Category: goodnews editorial

When all is said and done, there is one question that remains: what do we want to be committed to in this day and age other than our personal well-being and that of our significant others? For as far as I am concerned,  it is nohing less than peace on a sustainable planet. We cannot all be Bojan Slat of the Ocean Cleanup, Keep Skateistan Rolling like the skating pros do or clean up the Himalayas, as much as I would like to participate. But we can all contribute to peace and to a healthy planet in a myriad of small ways such as collecting garbage where we hike or jog, by reducing the consumption of animal products or by at least eating less meat, by wearing more second hand clothes and walking or riding a bicycle whenever we can, as well as by keeping ourselves in shape. While I still fall short of the aforementioned, I am keeping my eyes and ears open for other good ideas to integrate into my daily life while enjoying the warm weather.
You too, I hope.

Susanne G. Seiler
P.S. I will be speaking at the Elev8 Symposium on 9 June on
«Evolving Conscious Media.» (see below)

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I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall —
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
“Excuse me, I have work to do.”

Mary Oliver 

„The amount of disinformation is equal or superior to the amount of information.“
This eminent piece of wisdom was coined by me. It is the first reason why I am not impressed by the huge collection of data the powers that be gather on us. Sure, if they focus on me, for whatever reason, all of my life will be illuminated but this is hardly new. During the Sixties and Seventies, the Swiss secret service kept elaborate tabs on „The Movement“. You were nobody if you didn’t have such a tab and, fortunately, they also spied on me. We all had the opportunity to view our folders in the Nineties. You wouldn’t believe the nonsense the deep state claimed to know about me. First of all, I didn’t live near Basel but in Canada at the time. They also labelled me and a friend „the theoreticians of the movement“ – we translated song texts by Patti Smith, The Doors, Bob Dylan or The Rolling Stones to German. A lawyer I didn’t know called me up one evening to ask me if his name figured in my tab too? And so on. Yes, I know, it is more about consumer preferences and credit ratings nowadays. So what? My second reason not to worry: computers search for buzzwords but in the final analysis the evaluation has to be done by people. Will half the population soon evaluate the other? Who then is to evaluate the evaluators? And who is left? Think about it!
Unfazed yours,

Susanne G. Seiler

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Believe Believe

Believe in this. Young apple seeds,
In blue skies, radiating young breast,
Not in blue-suited insects,
Infesting society’s garments.

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,
Tearing the night into intricate shreds,
Putting it back together again,
In cool logical patterns,
Not in the sick controllers,
Who created only the Bomb.

Let the voices of dead poets
Ring louder in your ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials.
Listen to the music of centuries,
Rising above the mushroom time.

Bob Kaufman

Do you believe in divination, the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means?“ That you are able to obtain advice about your life through direct contact with your „higher self,“ the „collective unconscious“ or the „Earth Coincidence Control Office“ (ECCO), as John C. Lilly called this outlier of the great unknown? There are innumerable methods for achieving this. They carry names such as abacamancy (divination by dust), daphnomancy (by burning laurel twigs) or ptarmoscopy (by sneezes – my favourite)! Next to these largely forgotten methods we use many well-known oracles such as the Tarot, the I Ching (the oldest wisdom book we know), crystal gazing, numerology, astrology or palm reading. Thanks to modern science we know that we are not just imagining that the answers we obtain through these and other means can be trusted but there are a few rules to observe as outlined in two of the books introduced in our column good to read, the most important being (according to me) urgency and sincerity. Being real is always a good idea! As to urgency – don’t ask if there is no need to know.
Authentically yours,
Susanne G. Seiler

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Speech to the Young Speech to the Progress-Toward
(Among them Nora and Henry III)

Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
“Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.”
You will be right.
For that is the hard home run.
Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Thank you all so much for the extensive feedback via email and Facebook (www.facebook.com/gaiamedia/) on our newly designed goodnews. Unfortunately, social media are not what they used to be. Users are manipulated and posts pre-selected. Politics, first encouraged as opinion leading, are then abandoned as propaganda. Classical media and organisations like ours are applauded and then dropped like they’re hot, only to be spread further at a cost (“for $3 you can reach up to 1,300 users”). And so the carousel of fake friendship changes direction again and again. What to do? To me it is clear that the air of the social media is rapidly thinning, no matter how hard I try to make them work for the gaiamedia goodnews. And that is why I am all the happier about the new design and the regularly updated content of our website www.gaiamedia.org. And about spring – waiting backstage for its turn!
Warmly,
Susanne G. Seiler

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Prayer

Give thou thine heart to the wild magic,
to the Lord and the Lady of Nature –
beyond any consideration of this world.
Do not covet large or small.
Do not despise weakling or poor.
Semblance of evil allow not near thee.
Never give nor earn thou shame.
The Ancient Harmonies are given thee.
Understand them early and prove that
you may be one with the power of the elements.
Put behind thee dishonour and lies.
Be loyal to the Lord of the Wild Wood.
Be true to the Lady of the Stars.
Be true to thine own self besides and
True to the magic of Nature above all else.
Do not thou curse anyone
lest thou threefold cursed shouldst be.
And shouldst thou travel ocean and earth
follow the very step of the ancient trackways.

Celtic Wisdom

This year, the GaiaMedia Foundation celebrates its 25th birthday. In 1993, Dieter Hagenbach turned fifty and wanted to dedicate this phase of his life to a new and meaningful project. He invited his friends and acquaintances asking them to support the newly established Gaia Media Foundation instead of giving him presents.

Among the guests were Anita and Albert Hofmann, HR Giger, Claudia Müller-Ebeling and Christian Rätsch. The foundation council was made up of Dieter as president as well as Pierre Joset (again member of the council since September of 2017) and myself. In 1998, we were joined by Albert Hofmann. He remained an active member of the board until his death.

Dieter was born in1943, the year in which Albert Hofmann discovered the psychoactive effects of LSD. Dieter and I had already planned a large conference around the topic for the 25th birthday of this momentous discovery but Albert Hofmann was not willing to participate at that time. A conference about LSD in Basel without Albert Hofmann was out of the question. But he came around fifteen years later, and we launched a first highly successful conference the year he turned 100 and the World Psychedelic Forum in 2008.

On 19 April 2018, we will celebrate the 75th birthday of the discovery of LSD. The event (information only in German) is fully booked. However, there will be a free live stream for all sponsors of the foundation. You will find further information about this in one of the next issues of the gaiamedia goodnews.

As a sponsor you support our endeavors to distribute our goodnews and other activities of the foundation. It would make us very happy if you join us too!

Warmly,
Lucius Werthmüller

P.S. Those who are already sponsors of the GaiaMedia Foundation will receive the annual report for 2017 and the bill for 2018 within the next few weeks.

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Smaller than the Radius of the Planet

There is a patch like ice in the sky this
evening & the wind tacks about, we are
both stopped/fingered by it. I lay out my
unrest like white lines on the slope, so that
something out of broken sleep will land
there. Look up, a vale of sorrow opened by
eyes anywhere above us, the child spread out
in his memory of darkness. And so, then, the
magnetic influence of Venus sweeps its
shiver into the heart/brain or hypothalamus,
we are still here, I look steadily at nothing.
“The gradient of the decrease may be de-
termined by the spread in intrinsic lumin-
osities” —the ethereal language of love in
brilliant suspense between us and the
hesitant arc. Yet I need it too and keep
one hand in my pocket & one in yours,
waiting for the first snow of the year.

J.H. Prynne

The new year has barely begun, and I wonder what it will bring us, wishing you the very best. A favourite line in my favourite wisdom book (The I Ching) advises us not to combat evil directly but to make energetic progress in the good. We don’t need the make resolutions or detailed promises, all we have to do is to look and to move in the right direction – where our hopes and visions are waiting for us.

To the future!
Susanne G. Seiler

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The Road

Here is the road: the light
comes and goes then returns again.
Be gentle with your fellow travellers
as they move through the world of stone and stars
whirling with you yet every one alone.
The road waits.
Do not ask questions but when it invites you
to dance at daybreak, say yes.
Each step is the journey; a single note the song.

Arlene Gay Levine

For the last few months we have attempted to follow Dieter Hagenbach’s legacy, wishing to live up to his idea of providing a many-facetted audience with varied positive news items as well as reaching out to the millennial generation. This is why we would like to hear from you how these endeavors sit with you and how you think we should progress from here? What topics are of interest to you? What’s new with you? It would make me very happy to hear from you! My address: susanne@gaiamedia.org.
Sending you peace and light for the dark winter days ahead!

Susanne G. Seiler

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The Beauty Way

I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty,
lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty,
living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful.

Navajo Prayer

Dear friends of the Gaia Media Foundation

In front of you is our November newsletter in a new, contemporary design. We are looking forward to your feedback.
I welcome this opportunity to inform you about the innovations at the Gaia Media Foundation. After Dieter Hagenbach’s unexpected death, in August 2016, the foundation board was no longer capable of acting, since the statutes require a minimum of three board members. Dieter was not only the founder and president but also the driving force behind the foundation.

In September 2017, a new foundation board was established. Michael Gasser, the other remaining board member (other than myself), has new plans. We will miss him and thank him for his long-standing service. New additions to the foundation board are jurist Pierre Joset, PhD, founding member along with Dieter and me 24 years ago, who lives part-time in Switzerland again, as well as Swiss artist Kerim Seiler, Dieter Hagenbach’s stepson. I was appointed as President.

We are supported by translator and author Susanne G. Seiler, responsible for the content of our newsletter since last August. She is Kerim’s mother and the former editor of the magazine Sphinx previously published by Dieter Hagenbach. Further, I would like to thank David York Münster for the new design of the newsletter, for the upcoming conversion of the website www.gaiamedia.org and for his technical knowhow. Thank you also Therese Hartmann for faithfully taking care of the mailing of the gaiamedia goodnews and for keeping the foundation organised.

On 19 April 2018, the Gaia Media Foundation, together with Nachtschatten Verlag and the Swiss Medical Association for Psycholytic Therapy (SAEPT) are presenting a one-day symposium in the Hotel Hofmatt in Münchenstein near Basel. The occasion is the 75th anniversary of the discovery of LSD by Albert Hofmann, who was a board member of the Gaia Media Foundation until his death and who supported its aims. The title of the symposium is 75 Years LSD: Where is the Journey Going? Further information can be found in the December goodnews. Mark the date in your calendars!

We wish you inspiration while reading our newsletter and beautiful fall days.

Warm regards,

Lucius Werthmüller
President of the Gaia Media Foundation

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The Tiger and the Deer

Brilliant, crouching, slouching, what crept through the green heart of the forest,
Gleaming eyes and mighty chest and soft soundless paws of grandeur and murder?
The wind slipped through the leaves as if afraid lest its voice and the noise of its steps perturb the pitiless Splendor,
Hardly daring to breathe.But the great beast crouched and crept, and crept and crouched a last time, noiseless, fatal,
Till suddenly death leaped on the beautiful wild deer as it drank
Unsuspecting at the great pool in the forest’s coolness and shadow,
And it fell and, torn, died remembering its mate left sole in the deep woodland,
— Destroyed, the mild harmless beauty by the strong cruel beauty in Nature.
But a day may yet come when the tiger crouches and leaps no more in the dangerous heart of the forest,
As the mammoth shakes no more the plains of Asia;
Still then shall the beautiful wild deer drink from the coolness of great pools in the leaves’ shadow.
The mighty perish in their might;
The slain survive the slayer.

Sri Aurobindo