Category: goodnews editorial

On the passing of Ralph Metzner

With psychologist, researcher and author Ralph Metzner, a second member of the old Harvard crew has followed Timothy Leary. We owe Ralph countless insights and wonderful writings on a wide range of topics from shamanism to the great questions of our time. The gap he leaves behind is felt here too. I didn’t know Ralph very well, but I once was his guest in Tiburon, where his wife made sandwiches for my son and I interviewed him about his latest book, That was more than thirty years ago. Ralph Metzner was a frequent writer. German-speaking readers know him for the lance he broke for the mythology of his country of origin when he got the old Nordic gods out of the far right closet and revived them for us. How enthusiastic he was in Todtmoos, in the Black Forest, how feverish he felt about his very first lecture in German!
Dear Ralph, you will be missed by all of us who knew and read you.

In sadness,
Susanne G. Seiler

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Hope

& what if hope crashes through the door what if
that lasts a somersault?
hope for serendipity
even if a series of meals were all between us
even if the aeons lined up out
of order
what are years if not measured by trees

Mong-Lan

The good guys versus the bad guys

I would like to know how, in life, one separates the wheat from the chaff, the good from the bad? I don’t mean Caligula, the Ku Klux Klan or Hitler. It’s about us psychonauts. Are the differences really so great between the good, because serious and scientifically oriented “researchers” and the hedonistic consumers, the freaks or “stoners” among us? I would like to state here once and for all that we are, or were, all consumers otherwise we wouldn’t know what we are talking about. Moreover, one does not exclude the other: some people just like to think only they have a reputation to lose. Of course, in the sixties and seventies of the last century a lot of porcelain went to pieces when drugs were easily available for the first time but without the freaky, flashy and loud alternative culture, the stiff patriarchal mentality of those days would not have been challenged, which was just as necessary as it is necessary today to be free of old fears and prejudices. I don’t believe that history will repeat itself. On the contrary, drug use rather tends to arouse too little public interest nowadays. We psychonauts can therefore confidently get more involved with each other, communicate more often and cultivate our similarities.

In friendship,
Susanne G. Seiler

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Night, and I Traveling

Night, and I travelling.
An open door by the wayside,
Throwing out a shaft of warm yellow light.
A whiff of peat-smoke;
A gleam of delf on the dresser within;
A woman’s voice crooning, as if to a child.
I pass on into the darkness.

Joseph Campbel

Looking back & looking ahead

Dear Friends
As a first project, on 19 April 2018 near Basel, the new Board of Directors of the Gaia Media Foundation, along with Nachtschatten Verlag and the Swiss Medical Association for Psycholytic Therapy (SÄPT), organised the symposium 75 Years of LSD: Where is the journey going? Albert Hofmann, who discovered LSD, was a member of the Gaia Media Foundation’s Board of Directors until his death, loyally supporting its aims.
The conference was sold out, and a live stream was set up. Information, recordings and a press review can be found on the website 75-jahre-lsd.ch. On 19 April 2020, we are again planning a conference around the subject of psychedelics. Actually, we already wanted to do so for Bicycle Day 2019 but many of the speakers we invited for this date – Good Friday – declined, leading us to postpone the event by one year.
Starting in June 2019, the Gaia Media Foundation, in cooperation with the SÄPT, will be offering a new psychological-psychiatric counselling service – all about changing states of consciousness, psychedelic integration and crisis intervention. Anyone wishing to deal with issues around psychoactive substances or who needs psychological support in the aftermath of an experience will find advice and help from trained, experienced counsellors in a personal exchange or by telephone or Skype. The offer is financed by the Gaia Media Foundation. More information will be available after May 2019 on gaiamedia.org.
We are very pleased that our offers and contributions continue to be viewed with great interest. Our YouTube Channel alone, with over a hundred of our own and dozens of other videos, inspires more than 5,000 subscribers.
The foundation’s extensive media library has been in storage since the Gaia Lounge was abandoned. As of last autumn, Susanne G. Seiler has been viewing the collection, and we are considering to make at least some of its content digitally accessible. Furthermore, we want to create a physical meeting place again, similar to the former Gaia Lounge, where both our consulting project and the media library can find a home, and where those interested can exchange ideas. Further projects are planned, including a series of evening events.  We will keep you posted about these projects in our gaiamedia goodnews.
My thanks go to the foundation councillors Pierre Joset and Kerim Seiler. I would also like to thank Susanne G. Seiler for taking care of the content of the newsletter and for her commitment, Therese Hartmann for the formatting and mailing of the gaiamedia goodnews and for her organisational work for the foundation, and David York Münster for maintaining the current website. Above all, however, I would like to thank all patrons and all other persons who support the foundation from outside: For our future activities we depend more than ever on you. We therefore ask you to become a patron or to renew your subscription. Contributions will remain unchanged in 2019. Information on patronage can be found here Donations are also more than welcome. Thank you very much!

With my best wishes and warm regards
Lucius Werthmüller
President of the Gaia Media Foundation

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Raranga, the art of weaving

Hutia te rito o te harakeke
Kei hea te komako e ko
Ki mai ki ahau
He aha te mea nui i te ao
Maku e ki atu
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

If the center shoot of the flax is uprooted
Where will the bellbird sing?
If you were to ask me
What is the most important thing in the world
I would reply
Each person, each person, each person.

Traditional Maori weaving poem

Do we have to feel guilty because we are «destroying everything», foremost the climate and nature? Because man has mercilessly exploited all things natural for as long as we can remember? Because we all consume and exploit? Because we have still not made the political our private affair and, as a human collective, are not taking any essential measures to finally adapt our lifestyle to the planetary reality? At present we can only comfort ourselves with the fact that good often emerges from bad and that there is also such a thing as «happy guilt» or felix culpa. The Catholic term means that negative circumstances can lead to positive outcomes, and we may thus transform our guilt. And that – as in Taoism – there would be no better without the bad. My greatest wish: that in the coming year we will adapt ourselves more to the needs of Mother Earth.

I wish you a Happy New Year!
Susanne G. Seiler

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What is stronger

what is stronger
than the human heart
which shatters over and over
and still lives

Rupi Kaur

Many things exist in the sacred realm of the holy. It starts with habits held high, followed by cows, mackerels, crap and rollers. For many nature is the holy grail though when it comes to being properly responsible for the holy and sublime, we think of God and his heavenly and earthly helpers, the angels and the saints. Then there are those to whom nothing is sacred and their meeker companions, the sanctimonious, who only act as if. Most of us would like to be at least a little holy, the holy and the whole being siblings. Except for a few libertines, who feel compelled to be as unholy as possible at every turn. Holiness cannot be purchased, wholeness only approached. Ultimately, we have to measure ourselves against ourselves: How whole am I? Will we ever know?

A reflective winter season to you!
Susanne G. Seiler

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Winter Poem

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower

Nikki Giovanni

Everyone has probably wondered what happiness and joy are made of. Likewise, what brings us to affirm life, sometimes against all odds. Fortunately, we have our daily little pleasures, our achievements and successes to push us forward. Our families, friends and loved ones may support us, but there is also a compelling inner force, our life instinct, that keeps us going. Furthermore, we live from our memories of the beautiful and sublime and of the all good times we had. As a rule, they distinguish themselves more than the not so good things that have happened to us. Thus we have reason to be grateful because all these factors contribute to our happiness and satisfaction. The weather is also a decisive element, whether we feel good or bad and promotes our joie de vivre. (We are experiencing a golden autumn this year, at least in the part of Europe where our goodnews are at home.) Ultimately, however, our attitude counts the most. So let us remain positive!

Confidently Yours
Susanne G. Seiler

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Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare

Are you old? (How old is old?) Still young? U30? And how does it feel? Do you try to enhance yourself or are you happy when everything about you stays the same, give or take a little with the passing years? If you believe in improvement, there is a lot to be done, and there are many ways to beautify and strengthen the body while achieving an ever more mindful and intelligent headspace, paired with a benevolent attitude towards the rest of the world. We all know that whole industries profit from these constraints but we cannot refrain from «working» on ourselves, in order to reach optimal capacity and contentment. Fall is here, the season when it becomes more difficult to stay fit without artificial means. I am pleading for more coziness, less effort and lots of heartiness. Will there be a day when we are no longer allowed to have weaknesses?

Snugly,
Susanne G. Seiler

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After the Sea-Ship

After the Sea-Ship – after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship:
Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves – liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great Vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface.

Walt Whitman 

What do you think about the rising temperatures and sea levels? About the raging fires, and the furnaces that are our cities in the summer? About the brown fields, parks and gardens? The wilting crops, the slaughtered cattle, the dying fish? The suffering elderly? Does that sound like the Seven Plagues to you or should we wait for locusts? And is the world at large in denial? Our planet is rapidly changing, faster than anyone expected. The prognoses, extrapolations, calculations, predictions, projections, forecasts and visions of our scientists are surpassed on a daily basis. Keeping cool has never been more important. We, as a species, are richer, healthier and more secure than ever before but our summers will hardly get colder, our urgent problems won’t go away all by themselves. We have work to do so let’s shrink our lifestyles, recycle our belongings, simplify our habits. Now.

Reduced yours,
Susanne G. Seiler

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memo to lowry

You’re right, there are grotesques who shine
a dark light that lures us like how the sirens
tried to lure Odysseus, and yes, maybe we
ourselves are among the grotesques, but
there are also the beautiful who, if we’re
lucky, save us from ourselves, and validate
the sun’s light, and maybe also the moon’s.

Matthew Sweeney

The city, with its multitudes, its noise and its thrash has become obsolete for many, like before, when hippies strove back to nature and founded their country communes, no money but high expectations. The city has become obsolete, and it is easier than ever to leave now, laptop in one arm, child in the other, belongings in a rented truck. Nature beckons and greens, and when it gets cold, an airplane is waiting to fly us to warmer skies. Those fleeing the city are hoping for more time and community out in the country, for fewer distractions, less commerce and less plastic. And when in dearth of culture, their car soon takes them back to where they came from for a day or two. Just that nature grows less wholesome that way unless we become more natural ourselves and live with the earth rather than only out of town. I hope you will have a chance to leave the city now and then during this hot summer. And that your harvest will be plentiful should you already live close to the land.
On 17 August, it will be two years since Dieter Hagenbach left us. We miss him.

With warm summer wishes,
Susanne G. Seiler

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land

his approach
to love he said
was that of a farmer
most love like
hunters and like
hunters most kill
what they desire
he tills
soil through toes
nose in the wet
earth he waits
prays to the gods
and slowly harvests
ever thankful

Suheir Hammad

One of the most important responsibilities we all share is the responsibility to be truthful – in our public life, in our relationships with others and most of all in our relationship with ourselves. While THE TRUTH is a shifty notion, an authentic attitude is not. We need this honest approach more than ever today, and most of all we need it in the media. It is not only sad to witness newspapers, TV stations and social media promote the falsehoods known as fake news, it is equally embarrassing to see how they advance a culture of squirming commiseration or puffing outrage, leading to already marginalised groups being „infantilised by a culture of victimhood and offence-taking.“ (Dorian Lynski). Especially in the tabloids influencing „the masses,” readers are told what to think rather than being helped to form their own opinion. But it is still up to you what you choose to believe! Up to you what opinion you cultivate! Up to you what causes you support or become involved in! As Timothy Leary liked to say: „You are the director of your own movie. And the movie you are making tells the story of the great adventure that is your life.“ So don’t believe the hype!

Warmly,
Susanne G. Seiler

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Eat Your Words

I am a veggie table
A table made of veg,
There’s so much fruit upon me
All living on the edge,
Life is hard
But so are plates
And tea can be quite hot,
And vegetarian poets
Make me nervous quite a lot.

Benjamin Zephaniah