change is more obvious when coming from one country into another. People seem to be entirely enveloped by their “own” areal qualities and often develop likes and dislikes towards other ones. National entities are controlling their own areas of influence, their cell membranes, to ward off unwanted elements…
It is a fascinating play of energies, though not so easy to locate. I wonder what kind of experiences we are coming across on this journey. It is also always a crossing of inner borders to other fields of experience.

It is always fascinating to observe how out of the multitude of thoughts we come across every day certain thoughts are picked up and others not. Most remain unrelevant, a few ones we follow, and some are even so powerful that they shape our destiny. Sometimes we follow a dead-end road, out of which it is often painful to come out.
It is my experience, that new, future-oriented thoughts also often cause fear and irritation. Blocks and opposition is coming up. I am just confronted with such a situation. I have learned by time that it is mostly contraproductive to fight against these blockages (personified in persons), but look out how the flow can go on.
I feel that I have to stay in contact with the original inspiring power of the idea motivating the thoughts and not let it be diverted into side-issues or wrong motives. This will cause the death of the idea. Sometimes you might follow such an idea which has become dead because of the diversion from the origin.
This reminds me a of saying of the American Indians, that you shouldn’t ride a dead horse, and when you feel you are doing so, you better get off. Waiting for the right moment is something else. It demands attention for the door of time to open for a new direction.

At times there seem to be crosscurrents on the way, blocking the free flow of energies. Then the traffic lights on your way all seem to be red. Yesterday, especially in evening was such an experience, when some technical problems with the PC helt me in check. Suddenly you have to wait, and all ways you try to go on seem not to lead ahead. In the parlance of astrological symbology it is Saturn working.
Of course in these moments my mind speeds up and tries to find out a solution or a logic behind the obstacles. Sometimes this leads to nothing, and the best seems to be to keep quiet inside and be watchful. Letting things go often clears the way, and an inner alignment to the soul helps overcoming the feeling of being blocked. So I switched off.

This morning I woke up from an intense, a bit confuse dream, after a short night. Oh, I thought, we are just in the full moon hours, which for me are always a crest in the wave of a month’s cycle. Since the early 80ies I am observing the lunar cycles – observing in the double sense of the word, having a look at them and following their rhythm with a scheme of meditation. And since 2000 I publish every month for the full moon a newsletter, which now goes under the name of The Lunar Messenger.
This regular observation helps understanding the cyclical and at the same time ever-changing rhythms in the inner. It is not amassing any theoretical thoughts about it, but more of a scientific attitude, and this not by collecting any data, but by experiencing. This subjective research gives a depth and a strength which for me is of evidence, beyond any doubt.
Each full moon – like also each day – carries a specific quality. It is a doorway opening to what time offers at this specific moment. It is a periodical, rhythmic heart-beat, which goes unnoticed and subliminal, like that in our body, when not focused at. But when I align to the pulsation, I come in tune with the inner nature – which is not mine, but a present of the Presence. So the full moon is like a flower of time, blossoming for a short while, and a change in the currents. “Watch the time, for it is the very life of Life”, says and old saying.

Yesterday at work I got an e-mail from my previous superior that an old Iranian collegue of mine had just died. I had been working for seven years with him, while I was head of an inter-cultural psycho-social counseling centre for migrants and refugees. It has been closed some years ago due to financial reasons.
While writing a note to some of the old team members, in my thoughts the image of my Iranian collegue came up again. He was a very fine “gentleman”, with a stupendous knowledge about Islam and Iran. He was an archeologist by profession and had done field work during his youth in Afghanistan and later married a Swiss. At the end of the 80ies he had renounced his job at the Historical Museum of Berne in order to help Iranian refugees. We had been publishing together a series of information texts on Islamic culture and problems of refugees. He was doing crisis interventions with social workers in divorce, violence and generational conflicts. He gave me a deep understanding of the cultural and individual backgrounds of the cases and of the great Iranian past. We had been struggling together with running farsi on the PC or with his overcoming of his barriers towards the electronic communication.
In the 90ies, when Iran opened up again he had been travelling there each year for some weeks and also was engaged in help work during earthquake rescue. The world where he was coming from was deeply strange and at the same time familiar to me. All these concepts of honour and purity, of religious politics and extended tribal family systems were irritating and opened new vistas of understanding.
We spoke a lot about the origins of our cultures and their influence onto present living, especially adaptation problems of people coming from one world into another. He was a border-crosser between the worlds. He has chosen a good time for his soul’s way to the other world – in the Iranian New Year, Now Ruz, beginning with Aries, in the ascending part of the year and of the moon.
Though this was not his belief system, but: May the flowers of this life carry for him precious seeds for the future.

Yesterday I got a mail from a friend from Berlin, who told me that the mother of a common friend of us just had died. The three of us had come into a deeper contact during seminars of our spiritual teacher in India, and both friends are stewardesses of Lufthansa. Our common friend had been taken a lot of time going from Berlin to Kiel in North Germany to accompany her mother during the last phases of her illness, having had an intense relation with her.
It reminded me of the pass-over of my mother eight months ago and how my father, a believing Christian, but at the same time with a materialistic outlook, was moved experiencing that suddenly there was just a body where before his beloved wife, my mother, had been, and since then he started establishing an inner contact with her. For me, though knowing from out of the depth of my being that we as souls are immortal, nevertheless was deeply touched by the experience of the passing-over.
Another friend of mine told me two days ago about the work her group is doing in sensibilizing personalities in public positions about the unhygenic tradition of burying dead bodies into the earth instead of cremating. Milliards of bodies are thus rotting in the soil, creating poisonous effects. And also milliards of people, in this age called by the wisdom teachings the dark age, are living in the belief that these dead bodies have to remain in the ground to be awakened one day for ressurrections – what a deep illusion about the nature of man’s soul.
For many the soul doesn’t exist, they believe in the Darwinian evolution of matter and the survival of the fittest human apes, a belief stemming from a similar ignorance, just like believing that the pixels on the screen of my computer are fighting in a survival of the fittest to form the sentences – ignoring that there is a consciousness forming the shapes and also having created the facilities for their manifestation – many different expressions of consciousness. In consciousness, there are grades and transitions, from gross to subtle, but not endings.
A very beautiful expression of this are the sublime photos I yesterday saw on the website of Missoury Skies, of rainbows, the expression of the bond between the gross and the subtle worlds.

Yesterday afternoon I had a chat with a young Indian studying engineering in Germany. I know him just via the web, we came into contact because we have the same spiritual teacher.
After a few ping-pongs he came out telling: “I am under heavy pressure to go back (to India) and get married to some girl of their choice” (his parents). “I would be happy if they leave me alone…” It is quite strange for us here in the West, though still very common in the East that not the individual but the family decides. He was fearing the decision of his parents, because he considered them to be people not interested in his spiritual way. It turned out that he just had thoughts about their attitude and didn’t know it exactly.
I told him: “I am sure that when they feel that you are trying to understand them, it might be a chance that they also feel what your inner need is.”
He didn’t want to speak to them fearing their interference.
I replied: “Don’t expect that your parents follow what you think, if they are not involved in the process.”
There came an excursion about monkhood, and then the deeper point: “How do I meet someone spiritual? (here in the West) All my friends drink and are not at all thinking about spirituality I am the only vegetarian, non drinker, I drive them crazy, they drive me crazy.”
It is really hard in our Western value system, considering ourselves to be modern and open-minded, to find a friend and a way, where one’s inner priorities don’t get compromised through the mainstream-pressure. I could just tell him some experiences and how I handled this situation in my life. He will have to find his solution.

Today is sunday – the meteorologists expect not just a sunny day. Clouds however don’t bother the sun, just us, he continues shining. In spirituality the sun stands for spirit, the eternal, while the moon, with its phases of waxing and waning, for matter. Very significant that today in the West we start the week with Monday, and Sunday is just a day off, at the very end of the week. Here even the shopping times are slowly extended, “for a better economy” as they say. Economy rules, we are in a materialistic mainstream time.
The sun continues to be the centre of our system, even if scientists since long have discovered its tiny dimensions in the vast surrounding. Not to speak of the lost dimensions of inner significance. Sun stands for light, and thus consciousness. Sunday is a good day to align with it. It somehow has a different quality than Saturday or Monday, it’s not just a cultural convenience. Having Friday as the centre and moon as the central planet for yearly rhythms gives a lot to think of, even down to politics and the so-called clash of cultures.
When installing this blog I have set the time to a weekly start on Sunday, and may this continue to be so, also with the way the blog proceeds.

Many things we are doing seem to be ephemeral, without leaving any traces. The desire to leave behing something lasting is with many people, not only politicians. It often reminds one of building castles in sand, being washed away with the next tide. A fascinating play with creation of out of sand is on sandfantasy.com, where you find videos of an artists drawing in sand.
Not all “traces in sand” however are ephemeral. There are landmarks of the Great Ones surviving thousands of years, like those of Buddha or Christ, who haven’t even written a book themselves. They came from the depth of the source of creation, with the full power of spirit behind. There is a beautiful legend from the Leaves of Morya’s Garden about the Signs of the Christ, with a painting of the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich. It is an inspiring tale about the founding of the inner temple, which is not made of sand or by bricks and mortar, but of the tissue of the eternal.

Yesterday evening, after a busy day and after having done the daily flow of e-mails I set upon translating an invitation of friends for a seminar on silence. I felt, that silence is something very untimely. We are always very much outgoing, and silence is totally unusual. During the day, there is often music coming from a neighbor’s office. On the roads, even in nature people are jogging or cycling with earphones – the ipod generation. Also at home the music of one of your youngsters is often on, while the other puts on a headphone… Not to speak of the shops with their convenience music, and with the roaring waves of the roads or from the sky.
There can be outer silence, with inner noises going on, even during meditation. Calming down the emotional and mental is uncommon and has to be practiced. Since over three decades it belongs to my daily hygene with meditation, but the urge to noise is still there. A thought I read from a seminar with Sri Kumar helped me some weeks ago: We can be active with several things at a time. When we drive a car, we can talk. So we can also keep linked to the inner silence while being outwardly active. It is just a matter of training.
In the invocation given by Dr. Ekkirala Krishnamacharya it says: “May we speak the silence without breaking it / May we live in the awareness of the background.” For me this give a lot of energy, keeping linked with the inner source. Then the outer is going on in a flow, even in the waves of activity.