The Power of Decision

"By consciously deciding to live in a sacred manner we call upon the teachings, the information and the comprehension that we need to help us realise our gifts for the well-being of all."

This saying from the Cherokee Indian Dhyani Ywahoo is the central thread of my speech.

I needed some time before I could really understand and register the meaning of this sentence. In essence, it says that a decision is a power. That with the relatively small and intimate step of making a personal decision we can set off a process through which a larger power can pour in and through which in the end great things can be moved.

It is a spiritually formulated sentence, but modern science suggests a similar worldview. Chaos research strives to understand why large phenomena have very small causes and explains this through complex mathematical formulas of positive feedback and iteration. One area in which they are active is that of weather. To put it poetically we can use the well-known example: the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Hong Kong can set off a hurricane in New York. That can be explained through iteration and positive feedback.

We can find many examples for this connection: the tree that arises out of a tiny seed; or ourselves - each person and each life.

I love the example of the eddy or whirlpool. In the course of a river, a whirlpool can becomes big it will pull a swimmer down to the bottom. When you look at the base of the whirlpool, you find nothing more than a small stone.

The stone is harmless and tiny, what it sets off is huge. If the stone had asked itself how to pull this swimmer down to the depths, a swimmer which is much bigger than it and swimming five metres above it, then it would have soon had to give up. However, it was the initiator of a movement that reaches far beyond its own reach. It generates extra power.

We need this extra power. On the world-stage, the role of the stone in the river is played by the personal conscious decision. I want to invite you this week to find your stone that you want to lay on the bed of the river of life.

Like the stone, whoever wants to build up a global peace-power in today's world finds themselves at first in a position of hopeless inferiority. The power, the money, the work force are all to be found on the side of the existing system. The peace movement will only have a chance if it can set a globalisation of peace, humanity, connectedness and solidarity against the globalisation of violence. We need a network of people and groups who can intervene in a healing way in world affairs and who have managed to get hold of a knowledge for this that reaches deeper than the technological or military knowledge of the existing systems. A knowledge that reaches deeper because it accords in much deeper ways with our human desires and the desires of Gaia Earth.

I just want to briefly illuminate the challenge that stands before us today. We find ourselves in the era of globalisation. For the vast majority of the world globalisation means an increasing poverty. It means, for example, that farmers are being systematically deprived of their basic livelihoods. Ever-increasing areas of the planet's fertile land are falling under the control of the global economy.

There are innumerable examples for the globalisation of violence; here I will highlight just one, mentioned in the current issue of 'Greenpeace Magazine'. In Sudan the civil population is being violently driven from their land by Ethiopian soldiers, i.e. complete villages are being exterminated; men, women and children murdered, burnt alive. And why? So that 'Total' and other oil companies can produce oil there. That is true, and it is happening as we speak. The oil powers our cars and planes.

All over the world an unholy alliance is working together, an alliance of banks, transnational corporations, local military regimes with their troops and secret services. This alliance is benevolently supported by our western governments. Well-known German companies are equipping every war on this Earth with weapons and poison gas. The prosperity of our society is paid for with the death and suffering of people in, for example, Sudan.

The military and economic clout of this unholy alliance has greatly increased in the last ten years. The transnational corporations no longer abide by any democratic rulings since they have lifted themselves above ties to states. A worldwide mafia now rules and those who are really pulling the strings are never seen in public. This is no conspiracy theory; we can read facts such as this in the normal media. Every day we hear of new fusions and mega fusions, of export credit guarantees for Russia after the Chechnya war and of German subway trains for China after the massacre at Tianeman Square.

We are accomplices in this global system as long as we remain part of the industrial culture through our consumption, through our silence. We remain so even when we did not become an accomplice on purpose or in the sense of being personally guilty - and the only way to free ourselves from this complicity inside the system of violence is to abandon it. That means we need to become an accomplice of another system. In other words: to lay your personal stone on the bed of a new river.

Imagine yourself in fifty or a hundred years' time being asked, "So, How were you able to put up with all that? How could you DO that? How could you drink coffee, for which children had to die?" The standard answer of our parents' generation was: "We didn't know". Perhaps our generation's answer is: "We couldn't do anything. What can one person change? We were powerless". With these sentences, we expose ourselves as liars just like our parents.

I would like to challenge you to formulate a different answer, which we can tell our grandchildren. To say, "Yes, we knew what was happening. And that's why we decided to take a completely different path and put everything we had into ensuring that a new culture arose, a culture of peace, a possibility for love to live on this Earth.

Please take a minute's silence and put yourself in this situation. Think about which decision would be fitting for you. You do not have to make this decision yet, but you could already think about it, about which decision it might be and about how deeply you need to make it in order that its effects will still be felt in fifty years time.

(…)

In my introductory sentence, the word 'decision' should be read as 'conscious decision'.

If I decide something in an unconscious way, then I am always deciding within the existing system. Only a conscious decision has the power to change things, I can only let go of habits consciously. If I act unconsciously then I am always acting according to habit and re-affirming that which was always so.

A conscious decision is a decision from an open heart. It is a decision that is close to me, to my heart. A decision with which I take full responsibility for a desire or a situation that I want to swing in a particular direction.

Hans de Boer said, "Indifference is a new form of fascism". Hence, the first political task is to end this indifference. Political work can only have real meaning and a peace-building power if I act with an open heart. An open heart means being able to love. 'Love strengthens my political determination' has been my affirmation for some time now.

However, I can only keep my heart and eyes open to that which is happening in the world today if I have a political strategy for reacting. Hence, I need such a strategy if I want to become and remain a loving person. This is why I think love and politics belong so closely together. I want to love in such a way that the contact with the person I love broadens my heart and opens me for the perception of the world.

I want to learn to intervene politically in such a manner that I never need to shut off my heart again, since my actions are connected with hope and certainty, since my actions are healing and produce healing.

The sentence goes on: with the conscious decision to lead a sacred life.

What is meant by a 'sacred life'?

I would like to translate that as 'healing life', i.e. to live in such a way that my Doing, my Being, has a healing effect - for the Earth, for other people, for children, for animals. What that means for an individual can be different for everyone. It can mean, for example: I have recognised that animals have souls, so I will never eat meat again and I will also see to it that more and more people discover that animals have souls. It can mean: I will enlighten others as to why there is hunger on this planet and how we can bring it to an end. Or: I will contribute to the salvation of love, I will never abandon anyone again simply because he or she loves another. Or: I will ensure that this dam in my region will never be built. Or: I will become a home-builder for children, animals and everyone else who needs a home.Or: I will build up a women's centre in my hometown where real solidarity among women will be the focus.

We have arrived at the spiritual part of the sentence. It means that the world is constructed in such a way that we receive help when we need it. We have all heard examples such as the woman who could lift a lorry because her child was lying under it, or that during an accident a driver reacts at a speed that he could never otherwise have.

I would like to add here that I myself have had such spiritual experiences, but that I do not yet have an answer as to why nevertheless so many people in need do not receive any help. Their prayer is surely very real. I don't know it yet, but I am sure that we need to school ourselves in this trust in the helper-powers - and that we need to make ourselves into helper-powers for others.

This spiritual viewpoint is based on the fact that the entirety of all living things is comparable with one organism, like our body. If the little toe is itching, then the whole body bends over to scratch it. Since in an organism everything is connected to everything else.

I, as one person, or we, as humanity, are also an organ of one body - the body of the complete biosphere. If I need help, then 'the whole universe bends over' to help me, to provide me with the information, the teachings, that I need in order to develop my abilities for the benefit of all. However, the Universe needs to know that I need help. I need to inform it. We can call the way of sharing this information 'decision'.

A decision is a wish for which I have taken full responsibility.

When I have taken this full responsibility for a wish, then I let it go, I send it off. This way I make space for help to arrive. This communication with the Universe can also be called 'prayer'. For a successful prayer there are rules.

(…)

If we, for example as a peace worker, send a prayer out with a closed-off heart - without trust or interest - then it can be interpreted roughly as follows:
Dear Universe, I really am in favour of peace, but YOU are not supporting ME, so we better leave it.

A conscious prayer could go something like this:

Dear Universe (Goddess, God, Jesus),
I want violence and fear to disappear off the face of the Earth. I will put myself and my power into ensuring that a Ring of Peace arises, a thinking, feeling, acting and partisan Heart of the Earth. A peace-power with power to change things. A worldwide network of the heart. The people and groups taking part in this network will be those who intervene and work in their chosen places with open hearts; people who are connected with your spirit and therefore with each other. Who learn from each other and can depend upon each other, since they have the same goal. A network where scientists and technologists take part, so that we can gather together natural survival-technology. Where women participate who use their gathering-powers to act as foci for developing communities. Where people from diverse cultures participate so that the knowledge from the whole of the Earth comes into the network. Where musicians and artists take part and through them we remain ever aware of the universal wisdoms of existence. Where lovers participate who will remind us to open our hearts. Where communities take part in places where they can apply the knowledges and perform healing and information-work direct on the Earth. Where people from peace groups take part and can draw upon the complete knowledge-pool for strength to continue their work. A network that sets up models for peaceful living at diverse places in the world - models of a life without fear and with truth in love. So that the information about this becomes stronger and develops into the alternative, which more and more people can opt for. The children of the world are our children. The animals, rivers and woods are our fellows and stand under our protection. Every thing that is young should have a chance to grow. This is my political wish. Please send me the information that I need to know where I am needed and what I can do to support this network. I receive my instructions and the strength to carry them out from you.

Thank you and Amen.

What Universe could possibly resist that?

And another thing by way of an explanation: there is already concrete work in progress on this network - in ZEGG, in Tamera and in other places around the world - in fact everywhere where people have made their own decisions in the way described above and have found out what they need to do.

The underlying thought of the movement for a free Earth is that the Earth itself is a homogeneous body of information and that we can intervene by means of informations. Like acupuncture.

Instead of acupuncture needles we insert Healing Biotopes - experimental models of living for several hundred people in which they are concretely trying out ways of cooperating with nature, bringing about peace and freedom from fear in love, leading a spiritual life and giving a home to children and their cosmic potential.

This model, of a Healing Biotope, should arise at many places on the planet. Not as an island for the few, not in an ivory tower but as a real knowledge as to how peace is brought about. As soon as one is established, it will be easier for the next. When several are established, more and more people in various places will be able to make their daily decisions according to the alternatives. In order that it gets this far it is important that there is a lot of co-operation, with peace researchers, with scientists, lovers, pedagogues, children, trees etc.

Hence, I would like to appeal to you this week to focus especially on what your personal tasks or occupations in this life are and which decisions are needed for them. What is the stone which you want to lay on the bed of the river, so that a worldwide peace movement will arise?

I wish us all an inspiring week and thank you for your attention.

ZEGG