To Have a Story to Tell

I chose an angel card for myself today and the card that came out was “Play”. I find myself with than quality that we call childlike many times. We indeed do forget to play – yes even during a vacation. When did we forget to play? And how?

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I have been playing and watch others playing a different kind of game – The Transformation Game lately. This game is an amazing tool to discover how we act, how we behave and respond to life. I fell in love with this game as a player and then wanted to learn how to facilitate it. That is how my trip to Findhorn got started.

I have been hearing of the Findhorn Foundation and Community in the last couple of years. I have been hearing about it with respect to Spirituality and Ecological Living and Ecological Footprints. I have been attending workshops on Sustainability and we also organized seminars to high school kids in Fethiye on Ecological Foot Prints. However, I learned about the Transformation Game, which was developed in Findhorn, for the first time last year in October. A few months later, the Turkish translation of the game was available in bookstores around the country under the name “Donusum Oyunu.”

Personal development and healing are topics very dear to my heart. I am a life coach and I am aware that we all have our unique ways of learning and digesting information. Some of us like to read, some of us would like to hear the words from a teacher. Some learn better under pressure. And some of us do learn while playing. The Transformation Game is an excellent tool to learn, about ourselves, while playing.

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What would you consider “playing”?
Do you play in life?
Did you play today?

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I have an art studio in Istanbul. For me painting is playing. I lose track of space and time when I paint and I love that feeling. I get a similar feeling when I am reading. The other day I was trying to figure out how and when I started to like reading. I couldn’t. Maybe I should ask my Mom. But I do. I do love reading.

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There is a famous Turkish author who had passed away in 1950s, Sait Faik. He surely is one of my heroes. And I discovered him when I was 13, when I saw my British math teacher reading Sait Faik in Turkish, a book called “Semaver Sarnıç”. First of all, in class he never gave us a clue that he knew Turkish and, now he was reading a book in Turkish. I was to discover this wonderful and very famous story teller in the most unusual way. One of the first things I did after started to live in Fethiye was to order a complete sets of Sait Faik’s books for my library here.

Do you ever get that feeling, the feeling of wanting to read a story again, a section of a book again, and to feel a restlessness that is hard to explain when you cannot seem to find it? I feel like that quite a lot. For that reason, I have a library in all my homes and my offices for the books that I love. And yes I do have various copies of the same books, maybe not of all, but of quite a lot of them. Why do I need to have their presence? Maybe it is to be closer with the energy of the words or of the energy of the authors. I realize that in some of my libraries I have more books on certain topics or more books of certain authors. And they are not related with the location of the library. Makes me wonder about the energy interactions we usually do not think about, but that exit.

Ah, one final note. In Sait Faik’s biography it is written: “Since Sait Faik considered writing his work, he decided to do nothing else.” Quite courageous for the 1930s in Turkey and I am so thankful and grateful to him for just doing that...

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I send you lots of love and may the books that will touch your heart appear on your journey.

Zeynep
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Angel of the Week: Patience

Affirmation of the Week:“My creative powers of imagination and my connection to all-encompassing consciousness show me the way to realize my ideas.”
Gerd Ziegler

Quote of the Week:
“Energy moves in waves. Waves move in patterns. Patterns move in rhythms. The rhythms gave me a way to map the movements of my own psyches as well as the ever-changing state of the universe.”
Gabrielle Roth

Zeynep’s Book Recommendation of the Week:
This week I have different book recommendations in English and Turkish.
In English: “Six Degrees, Our Future on a Hotter Planet” by Mark Lynas
In Turkish: “Semaver Sarnıç” by Sait Faik, with my deepest respect to the memory of this great Turkish story teller. He is one the reasons that I am writing today. May he rest in peace.

Our Big Transformaiton Game - Life

Last October I was introduced to a wonderful game called The Transformation Game. It is a game developed at Findhorn, in Scotland and I was introduced to it by Ms.Deniz Dinçel. Deniz was in Fethiye last November as a guest of the Fethiye Lions Club to give seminars in some of the high schools in Fethiye. The topic was ecological foot prints and global warming. She is a biologist by training and she is organising the eco-village design and sustainable living workshops with the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Deniz is also one of the current three certified facilitators of The Transformation Game in Turkey.

I was in Ankara in February to attend the second international workshop on Sustainable Living at METU (ODTÜ). Teachers from Findhorn, Scotland and from Torri Superiori Ecovillage in Italy were in Ankara, to share their knowledge and experiences on sustainable living and permaculture. Prof. Dr. Ali Gökmen and Prof. Dr. İnci Gökmen of the Chemistry Department of METU were the hosts of the workshop. I am very grateful for the effort and contributions to the workshop.

Sustainability was discussed from the social and ecological aspects in depth. Of course it is a very broad area; however it was a wonderful experience to share a whole week with like minded people from all around the world and Turkey. There were participants from Portugal, Israel, France and Australia. The instructors were from Turkey, Scotland and Italy. This was a confirmation for me that, in order to find solutions to global problems, we need to get together as citizens of this Earth.

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When the topic is the welfare of the planet I cannot seem to stop myself.  Maybe what we can do is very little, but we can only do what we can do…

Back toThe Transformation Game… The game has been on sale in the D&R book stores for the last 5-6 months. At least I bought mine last November after Deniz told me that the game was available in Turkish.

This game is a wonderful representation of life. We can start playing the game with an intention about life and in about five to eight hours, we can see how things will turn out or what qualities about ourselves that we need to realize, see, accept or change.

The game gives us a wonderful opportunity for self-discovery and self-awareness, and also the truer and the more sincere we are to the game, the more we benefit. It becomes, it represents a very honest and concentrated version of our life.

We learn and experience possibilities in life, without the permanent effects. After the game, we can choose to take action or not. Hard to explain.

I really recommend experiencing this game. Do not be fooled by the word “game”. The Transformation Game gives us an opportunity to learn, to grown to live the life that we desire, or whatever we truly desire.

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I was reading Neale Donald Walsch - again. My brother Yaman has been reading his books for the first time in the last few months and has been sharing with me his ideas about the books. I believe that Mr. Walsch has started a silent revolution for a happier world over a decade ago. I find his words sincere and from the heart. It has been maybe over four years since I listened to him in Istanbul. His approach to life and towards God could be worth listening to.

This week I would like to share some lines from his famous book series “Conversations with God”. So what could God be telling to us? Here it goes:

 You don’t have a clear focus; you’re not really sure what’s true for you. And the universe is just a big Xerox machine. It simply produces multiple copies of your thoughts. Now there’s only one way to change all that. You have to change your thought about it.

 Every prayer – every thought, every feeling, every statement – is creative. To the extent that it is fervently held as truth, to that degree will it be made manifest in your experience.


 We dare not solve all the problems, or there will be nothing left for us to do.

 Worry is the activity of a mind which does not understand its connection with God.

 Your perception of ultimate reality is more limited that you thought, and Truth is more unlimited than you can imagine.

 No one who has attained mastery is dull. Unusual, perhaps. Extraordinary, perhaps. But never dull.

 A true Master is not the one with the most students, but one who creates the most Masters.

 Your ideas about Right and Wrong are just that – ideas. They are the thoughts which form the shape and create the substance of Who You Are. There would be only one reason to change any of these; only one purpose in making alteration; if you are not happy with who you are.

 You have come here to work out an individual plan for your own salvation. Yet salvation does not mean saving yourself from the snares of the devil. You are saving yourself from the oblivion of non-realization.

 Why not simply acknowledge the truth when you hear it, and move towards it?

 You are not on this planet to produce anything with your body. You are on this planet to produce something with your soul. Your body is simply and merely the tool of your soul.

 The more you are, the more you can become, and the more you can become, the more you can yet be.

 There is no coincidence, and nothing happens “by accident.”

 You misunderstand your power. I tell you this: Your life proceeds out of you intentions for it.

 I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens?

 A true teacher is not the one with the most knowledge, but one who causes the most others to have knowledge.

 Nothing occurs in your life - nothing – which is not first a thought. Thoughts are like magnets, drawing effects to you.

 Be patient. You are gaining wisdom.

 Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation.

 You must first see yourself as worthy before you can see another as worthy. You must first see yourself as blessed before you can see another as blessed. You must first know Self to be holy before you can acknowledge holiness in another.

 You can know yourself to be generous, but unless you do something which displays generosity, you have nothing but a concept. You can know yourself to be kind, but unless you do someone a kindness, you have nothing but an idea about yourself.

 The soul – your soul – knows all there is to know all the time. There is nothing hidden to it, nothing unknown. Yet knowing is not enough. The soul seeks to experience.

 Treating others with love does not necessarily mean allowing others to do as they wish.

 God asks that you include yourself among those you love.


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May your life be what you truly desire.

With love and light,
Z.


Affirmation of the Week:“Peace comes from remembering that only love is real.”
By Doreen Virtue

Quote of the Week:
“Lovers find secret places
Inside this violent world
Where they make transactions
With beauty.”
Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi

Zeynep’s Book Recommendation:“Sincerity and Truth – The Life Story of Meishusama” by Gerard Rohlfing

Seminars on Global Warming in Fethiye

The Fethiye Lions Club organised seminars in four high schools in Fethiye (Mugla) on the 15th and 16th of November, 2007. The seminars were for the 9th graders of eight high schools of Fethiye. Industrial Engineer Zeynep Kocasinan, Bioligist Deniz Dincel and Agricultural Engineer Kerziban Arikan discussed various aspects of "Global Warming" and "Ecological Footprint".