Thursday 17th December 2009

We woke up on Thursday to a snow covered Copenhagen.

Julia and Piero set off early in the hopes of getting into the Bella Center, where over 100 Heads of State would be meeting that day. Battling freezing cold winds, they arrived with about 20 others only to find that the numbers of NGOs allowed to enter the Bella Center had been reduced from 1,000 to 300, and that if you were not on a special list –with a green access card – you were not going to get in! We had our registration badges, and our secondary white pass, but now we needed a third green pass! We were not on the list. We left the Bella Center to catch a metro train back to the BK center. An arriving train was packed with other NGOs also hoping to beat the crowds to get in . . . Most of them would be disappointed.

We found out that the People's Climate Action had arranged an alternative venue for the NGOs to hear what was going on, by video streamed from the Bella Center. This happened to be taking place near the BK center and so those of us now left from our delegation: Piero, Golo, Julia, Sonja and Valeriane, set off again into the snow. On arrival we found ourselves in a large hall with 5,000 chairs and big screens showing the Heads of State (literally!) being shown to an almost empty hall. We were almost the only ones at the alternative venue. This brought an amazing opportunity because we were consecutively interviewed by a web media journalist from the UN COP15 blog page, Behind the Scene while Golo was interviewed by a journalist from a German news agency.

We lost one more of our delegation at lunch time; Golo left for Germany. After lunch the remainder of us set off for the Klimaforum for our final event of the conference where Valeriane was to take part in a panel discussion to give a spiritual perspective.

Panel Discussion - Crucial Principles for Radical Change

The moderator of the panel was Karen Blincoe, ICIS Founder and Director, and former director of the world renowned Schumacher College,UK. She had been arranging the morning meditations at the Klimaforum and had connected with Valeriane during one of the BK led meditation sessions. She asked Valeriane to be on a panel of speakers she was organizing.

The question posed was: "How must human consciousness and culture evolve in order to meet the overwhelming urgency and complexity of our time?"

The other speakers were from EnlightenNext, who produce a magazine in the US and are connected to Andrew Cohen who describes himself as being dedicated to igniting a revolution in human consciousness. They were introducing the subject of Bright Green. There were two presenters, one a scientist and accomplished musician, from Denmark, Peter Bastian and the other Ross Robertson from the USA.

Bright Green environmentalism emphasizes innovation and intelligent technologies as the solution to the global climate challenge. They were basically saying that we need new maps to guide our progress into a brighter, greener, more just and sustainable future; we need new and creative capacities for radical change, and a willingness to let go of obsolete mindsets. Progress should not be demonized, and we should free ourselves from the values of the past and use our creative power to create the future using technology.

Using a power point presentation, and standing on each side of the stage, they went back and forth with each other. Valeriane took her seat center stage and brought the audience back to focus on themselves. She started by saying the most difficult thing for people to do is change, even in normal circumstances. Speaking from a spiritual perspective, the power we need to change comes from the inside - from the power to think, to feel, to find creative solutions. We have somehow lost sight of our internal power, and have been looking for solutions and happiness from the outside - in science, and consumption of material goods - increasing our greed because we never seem to experience contentment. She then took the audience through a meditative exercise to access the inner qualities needed. She asked them to remember a moment in their lives when they experienced deep peace, unconditional love, or when they felt totally happy. These qualities are resources that come from within. The exterior beauty of our world is only a reflection of the inner beauty that is already within.

Valeriane went on to say that in order to find creative solutions to the big crisis we face today we need to recuperate these inner abilities, powers and capacities, to enable us to discriminate and use our creative power, to think holistically and not in a fragmented way. Our biggest creative power is our capacity to think, but we have not been using our thoughts properly. By wasting them and misusing them, not using them in the best possible way, gradually we lost the capacity to think powerfully.

The most beautiful adventure of human life is to discover what it is we are looking for. But we look for it in the exterior world where we are not likely to find it. And we are not likely to find solutions if we don't have the power to face the situations.

She explained how matter is only an instrument through which we express ourselves as conscious beings. If we are harmonized within, non violent, loving and peaceful we create around us a use of energy which will not damage, or hurt, or create violence. This is something we can only achieve when we are connected to our inner peace and inner beauty. She added that there is a divine source of beauty, love, and peace which is outside of us, one thought away; only we have forgotten how to access it. Nature today needs this touch of divinity - the power of God. This power is accessible if we learn to connect again with our capacity to link to the divine and recreate the balance we have lost. We need to empower people to find solutions for themselves.