"AND JESUS CAME DOWN JUST LIKE A SOLDIER"

Berlin Seminar, 3-5/11/17

Berlin again, exactly 40 years after my first visit there in 1977. 150 people there then, but that was in my sannyas days, and having left Poona for the West again, unlike other Group Leaders there, I represented the whole ashram...

This time we were 28.

Daughter Wu-Chi was there, said that it was great but different.

Different. Recently the seminars have all seemed to me to be different. Each one singular, somehow unique. Must be partly because I rarely do the WG Meditations, or maybe one, and hardly ever even any of the many energy structures that have emerged over the past many years, either.

It is more & more just being together in that energy we are blessed with, not just sitting only, not by any means, and yet always it's moving within and without us, at work throughout our time together, this cosmic energy that joins me, us.

So it's essentially The Passing of the Holy Flame. Again & again.

That's a poem, and then also a Domini song, from long ago. You can find it on the CD, Beyond All This, from 2004, though the words are from long before that. Here they are:

Flame burning
Burning flame
Ashes blown away
Nothing left
except what survives
The sacred flame 

What is that
What's beyond fire
Beyond all that fire can burn
Beyond all that fire can consume
And wind can scatter

To that will be given
When known when known
The holy flame
The Passing of the Holy Flame

And again 3 of the 4 newcomers took the jump and joined us - receiving holy flame names...

Another 'daughter story'. For a change, at least, recently, up came a talk to give, first thing on Sunday morning: No Mind, Never Mind! Who to translate? Up came one volunteer, soon sent away. Up came another - even sooner sent away. Up came a third, very quickly sent away. So, what to do?

I looked around...who? Sitting right in front of me a couple of rows back, there was a familiar face, a much- loved face - daughter Wu Chi! "How about it, Wu Chi?" "Sure, I give it a try..."

Took to it like a duck takes to water. Supremely comfortable, at home - a natural! Swinging along with me all day and into the Q&A. The solution under my very nose (sometimes, for me anyway, the hardest place to find something I'm missing...)

My beloved student, and much-loved friend, Tarima, was there in everything, tirelessly and close. Her organizing colleague since many years, Astari, who is also my chauffeur there (and what a just great Berlin driver she is!) decides now to retire from this commitment. (And now up jumps Disiray, to take over.)

The year rolls to its end - again. Still the Enlightenment Circle to come - herein UNACHO, and soon, and then right after, a late-year group - we go back once again to Switzerland, this time in Solothurn. Then in December comes the final leg of Love&Beauty, which will for sure include both those in the title! Finally, at the turn of the year, our precious and always 'love-making' Winter Festival, Only Love Redeems, once again in Sampurna, close to Wiesbaden.

If you can come - come!

LOVE
Michael