The Flowfeather Manifesto

The Core Values Behind Flowfeather

1. Nature
   Being in nature regularly lowers stress levels and brings us back into touch with ourselves. We feel the connection with life and come to rest again when we are in nature. In, from and with nature we can learn a lot about life, because nature is the direct expression of life. Some of the best memories of my life are associated with my stay in various US national parks and one of the best compliments in my life comes from an old Sami (the indigenous people of Lapland) who, when I was writing my diploma thesis in biology in northern Sweden, said about me that I looked like I "got along well in the forest".
2. Balance
   A scale is in balance when there is the same weight on both sides. If you then press down one side slightly, the scale swings in the other direction and swings back and forth until it is "in its middle" again. It's the same with us: When we experience a difficult phase of stress, we need a phase of regeneration to compensate in order to get back to our center. If you're always stressed, you'll eventually tip over – just like a scale where the weight is larger on one side. The same applies the other way around: If you are always looking for relaxation, you no longer have the energy to be active. For a fulfilled life, we need to alternate between tension and relaxation.
3. Harmony
   Harmony doesn't mean walking around smiling all day, "breathing away" your anger and pretending everything is fluffy. Living in harmony means living in harmony with yourself and the world around you. In music, harmony always arises when tones follow certain laws. Harmony in life arises when we follow the laws of life. That means doing the things that feel right. Things that I feel are right. Harmony therefore also means taking the time to feel into a situation. And also: taking your own perception seriously and trusting it. "Living in harmony" is therefore a process that is about trusting one's own intuition more – without switching off one's head completely.
4. Freedom
   Freedom has many meanings. For some, it means being able to do anything you want. For the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, freedom was more about not having to do what you don't want to do. For me, freedom means the realization that borders exist primarily in our heads. Freedom is a very important value for me and g I always feel unlimited freedom when I am in a magnificent nature. Then I feel "boundlessly good".
5. Self-love and self-awareness
   Self-love is probably one of the most misunderstood terms of all and is often equated with selfishness. But I believe that it is exactly the other way around: Lack of self-love is one of the main reasons for selfishness. Why? The writer Anais Nin says that we don't see the world as it is, but as we are. If I don't have (self-)love in me, I can't look at the world lovingly and perceive it as a dangerous, perhaps even hostile place. In such a world, I have to assert myself – and that leads to selfishness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and meeting them. Those who don't do this often expect others to do so – that, too, is nothing more than selfishness. Self-love only becomes selfishness when I fulfill my needs at the expense of others. Self-awareness is important in order to perceive one's own needs in the first place and to recognize what is important to me.
6. Spirituality
   For me, spirituality is closely linked to the conviction that there is not only the material, visible world, but an underlying world of energy and consciousness. It is consciousness, i.e. our thoughts, beliefs, desires and the emotions associated with them, that shapes our reality. "I consider awareness to be fundamental. I consider matter to be a derivation from consciousness," the physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Planck once said. A spiritual way of life is not in contradiction to a modern, scientific worldview, it almost inevitably results from it and, in my eyes, is also a basic need of us humans – which unfortunately is often not fulfilled in our society.
7. Respect
   A good way to find out which values play a role in your life is to look at what you can get upset about. For example, it upsets me when people behave inconsiderately – whether towards other people, animals or nature in general. The Latin word for consideration, consideration or looking back is Respectus , hence our word respect. To behave respectfully means to "consider" the interests of others. This has something to do with appreciation. But I can only show it to others if it is present in myself, i.e. if I also value myself and my concerns. This requires a healthy self-esteem, which in turn has a lot to do with self-love. Inconsiderate behavior towards others is therefore another consequence of a lack of self-love.
8. Aloha Spirit
   I had just written that a spiritual way of life is a basic need of us humans. But what exactly does it mean to have a spiritual way of life? And how can such a spiritual way of life be combined with a modern worldview? To such questions, the Huna philosophy of life, which goes back to the traditional knowledge of the ancient Hawaiians, can provide very practical and undogmatic answers. I have been dealing with the Huna philosophy for several decades now and have found a system in this fascinating view of the world that serves as a framework for orientation in the world of spirituality and with which I have had many fascinating experiences. A central component of the Huna philosophy as well as the Hawaiian attitude to life in general is the Aloha spirit. The word aloha, which is also used to greet people in Hawaii, has several layers of meaning – like many Hawaiian words. One meaning is "The Presence of the Breath" or, more loosely, "The Presence of Life". Aloha spirit in this sense means living a life that follows the basic principles of life – which in turn are a central part of the Huna philosophy. And that's exactly what I mean by a spiritual way of life.
9. Attachment
   As a biologist, I've learned that in an ecosystem, everything is connected to everything else. If you change one part of the system, it can have an impact on a completely different place. A few years after wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in the USA in the mid-1990s, it was discovered that the river's courses had changed: Due to the presence of wolves, the native elk stopped staying near the banks of the rivers and eating the bark of young trees there. The tree cover recovered, whereupon beavers returned to the rivers. They built dams, dammed rivers and created habitats for a large number of other species. Due to the presence of wolves, the rivers had changed their appearance and course – because everything is connected to everything else. Today, I firmly believe that this is not only true for the ecosystems of this earth, but that on a subtle level, everything in this universe is interconnected. In my eyes, becoming aware of this connection again is an important building block for a fulfilled life and a great help in the search for a vision for one's own life.
10. Responsibility
    We cannot control the world around us, we can only influence it. Some things we don't like, we can change, others we can't. But what we can always change is the way we react to the things in our lives. However, we can only do this if we take responsibility for our actions (and also for our reactions). Responsibility in this sense has nothing to do with being to blame for something, but means granting oneself the right in a situation to decide for oneself how to respond to a situation – in other words, how to react. This is exactly where the freedom to determine one's own life lies. "It is not what we experience, but how we feel, what we experience, that determines our fate," says the writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Taking responsibility for one's own life is therefore another central building block for a fulfilled and happy life and the prerequisite for developing a strong vision for one's own life.

And of course: lightness, joie de vivre, resilience, inner peace and serenity 🙂