Tomorrow is Winter Solstice and the beginning of the month of Capricorn. I have just published a new painting for the month, also as an e-card for Christmas. I did it already on 11 August 2012 and called it “Capricorn – The Dawn and the Light of the Higher Heart Centre”. How did the picture come about?

Capricorn is also called The Mount. On the painting you see bright mountains in the background – Himalaya summits – which I transformed a bit – in bright sunlight, symbols of striving to the heights, be it in the outer or in the inner. In the foreground there is the dark blue silhouette of a meditator, symbol of diving into the subjective worlds. A huge eight-petalled lotus of the higher heart centre carries in its centre the entrance to the inner light. The stalk is rising from out of a reddish sun and fiery flames surround the lotus. The sky above the mountains merges with cosmic spheres and at the same time the inner of the meditator. At the top of his head the jewel in the lotus radiates an electric blue light.

For some days I meditated on thoughts from Spiritual Astrology, and the picture developed in the inner: I perceived the huge lotus of the higher heart centre, a dark blue silhouette over-towering steep Himalayan mountains merging with the starry sky above.

When the inner picture is clear there just remains the task to bring it down – and that is where the meditative work starts. At the beginning I ask the Masters for help, for it is my experience that the flow of ideas takes to the right direction when guided from inside. I’m in a kind of elevated state as long as there is this flow – and when I get stuck, I have lost the inner connection. This picture developed quite fast. I took a mountain range from a collection of Himalayan valleys I had googled before – the same with a huge white lotus – and compressed it a bit to give the impression of altitudinarian summits.

I transformed a picture of Master MN, cut out the contour and changed the silhouette to black and a copy of it to dark blue. I made other copies, started creating layers in Photoshop to modify the nuances and experimented with different scenes of dawn and sunrise. For the lotus of the head I took a photo I made from an artwork of a friend and transformed it in perspective. And again several layers in different gradations. Then I took a photo of the constellation of Capricorn and transformed it to form the sky. I duplicated it, minimised and rotated it to place it at the inner of the head – the outer sky reflected in the inner

Then I printed the picture and started working on the colour transitions with pencils. This way the forms become softer and one colour subtly transits into the other, even if they are strong contrasts there is no hard border.

Since 2 years I always listen to some songs of Davide Swarup done with a new percussion instrument, the hang. It has certain similarities with steel drums, but is more melodious. Again and again I hear the same series of songs and they are very inspiring for me. They also accompanied me with this image.

Finally I scanned the picture again, did some final retouching and then did prints of a small format until the colours have the right luminosity. Afterwards looking at the new-born child of the soul I familiarise myself with the picture and show it to my wife before putting it on the altar to shine there for some days.

Today was a very important moment for me: I got a phone call from the printing office that I could pick up the pictures. They had produced 36 prints of my paintings with a special technique in A2 format and some in A3. I blogged about my “Experiments with Pictures” mid-November. Last Thursday I already had been in the print shop to control the prints, and then they had to be wrapped for transportation. I was thrilled about the good quality and the luminosity of the colours. It had been a long way while searching the right method with quite some waste producing.

So I took the car to pick up the paintings. It was heavily raining. When I saw the ready-packed pictures it was a solemn moment for me, though in the print-shop it probably was “business as usual”.

Walking through the basement of the printing office

The graphic designer who had accompanied the process putting the pictures on the forklift…

… and then into the car

At home on the sofa, ready for unpacking

Phoenix out of the ashes: the first of my “Fiery Paintings” done in September 1981, destroyed in 1997, now restored from a photo to its original beauty. It’s the only one of the old paintings I got produced now.

Unpacking and storing: though the photo doesn’t show, the quality of the colours is and the production is very neat.

An upcoming documentary called “Landfill Harmonic” is presenting a remarkable musical orchestra in Cateura, Paraguay – a “Recycled Orchestra”, where the young musicians play instruments made from trash. The film of  The Creative Visions Foundation (CVF) shows how a humble garbage picker in the barrios of Paraguay uses his ingenuity to craft instruments out of recycled materials – – all made from recycled metal drums, tin cans, and plastic pipes. The film portrays some of the children who learned to play violin, flute, drums, cello, string bass, and how a youth orchestra is born:

“Landfill Harmonic shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments, but more importantly, it brings witness to the transformation of precious human beings.”

You can like the project on Facebook to spread this inspiring initiative; a longer version of the video trailer is available here.

Pictures credit (c) Landfill Harmonic

Google Maps and NASA have just published a new global view and animation of Earth’s city lights. It is a composite assembled from data acquired by a satellite over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth’s land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/NOAA NGDC. Here are some pics on Mashable, and below a video of the pics. You find more on the NASA site.

A fantastic, light-filled view of our dear home planet’s beauty.

The Black Marbe. Credits: NASA

As a farewell-gift when leaving my job a colleague gave me a book about men over 80 telling about their lives. I’m reading it with fascination as a bedtime book, impressed about the variety and intensity of their paths.

I’m just reading the story of an architect / biologist explaining in a vivid way his experiences and reflections about how machines and electronics are controlling us instead of the other way round. He gives examples of  how we subordinate our thoughts and our will-to-form to the conditions of the computer screen, how the connections of the brain-currents in the nerves are cut off from the movements of the hand with a pencil, how a sensuousness gets lost and loud slogans without much content come at the place of deeper content and quality, which are more inconspicuous and self-evident. The way he describes his experiences as an architect when constructing a landscape park in Zurich show that he is a keen observer, a passionate maker and shaper and isn’t just plunging into a critique of the present.

It made me think of how the electronic media have shaped my life and inter-relations. For the last 12 years I have been professionally active in digital communication and have actively taken part in shaping and developing it in my surroundings, with the development of websites, social media channels, the management of digital documents and media, with newsletters and extensive writing. I am handling a lot of communication and inter-relations with these tools – quantities and kinds of relations which otherwise wouldn’t be possible, especially on a global scale.

However, I note that many of these relations are very abstract, confined to short exchanges – a short “hello”, requests or giving some information and help to people, often in some remote corners of the planet. The keyboard is the main instrument, linked to the PC with its screen. There is little physical interrelation. Even the more concrete interactions via phone or Skype are reducing the interaction to an acoustic or sometimes visual transmission. With some persons I feel the presence of their being, even through these channels; they are like physically here. Mostly it is a thin, vague interaction, not even demanding much attention, probably not even with much impact.

At the same time there is such a flooding of information, seeking attention. The day before yesterday I answered a friend who sent me an article from a German newspaper, telling him: “I sometimes don’t know how to help myself with all the many interesting articles, statements etc. I don’t get around to read them; if I would do so, there wouldn’t be any-more time for the essentials. So I got today this long (“wonderful to read”) article, see enclosed. If you like and have time for it, you can read it…” I felt a bit snippy, answering flooding with flooding: “Similia similibus curentur” – curing by using the simile. Does it really cure or is it a “placebo”?

When I hear someone saying “I don’t have time…” I always hear “I don’t want to give my attention / energy to…” So when someone says, “I don’t have time for visiting / phoning / writing you”, it says, “I can’t give my energy to visiting / phoning / writing you.” It’s ok, attention is a rare  source, and there are enough energy-vampires around, making us feel depleted – the whole rush and pressure of our lifestyle. When I put a “like” or a short comment on Facebook, it’s like a surrogate of communication – showing, that I thought of the other, but at the same time keeping it low-level, non-committal. I seem to be there, but without much of my presence. So there remains a void.

There are so many Facebook birthday posts and mails coming in today – my living room would have be full to accommodate so many “friends”. But there is no-one – and it would be difficult with all the cakes…. E-mails often have a higher intensity, and more so real letters do. But the amount of letters decreases – just one came – and e-mails are more easily to dissolve with a “delete”.

How deep is an impact? I somehow sense whether there is a presence behind and how profound it is. Presence is a strange phenomenon, it has to do with energy. When you feel the touch of the heart, then there is the presence. When there is just a digital whirring, it’s just a mask of the presence. Presence and attention seem to be inter-related. I wonder how I will manage the upcoming flood of Christmas and New Years greetings. I decided to invest some time in phone-calls instead of non-committal copy-paste of “warm regards” or Merry-Christmas-postings. The Christmas-marketing in the city and the media will soon be over again. The flame of inner presence hopefully not.

3 birds “twittering” in our garden this morning

I today got the following story in Spanish – it’s nice, so I google-translated it:

One day a disciple asked his master:

– Teacher, when will be the end of the world?

– Which end of the world? replied the Master

– What do you mean? How many times will the world end?

– Two times, said the master. The first is when my wife dies and the second will be when I die.

The end of the world comes to us when that which we consider our personal world ends, everything else is relative.

Dawn over the Alps, 23 Nov. 2012

A friend send me this morning a link to an article in the German Spiegel magazine about a new discovery of astronomers of a quasar, being the brightest object discovered in the cosmos.

This quasar by name SDSS J1106+1939 from the sign of Leo sends out annually the matter mass of 400 suns into the cosmos with about 30 million km/h. This matter stream radiates about 100 times more energy than the entire milky-way, and it contains about 2 million million times (2 trillion) more energy than our sun radiates, as will be reported in a research to be published in the next issue of the American “Astrophysical Journal”. It is 5 times higher than the maximum energy discovered before.

This stream has been registered by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Astronomers think that quasars are super mass rich black holes, which normally absorb matter, but also throw out a part of the matter back into the cosmos. The quasar radiates 1000 light years into the surrounding galaxy. You find more articles about this quasar on the web, like this one here.

The time of the discovery of this tremendous source of light seems to be in an interesting synchrony with the upliftment of our system at the present moment.

Below is an illustration by the ESO of this Quasar.

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Last Sunday the weather was grey and high fog covered the sky. At noon it cleared up and we decided to go on the nearby Belpberg mountain. When driving up the hill we came again into thick fog and first thought it was a bad idea to go up. But then we pierced through the clouds and there was an incredible golden autumn light with a brilliant view of the Alps.

Coming out of the fog reminded me of coming out of the fog of dreamy-drowsy thoughts in meditation, when you are a bit sleepy. It sometimes happens that suddenly the inner sky clears up and consciousness, which is always there like the blue sky, becomes vast and radiant of light. Enjoy the photos.

Magical light through the fog

Mystical stones between the trees

Piercing sun rays

Autum sun reflections

Transparency

Walking up the hill

The view opens up

No question where to go – the path is clear…

The Bernese Alps with view over to Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau

On the ridge

Two helicopters arrived

Dreaming of jumping through the air

The sea of fog in the valley, and above – resplendent light

The sun reflecting in the sea of fog

A farmhouse just coming out of the fog

Little village on the mountain

Walking into the Light

Going away from my profession was and is a profound spiritual lesson and experience for me. It is a kind of experiment in letting go and being joyful in the heart, without any resentment. I had been been intensely working on this during the last months, also together with my wife, and this in several ways. Besides the inner meditative and energetic work there were some other experimental dimensions in letting go and de-blocking  energies:

We did an inner cleaning work with detoxification by means of a liver and gallbladder flush as recommended in a book by Andreas Moritz and a colon cleansing; we did it several times with astonishing results and it increased the vitality.

In May a good friend sent me a PDF of a book by Michael Newton, an American psychiatrist who has developed a lives between lives hypnotherapy.  With deep interest I read this summer 2 of his works, Journeys of Souls and Destiny of Souls. These books on  spiritual regression, written in a research-oriented attitude, left a profound impact on me. They opened and deepened very much my understanding of the pre-incarnation periods. And so I became curious to go myself into an experience. For years I had a sceptical attitude towards regression and would not have dared to do such a work.

Via the website of Michael Newton I found a French / American therapist, Dr. Dominique Glaub,  and asked her when she would be in Switzerland. She replied, in November, but that she also works via Skype. I decided to try it, and to my astonishment this goes very well. Experiences with several old topics came to the surface and steps of a transformation showed up. So I decided to do a series of sessions over 6 months.

Dominique is now in Europe for 3 weeks and my wife and I met her for a session last Tuesday in Montreux at the Lake of Geneva.

On the highway – reflections of the Lake greeted us through the bushes.

We parked in the Casino parking and to our surprise came out in the gambling hall – what experience were awaiting us?

The hotel where Dominique stayed was near the lake. Since we were a bit early we had a little walk.

The regression led me deeper and deeper; she guided me through scenes of peaceful nature to a door and made me write a word on it. The door opened and I was inside.

An impression of a female figure clad in long brocade-like clothes came up, but dissolved again. For a while I was like hanging in space, no other images came. Then my body had little jerks and a feeling and images came: I was running down a rugged hill-path with rocks along the way. I felt persecuted by a man and tried to escape. He was faster, for he was riding on a horse, coming nearer and nearer. He held a lance in his hand, made me stop and shouted at me full of fierce rage. Then he pierced me with his lance, smashing it into my body. He obviously enjoyed killing me – I didn’t know why. I was covered all over with blood and then came out of the body, observing the scene from above, relaxed.

Dominique made me go back to the moment of being killed and asked about my emotions. I was full of anxiety, being locked down to the ground, helpless, powerless.

Then Dominique made me bi-locate into the person on the horse and describe his feelings. He was very angry with the other person on the ground, he was convinced that he had a right to kill him and did it with a grim joy, triumphant.

I was led back to the early childhood of this rider, to experience from where all started: Images came. He was playing with a ball and it was taken away by a stronger one. He felt powerless and suppressed his anger. This feeling of being powerless and the suppressed anger connect this young boy with the elder victim. Now the grown-up boy was in the position of the vanquisher, the stronger one, and he enjoyed his power.

Asked what is the connection with my present life situation I answered I experienced powerlessness and a feeling of injustice when I got my notice of termination, and my boss was in the power-position. I understood the message and decided to go away in peace, leaving the learnings of my boss to himself. I wanted to go with a firm stand, look into his eyes and tell him that I feel no resentment nor anger against him – and then to go my way, unhurt and with dignity.

This I did on the 15th, at the exit interview. When he proposed to have a view back on the last year, I didn’t go into the past but told him that I have a present for him, a card of my paintings. He was surprised, chose one and put it on his shelf in the office. I went out in peace and joy.

This was a direct result of the regression experience. For me it doesn’t matter whether it is “past life” or creative imagining. I didn’t make any direct connection between the persons in the inner journey and any outer ones. Like with the previous regressions the one in Montreux gave me a profound relief and transformation.

While my wife was doing her session, I went along the Lake of Geneva. It was a beautiful autumn evening light. While it was getting dark I sat on a bench, taking notes of my experiences. And later we sat in a Pizzeria, exchanging, before we drove back through the night.

Last sunrays over the Dents du Midi mountains in the background of the lake in blue evening light.

Nightfall at the lake

First this picture didn’t show up clearly before my mind’s eye. When reading the chapter on Sagittarius in Spiritual Astrology just the impulse flashed in that it will be about Kalki. In the Eastern Puranas he is described as the 10th Avatar who comes to close the Dark Age. He is riding on a white horse, symbol of the purified energy of life. The saviour is said to destroy injustice, conduct judgement, sit on the throne and re-establish law.

I thought at once of the painting “Oirot – Messenger of the White Burkhan” by Nicholas Roerich, but in my inner view there was just the rider in a majestic posture, behind him spheres of light and mountains. However, the whole didn’t get clear. But there was the inner impulse saying, it will come.

To get an idea of the position I googled through many equestrian statues – but either the attitude of aristocrats was somehow too arrogant or too martial. When I saw a white marble statue from the Vatican I knew it was the right one, but I had to mirror and transform it. For the mountain range I looked through many sceneries of the Himalayas and made a collection, before I started on arranging the picture in Photoshop.

After some hours of work I thought that this time I wouldn’t get the picture done. I made pauses, observed the image again, prayed for help. One mountain scenery fascinated me very much. And suddenly there was the impulse of eagles coming in from above. Inter-penetrating spheres, fiery eruptions, colours of dawn. Finally the basic structure of the image was ready.

The next morning, Sunday during fire ritual, there was the inner lustre over the inner image. After breakfast I started to work on the printout, and now everything went very quick. The painting started its glow, and when I scanned it and worked it over again on the PC, the radiance shone in its beauty.

See “Images of Synthesis” for the image in high resolution.

05 August 2012, A 5, pencils, crayons and photo work on paper