What we want

The following Manifesto is worth reading and sharing with all your friends.  I invite to leave comments!

Manifesto for the Movement for a Free Earth

What we want is not to be normal but to be true.
What we want is not only to fight against the old system but to create a new system.
What we want is the full liberation of love and sexuality from fear.
What we want is to strengthen our will in the conscious decision to serve peace – outside and inside.
We won’t be able to handle the challenges which we will face with only our own power. What we want is to cooperate with the greater forces of life.
What we want is to experience the original form of humans living together: Community

We want these words to become a reality by building concrete life models.
The world has come to a point where it is not enough anymore to point out the change that needs to happen… We must be that change.

To be this change we follow three guidelines in our daily life:
Truth
Mutual support
Responsible participation in the community and in the world

All of this will only succeed in the long term with a base of humanely functioning, grounded community. We cannot realise the highest goals if we are not able to found functioning communities which can survive. Ecological humanism needs new social structures. A new culture arises by reconnecting with the eternal laws of love and community.
There are definately many ways to reach this goal but there is only one key to open the gate: Rediscovering trust.

We dedicate our life to peace work.
The education of a peace worker includes education in love. This is a high task with a high goal. But there cannot be peace on earth as long as there is war in love.

May we, the youth of all countries step out of our 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, Nairobi, from San Francisco and Kiev come together. May we celebrate our new world community in Colombia and with the Zapatistas in Mexico, in Bethlehem and in Tamera. May we draw and actualise the information and forces from the code of life that will lead us to a future worth living on a wonderful planet.
We will do it, the “Movement for a Free Earth“ is underway.

Movement for a Free Earth
Tamera/Portugal, May 2009

There is a model to look at

Patch Adams participated in the Easter Conference in Tamera, which brought together 30 peace workers, leaders and visionaries from all over the world in order to deal with the possibility of changing the world. In a short interview Patch described his deep impression from Tamera community, his love to the people and to the ideas he encountered, and his wish for a future cooperation. You can watch this beautiful interview at Youtube

Tamera was founded by Dieter Duhm, Sabine Lichtenfels and other visionaries in 1995. Together they developed this place in order to demonstrate how a humane future could look like. It is not at all finished.

We want to use Patch’s moving statement in order to invite you – sponsors, creative artists, radical scientists, youth activists and love adventurers – to support this new perspective for a future without war. Leave a comment! Start talking about these ideas in your circles!!

Pacifism is the Reconciliation of the Human Being with himself

Today at the anniversary of the uprising in Tibet I want to quote some words by Dieter Duhm about pacifism and nonviolence. They are the deepest words I could find. I want to dedicate them to all those who lost their lives in the years of occupation and suppression and I also want to dedicate them to those who survived and still follow the path of nonviolence.
“Violence is the eruption of blocked life energies. Pacifism does not mean to gently appease violence, nor does it mean overcoming conflict through appeals for peace. True pacifism is the radical and intelligent commitment of the human being to the liberation of all life energies and creative forced that are present in him. Pacifism means taking an uncompromising stand for all living beings An uncompromising stand for achieving inner truthfulness and freedom – for pacifism is the reconciliation of the human being with himself.“
(Dieter Duhm: Towards a New Culture)

The Middle East is about more than the fate of two peoples

by Dieter Duhm
The Middle East is about more than the fate of two peoples. If peace is achievable here then something new will have been achieved for human kind. In this war the potential conflict between all of humanity is revealed. Peace in the Middle East is not only of regional importance but also of planetary significance.

(more…)

Gaza: There is only One Limit

Some days ago I received a letter by an Israeli peace activist about the situation in Gaza:

“…children were found cowering in their home near the dead bodies of their parents, probably for days, as ambulances could not reach them, despite strict international laws about the free movement of medical crews.”

Wait a moment, before you continue reading. Let this information reach your heart.

Do we know what a child is? At night? Next to the body of his murdered mother?

Something in me becomes very calm and decided. I do not want to argue any longer about international laws or the concrete background of this specific crisis. I cannot. I also do not want to send out another call to sign a petition, another appeal for peace, another meditation and prayer. I cannot.

I only feel the wish to UNDERSTAND. What happens today in Gaza is beyond logic, beyond human law, beyond arguments and beyond emotions … and it has happened yesterday in Ruanda, in Colombia, in Vietnam and … tomorrow … it may happen in my community and in my neighbourhood.

I know that the destruction is carried out in the name of governments, corporations, banks, military, arms industry, intelligence agencies, … but these groups could not  impose their will on the rest of the world if there were not human beings ready to follow, to obey, to carry out their instructions.  So I end up with the question: Who is the human being?

I quote Dieter Duhm:

“Imagine that we, as hermits, crawl out of a cave after carefully resolving to live henceforth in the world and seeing it as it truly is, without interpretation or judgement. Nothing would strike us as more monstrous, more contradictory, and more incomprehensible than the human being, unless we had prematurely explained or defined him with our embryonic powers of understanding. If we make a cross section through our history to date, or through everything that is happening among people and between people and the rest of nature at this moment on our planet, then there is only one limit to what the innocent eye can see: the limit of how much horror it can endure seeing.
The human being: it is he who built the pyramids, it is he who destroyed cities down to the last child and the last cat, who sang hymns and erected cathedrals, who roasted people with other beliefs over burning coal and turned those of another race into soap. The human being hated out of love and murdered in devotion, preached love to the neighbour and produced Napalm, loves peace and now prepares its own annihilation.”

Who is the human being? What is the mistake?

Let us come together and THINK how to heal ourselves and humanity and so to put an end to global war.

Do we know what war means?

“Do we know the unbearable pain of people who suffocate beneath debris, who are crippled or burnt? This and nothing else is war.

The economic, political and military power cartels know that children die, freeze and starve as a result of their policies of conquest – and yet they continue to follow them. They know that families are torn apart and communities are destroyed – and yet they do it. They talk about peace, freedom and democracy and kill all freedom fighters who stand in their way. They have constructed a world of consumerism that results in slavery, despair and collapse on the other side of the world. Behind the figures of the stock market, there is the suffering of innumerable people and animals. Can we continue to enjoy our privileges and limit our efforts to words? We need to find real ways to free the earth from war.

We indirectly contribute to the war because we do not have the time to understand what is really going on. Our culture is arranged so that nobody has the time to understand what is really going on. We are a part of the war because we participate in a civilisation which generates war everywhere. War is a component of our civilisation, our economy, our consumerism and our ideas about life. Our own Western society lives from the armament and weapons trade, from war against nature, from war against villages and farmers in the “Third World”, from war against love, from war against our mental/spiritual anchors and homelands of humankind. This war claims its victims in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Latin America and Palestine, but it also claims its victims where there is supposedly peace and democracy: in the offices and factories, in schools and families, in love relationships and ruined marriages, in the situation of homeless youth, in the sexual misery of the youth, in organised child abuse and finally in the hopeless situation of people who cannot handle the lies of the existing culture any longer and who can no longer cope with the mechanisms of existing conditions.
And are not the slaughterhouses, the fur farms and the animal laboratories a part of the daily war as well? Is it really necessary for the progress of a culture to be linked to such an amount of suffering in the animal world?

There is a solution. We can recognise it if we look at the whole of contemporary life on earth from a greater mental and spiritual distance.“

(Quote of the book “Future without War” by Dieter Duhm)

Gaza, Ruanda, Colombia … endless chain of violence. And: “There is a solution”. I pray for all victims and perpetrators that this solution will soon be known in the world. This is the background of my work and my motivation. War has to end. Please take the time to learn more about this solution and help spreading it! This is my deepest wish for 2009.

Those who are walking in the name of “GRACE”…

Here is a wonderful quote of the book “GRACE. Pilgrimage for a Future without War” by Sabine Lichtenfels. I present it also as an invitation to join and support this years’ GRACE pilgrimage in Colombia in October 2008. May the power of GRACE rise on our planet…!

“The pilgrimage is to lead us to Israel/Palestine to the so called Holy Land, a region which has been dominated by war, conflict, struggle and division for a long time.
If this pilgrimage is to be a success in terms of inner and outer peace work, then a spiritual source will be needed. This will make us as pilgrims act in both a correct and healing way despite any difficult situations. In search of a name for the pilgrimage we came across the term GRACE. Grace has many connotations and in English comprises more than the word “Gnade” does in German.

GRACE is mercy, favour, charm, sweetness, readiness, charity, consideration, congeniality and also stands for the act of Grace itself.

GRACE reminds me of walking in the service of the higher mission, in the service of life and its inherent justice. Those who are walking in the name of GRACE do not come to accuse. They do not come to impart a new ideology on a country or on a land and its people – they come in the service of openness, of perception and of support.”

“I saw the world without any fighting…”

Eugene Cernan was an astronaut from the U.S. and the “last man on the moon”… and while he was out there – “a quarter million miles away” looking into space, he saw something so beautiful, so precious and important, that he had to write it down later: “I saw the world without any borders, without any fighting, without any fear (…) and isn’t it the way we perceive things what makes them what they will be?”

Two brothers, Paul and Ralph Colwell, came to read these words and made up a song. The music was added also by Herb Allen.

As Charly Rainer Ehrenpreis, co-worker of the peace research center Tamera, learned this song from a friend of the Colwell brothers some years later, it became a favorite song of the Tamera community. Its title: Moonrider.

Listen to the music…!

The song expresses on the level of the soul what the book “Future without War” explains in scientific terms. A world without fighting is possible! A future without war is possible! We “only” need to open up to new ways of perception, of ideas and concepts. “And isn’t it the way we perceive things what makes them what they will be?”

Create a tipping point

I have just returned from a trip to Estonia and I want to thank all of those who invited me and who shared their thoughts, their dreams and visions. Thank you very much! What struck me the most was the clear and sober view of many Estonians I met of what is happening today on Earth and what chances there are to create a future worth living.
For example I met very committed people who were able to realize an incredible environmental action through a combination of different skills and qualities: courage, intelligence, joy and knowledge about how to use today’s information technologies. They managed to clean up Estonia in one day, collecting 10,000 tons of illegally dumped garbage. Environmental activists all over Europe are now interested in doing the same thing in their country. (more)

When I met one of the IT-specialists involved in this action in his modern office in Tallinn, he sat back in his chair, looked at me, and said something like: “So, we cleaned up Estonia. This was easy compared to the global change which has still to be brought about. We have a vacation now and are waiting for the next challenge. Do you have any suggestions?”

I had, indeed. You can imagine the inspiring talk we had after such an introduction. Since the book “Future without War” by Dieter Duhm has been published in Estonian language in February 2008 the thought came to me: What if we could create a “tipping point”, an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development in the direction of global peace? Couldn’t it be that the book “Future without War” will be discussed in Estonia so intensely that peace activists all over the world will start to do the same? This will nourish the idea and thus brings it closer to an irreversible manifestation of a future without war.

This or something even better may happen. The future is in our hands and in our decisions.

To end I want to use a quote by Dieter Duhm:

“The basis for the theory presented here is a world view that we can call “holographic cosmology”. We all come from the universe, not only from Earth. We therefore all have within us the same latent cosmic knowledge, a store of memories and cosmic consciousness, which is at our disposal, and which we can use at any time, as long as we know how to use it.” (out of the book: Future without War)

Is there something stronger than enmity?

Is there something stronger than enmity and violence? Is there a power of reconciliation that operates even when we are facing our worst enemy?

Shaken by the impending war against Iran, Sabine Lichtenfels sets off on a 6 months’ pilgrimage in 2005. She is led by the question of what an individual can do to prevent future wars, and she thereby discovers an inner source of power that she calls “GRACE”.

In her book “GRACE. Pilgrimage for a Future without War” she writes:
“GRACE reminds you that the healing of our planet only can succeed if humanity succeeds in reconnecting with the true foundations of life and love, of trust and truth. It can only succeed for humanity if it succeeds for us.”

With the attitude of GRACE, in the autumn of 2005 she leads a group of 40 international pilgrims on foot through Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine. Walls of fear, distrust and prejudice between people open up in unusual ways. Ideological fronts are softened, making it possible to believe in solutions that seemed impossible up to now. In 2007 another GRACE pilgrimage is held, again to Israel/Palestine, this time 350 km by foot through the desert of Eilat, through the West Bank to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Up to 170 people from Israel, Palestine and various international countries took part. In the autumn of 2008, a GRACE pilgrimage will be undertaken to Colombia under the leadership of Sabine Lichtenfels.

GRACE is the power of creating outer peace. GRACE is an inner attitude that provides protection from danger.

In addition to the annual pilgrimages, together with an international team, Sabine Lichtenfels is planning the establishment of a “Global Campus”, through which the knowledge of how a future peaceful society can be created, will be brought together and taught. The Global Campus deals with the establishment of self-sustaining models for life, energy generation without the exploitation of resources, non-violence toward all living beings and learning GRACE, the knowledge of how peace between people can succeed on a permanent basis.

We ask for your support in the dissemination of GRACE and for the financing of the actions.