The dawn of a new era

Tomorrow, Oct 1st, a group of around 500 people will start a peace pilgrimage through the rainforest of Colombia, led by Padre Javier Giraldo (Colombia), Sabine Lichtenfels (www.the-grace-foundation.org)  and Benjamin von Mendelssohn (www.prvme.org). The participants are inhabitants of the peace village San José de Apartado, but they are joined from people all around the globe. They come from Israel, Palestine, Europe, USA and other countries of South America. (More information: www.grace-pilgrimage.com)

I want to greet them with a quote of the book “Future without War” by Dieter Duhm:
Sun Bear, a native American tribe elder said once: “Sometimes I dream that I am at a place where small groups of people are approaching over a hill. We all embrace each other and call out: “Brother, sister, you have survived!” All “isms” have disappeared. We no longer say: “Which religion do you belong to? To what do you belong? None of this is of importance anymore.”
I see a new generation of pilgrims from all countries travelling across the earth. They are not bound to any nation, language, race, culture or religion, to riches or possessions. They help in areas of crisis, they visit holy sites and they are on the way to centres, to new anchorages. They encounter each other at campfires, in barns or hostels, share their bread and develop a new quality of community, hospitality and willingness to help. In this way a young world citizenship of a new kind and beyond all institutions will come into existence – a different type of globalisation will take place. This development is supported by the emergence of completely new centres spreading slowly across the earth. We call them “Healing Biotopes” or “Peace Villages”. They serve the pilgrims both as hostels and as places to study and work in. In these centres concrete research is conducted, facilitating the development of a technological, spiritual and social basis for a non-violent world society. The centres stay in touch with each other through the growing flow of pilgrims. They are aware of each other, they are on the same path, and they have taken on responsibility for the future of the planet.
The beginning of a new culture, the dawn of a new era.

May the youth of all countries step out of their pasts and enter into the possibility of a new era of planetary thinking, planetary friendship and planetary joy. May the young people from Toronto, Sydney or Nairobi, from San Francisco or Kiev come together and meet. May they celebrate their new world community in Colombia or with the Zapatistas in Mexico, in Bethlehem or in Tamera. May they draw and actualise the information and forces from the world code that will lead us into a future worth living on a wonderful planet. They will do it, the “Movement for a free Earth” is under way!

No revenge

After a long and intense summer break I want to quote the following out of the book “Future without War” by Dieter Duhm, titled “No revenge”. Please read and think about it! Comments are appreciated!

“The ideas of a realistic future which is worth living also have a very personal side to them. They release us from old images of hostility and fear, because they provide a more powerful perspective. Tamera is cooperating with peace workers in Israel and Palestine. A young Palestinian friend was shot at by Israeli soldiers. He was hit by three bullets. He fell in a coma. My daughter Vera visited him together with Israeli and Palestinian friends. When he woke up from the coma, his first words were: “No revenge.”

The principle of revenge no longer serves, there is now a different one. Those who are our enemies today may have been our friends before. Those who are our friends today may have been our enemies before. In a coma, deep down where we no longer have a language, we are fully awake, but at a different level.
Those who have harmed us have suffered in similar ways, and they could be our friends. We begin to understand that, whatever we do unto others through our thoughts or deeds, falls back on ourselves. And we see that there is a different possiblity in life. For we are a part of the whole.

But we should never argue morally, as long as we are sitting in our warm living room, while outside terrible things are occuring which everywhere give rise to thoughts of revenge. Revenge is a principle of high energy. There are situations where one can follow no other thought than this one, because it is stronger than all other thoughts. I have experienced the truth in the saying that “revenge is sweet.” Whenever people or peoples, who have experienced great injustices, follow the impulse of revenge, they feel no fear and they are willing to do anything. It is absurd but true that for millenia the energy of revenge was the energy of liberation. What can we offer to the soul of humans if we want to deprive it of liberation through revenge? Is there truly something better? Here, there is no room for empty slogans.

We are dealing with a reorientation of human thinking. In science this is called a “paradigm shift”. Here, we are dealing with a paradigm shift in the deepest area of all. No revenge! Above all not when we see what they do. So what else, if not revenge? Reconciliation? How can you be reconciled with someone you hate? If the word reconciliation is to have any meaning at all, we must invent something for our souls that truly releases us from revenge and opens us up for reconciliation. This cannot consist of moral or religious appeals. It must be much more, much deeper, much greater.”