5:36
And then I started looking around and by that time I was in Germany, I lived in Germany for five years and I lived in Hamburg, which is very close to Berlin and I had initiated a master who lived in Berlin, West Berlin, who was going to the East to teach classes, illegally. And so the Berlin wall was very real for me and I was there when it opened. I mean “opened” is a very accurate word, because it just opened.
6:23
I thought to myself “I hope the world learns a lesson from this”. That you can put up an artificial wall but it doesn’t keep families from loving each other or wanting to be with each other, it doesn’t keep people separated. It just is an artificial structure that brings pain. And it seemed at that moment, because of the way that the wall opened that maybe we had come to another order of relationship in… between nations and between people in the world. And I have to say that after this there has been a kind of… in my opinion, a kind of back-stepping that.. and maybe it’s going forward and we’ve met another impasse. But somehow today, in 2016, you know we’re looking at countries in Europe building walls, literally building walls again, because they want to keep out their brother and sister who are starving to death, who fear for their life so much that they’re leaving their beloved homeland.
7:56

7:56
You know, it’s weird for me that people think that these people, that migratory people, people who are running for their lives literally are doing this out of choice. Well of course they would stay at home if they had food. Of course they would stay at home if they thought their children would grow up. You know, of course they would stay at home if thought that they would live to see another day. But they’re literally running for their lives and that the call to humanity for me is we’re getting an “F” right now, which in American grading system means “we’re failing”. We’re failing our test of humanity.
8:49
There is a wonderful saying that says “if you have enough build a longer table rather than a wall”. And it’s like this is what we need to do. The world needs to respond and I’m amazed that you know, an earthquake in Africa or in India or Bangladesh can just inspire all these musicians and all these people to give millions of Dollars to rebuild.. because they’re in their own place and they are not migrating. But these people, not just Syrians but other people are migrating because they have to and we’re not willing to spend this money in our own countries to take them in and to say “you can live here until your country is ready to take you back”.
9:56

9:56
I just … it’s for me a big test, it’s a global test like we’ve had global world wars, now this is a global test for humanity to say “our we really being human”. I mean it’s no mistake that… wow, am I really getting opinionated?… okay… It’s a big mistake for me to think that .. to have the question “why is … why is fascism on the rise? Why is extreme prejudice on the rise?” It’s because people are afraid for their existence. But here in America we could all lower our existence level by just a little percentage and give people who really are… really are starving food. And we wouldn’t have to give up much. In fact, we live in luxury for the most part. And if we can’t be humane enough to give a little of that so that other people can actually live. I feel like we’re not doing a very good job in being human beings.
11:26
Now I’ve always said to people, especially in the US, you know, if you want to make a difference in the world, do your self-treatment, because this will change the atmosphere of your life, make it more peaceful and that will make your community more peaceful and so on, which I still agree with. And now we have to put a little bit of our .. we have the saying
… where our money where a mouth is. We have to actually give. And I’m surprised that there aren’t some kind of way that we can all give money and create a way for these people to be supported. And I just think that we are being so uncreative with the solution and that spending on top of that millions of Dollars to erect more walls, just seems like totally crazy to me.
12:36

0:00
The succession question for me had been one that has been foremost in my mind since 1983. And … of course back then I was so young, that I was gonna live forever, and we didn’t really have to think about it. But I did think about it because my grandmother’s death created so much havoc for all of us and at that time of course we were still in this conversation with Barbara Weber and I thought my grandmother could have been more clear and so on. And at the same time realizing how advantageous it was to have a restraining force, you know, this activating/restraining, it was fabulous. So…
0:57
And then in the late 1980s Paul Mitchell and I started to travel in … to other continents, we came to Europe first. And we often flew on the same airplane. And finally somebody, I’m pretty sure it was a German master said to me “you know, you guys shouldn’t fly on the same plane”. And I just laughed and I said “You got to be kidding me”. And she said “no, actually I’m not. I’m saying to you that you two have a responsibility that you’re not taking care of”. And I thought to myself, well that’s actually true, I guess accidents can happen. And at this point the Reiki community was so fragile that if Paul and I had died in the same time it would have shattered the community. I’m not saying that to feel like … you’re replaceable or anything, I just feel like if I was living responsibly as a leader, you know, I had to take care of that.
2:08