A series of unexpected events on our trip East in 2005 has raised the theme of survival in difficult times. From the English Parliment to the Kalahari Bushmen, people are trying to find solutions to the enormous problems that face our world. It reminded us that we see IAM as an institute for social change where we apply meditation to the problems of our lives and the larger problems of humanity. In the course of this trip, we found many other groups working for social change in other ways with whom we felt a link and the potential for collaboration.

On a beautiful sunny day with 80 degree weather in Tucson in November, Puran and I packed winter coats and boots, a suitcase with books and CDs and a suitcase with electronic equipment for 3-week seminar trip to the East.

We arrived in Boston, the airport so familiar from so many trips when we called Ipswich our home. Now we came as visitors from the West. Zuleika Danielle Swanson picked us up at the airport and it couldn't have been a warmer and more heartfelt welcome as she had been the one to give us a farewell party the night before we left Ipswich. And there we were again, in the middle of the cold New England night hugging each other, happy that we all were still there.

She dropped us off at Linda and Sage Walcott's house in Gloucester, who were still waiting up for us. They have a big garden and New England has a special feel before Thanksgiving; the colors orange and brown are prevalent and the earth seems to smell more strongly after she had given all her fruits, and at night these experiences seem even more available than during the day.

The seminar we offered was on Self-Healing through Heart Rhythm Meditation.

Before we left Gloucester we had dinner with Mark McDonough, a long-time friend of ours. We met at one of his restaurants in Manchester for lunch as he was interested in connecting with people we knew who might be possible candidates for a "community weaver". Mark, a New England philanthropist, is concerned about "Peak Oil", the fact that half of the world's oil is used up, and the other half will be gone in 37 years at the current rate of use. Long before that, a lot of things we depend upon will become unavailable or prohibitively expensive. See: www.peakoil.net

Mark's response to this is to help communities develop gardens where residents can grow some of their own food. He has started a project to get schools around Boston to set aside land for this purpose. He is also on the board of Time Dollars, a form of organized bartering without money that could be very helpful if the economy suffers a collapse. See: www.timedollar.org.

I suggested to him that Heart Rhythm Meditation would be very helpful for building communities that are broadly supportive, avoiding the difficulties that can occur in narrow-focused, issue-oriented communities.

Arriving in Heathrow London is always special, as it embodies the experience of multicultural like no other place familiar to me. It is more like a well done costume party, from the silky variety of Indian saris, to Muslim kaftans and burkas, English mini skirts and tights, occasional kimonos, and last not least the vibrant colors of Africa mixed in with the grey and black of European suits. Our cab driver this time is a Sikh, Puran greets him with: "Sat Sri Akal", the standard greeting for Sikhs, meaning, "The name of God is Truth."

We are driving into the night of London, with the never-ending sounds and lights of business. We ring Paul and Zuleika's door, and there they are, now in Paul's studio. Zuleika had flown over the day before to be with Paul and for the relationship seminar and the teacher's training. Paul Benny is a portrait painter who has been commissioned to paint some extraordinary people, several of whom we've met as we stay in his studio on our trips to London. We were invited to the unveiling of his portrait of Baroness Valerie Amos, the leader of the House of Lords in the English Parliament. Valerie is an amazing woman; she was born into poverty in Guyana and became the first black woman in the English cabinet. She has just been nominated by England to head the United Nations Development Program. UNDP is the UN's global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. They are on the ground in 166 countries, working with local people on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. For more about her, see: Baroness Amos

The dinner party afterwards became an interesting discussion about English and American politics as we were seated on either side of Iain Duncan Smith, the past leader of the Conservative Party in England and now the founder of the Centre for Social Justice, a thinktank which aims to solve the problems facing Britain's inner cities. He knows our president, vice president and secretary of state personally. It is quite an experience to be respectful, understanding and staying in a conversation with someone whose idea about the Iraq war one does not share. But I liked his views on how the government can help the rehabilitation of families and society. I got really inspired and animated about life and the state of the world and things that need to be done, like teaching millions how to breathe through their heart.

Our next seminar was at the CCPE, the Center for Counseling & Psychotherapy Education, a graduate school for transpersonal psychotherapy based on Sufism. The founder of the school was a student of Pir Vilayat and Puran. Puran and I are contributing through Heart Rhythm Meditation to the further development of the Sufi message. Our students came from the CCPE, from the Sufi group in England, and from Alternatives, a London-based organization that sponsors speakers at St. James church in London. We had given a presentation to 200 people at St. James in Piccadilly last Spring.

Our seminar on The Energy Centers of Relationships was about how the 7 energy centers of two people can interact in ways that are inharmonious, and how to change the energy to become complementary. Sharifa Caroline Dale did a great job in organizing the event and teaching classes in London. We continued with a teacher's training on Emotional Heart Health, which of course opened our hearts to deeper levels and let us explore the patterns the heart tends to involve itself in when left alone. Some of the people in the training are already certified teachers who want to upgrade their classes to the topics of Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Heart Health, others take the course to become certified, and others take the course to use the HRM material in their own meditation classes in other organizations.

On our last night in London, we were with Sabiha Foster, who has founded an organization called "Diamonds for Humanity," and has asked Puran and I to be on her board. D4H aims to channel the profits from an elegant line of non-conflict diamond jewelry designed by Sabiha to programs that benefit children in Africa. See: www.diamondsforhumanity.com and D4H

Sabiha invited us to a meeting of Survival International with the Kalahari Bushmen. Survival International is an organization based in London which helps tribal people defend their lives, protect their lands and determine their own futures. The bushmen have been rounded up and confined to settlement camps away from their hunting/gathering lands because diamonds have been discovered there! It's killing the bushmen as their lives and way of life are beig destroyed. We met two of the bushmen, including Roy, shown at left, and we were very impressed by the dedication and work of SI on their behalf. Please go to their website and investigate their work for yourself: Survival International

To emphasize that greed of big corporations and ignorance of spiritual values are rampant in our country too, we were shown a documentary of the Enron scandal on Virgin Airlines as we crossed back over the Atlantic. We think everyone should see this, and now you can see it online, or wait for the DVD. See "Enron: The Smartest Guys on The Block" at this URL: Enron

We landed in Boston again, tired and jet-legged for a seminar the following day at the Rowe Conference Center in Western MA. When we arrived there we were kissed by gentle snow, and welcomed by Prue and Doug, the directors of the conference center, which is Unitarian based. www.rowecenter.org

At the same time we were teaching our seminar on HRM, there was another group present with whom we shared meals: Wisdom of Nature & Mythology of Progress, an interesting group led by Tom Wessel, Professor of Ecology at Antioch Graduate School. His message is that nature has laws of sustainability that we should be emulating in our communities and nations.

Our group at Rowe included several people who have atrial fibrillation, arrhythmia, and sleep apnea, all of which can be relieved by Heart Rhythm Meditation. The case studies just keep building as people find out these conditions can be treated without drugs. This course became a deep exploration of the connections of breath, heart, and how they effect our physical, emotional and spiritual levels of experiences. We departed as friends of the heart knowing that we shall meet again.

The last night of our trip we spent with our good friends Brian and Jo Ellen Cody in Ipswich. In the morning at 5 am I walked their dog Noodle while the Christmas lights were glowing in the dark and the morning was silenced through the snow. It smelled like Christmas as I know it. I was thinking of all of you and our world and that the uncertainty we are experiencing might be relieved through the hope we share.

Now back in Tucson, I think that the world is burning and so are our hearts. We cannot avoid anymore what is in front of us and around us. This trip was an experience of the state of the world; we hadn't planned it this way, but looking back on it, it feels like we received a strong message. We speak of the world's prophets as "The Warner of coming dangers, Wakener of the world from sleep," and that's what we had a taste of. We need to let our hearts speak and guide us when we encounter the atrocities of the world. Our hearts are stronger than our surroundings when we receive support in heart-centered communities. That's what we call "Heart Ecology", the relationship between one's heart and the world: how the world affects your heart and how your heart affects the world.

Here's a positive idea for making a difference this Christmas -- give a gift from Alternative Gifts. See: www.alternativegifts.org. (Thanks to Linda Newmark for the suggestion.) And give someone you know a course in Heart Rhythm Meditation.

All love to you, Susanna