Today it is Sunflower Seeding Day or simply Seeding Day. It marks the beginning of a new cycle for the Gamma Tao.
Through the year there are three celebrations and one week of reflection.
Seeding Day is a good moment to set good intentions for the coming year. After a few days these intentions may become New Year’s resolutions.
The next celebration is Gamma Day on the first of April. Gamma Day is the most important celebration of the year. On this day the seeds planted in our mind have started to germinate and are beginning to take shape.
The third celebration is Sunflower Day and is celebrated on 21st of June around Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year on the Northern hemisphere and the beginning of Summer. It is a day to celebrate human flourishing, because the seeds have now become mature.
Hopefully this flourishing will continue for a long time. Apology Week is the next activity on the Gamma Tao agenda. It is a week of reflection and fasting just before Winter Solstice (14-20 December) and a great occasion to work the soil and prepare it for another new cycle.
I have been celebrating these days and observing Apology Week for several years now and they have become increasingly meaningful.
The three celebrations correspond to three important moments for the Gamma Tao: the intention to formulate my ideas on philosophy and religion (Seeding Day), the conception of the Gamma path (Gamma Day) and the launch of this website (Sunflower Day).
In this way the Gamma Tao has become a personal cult for me.
This is very similar to the way human cultures develop through time. Rituals and celebrations like these give us something to hold on to during the year.
At the same time we have to distinguish between particular cultural practices and the underlying universal values of our traditions. In most religions these two aspects have become so intertwined that they are almost indistinguishable.
There is no necessity to follow these Gamma Tao traditions. All the forms and rituals of the Gamma Tao are only handles for the universal values they represent. It is more important to embody these values in everyday life.
Eight years ago on this day all pieces of the puzzle came together to form the Gamma Tao symbol. As from that moment I knew I was on to something that was going to be a lasting part of my spiritual life.
In recent years on Gamma Day I planned short pilgrimages to places with a special spiritual significance like the Pantheon in Rome, a temple dedicated to all the gods. This is the second consecutive year that due to the pandemic I stay at home.
Last year I wrote how the Gamma Tao can help to increase resilience during the pandemic. Resilience is fundamental to the practice of the Gamma Tao. I really believe that the Gamma Tao has helped me to keep my spirits up last year.
Gamma Day is the most important celebration of the year for the Gamma Tao. It can even be extended to five days until the global celebration of Golden Rule Day on April 5th. The Golden Rule is one of the three treasures of the Gamma Tao. This year the sequence is even more special, because these days include Christian Easter celebrations as well.
It may seem a little pretentious to talk about Gamma Day like this. After all, the Gamma Tao is probably the youngest and tiniest spiritual “tradition” in the world. In fact, I am pretty sure that I am the only one celebrating Gamma Day right now.
It may feel like a joke on April’s Fools Day.
Actually, it is quite auspicious that Gamma Day and April’s Fools Day are on the same day. There is plenty of space for a smile on Gamma Day. Many great traditions are taken so seriously by extreme adherents that they regard it as the one and only absolute path to truth, to the exclusion of all other wisdom traditions.
The Gamma Tao is completely different. It is only a starting path. It truly recognises the value of all wisdom traditions. In fact, it leads to all of them. It is a path that encourages everyone to explore other wisdom traditions in order to come closer to transcendental love, truth and beauty.
During the past eight years my own daily practice has become to explore all great wisdom traditions of humanity, while constantly minding the basics of the Gamma Tao.
On religious holidays people tell each other the same stories every year. The Gamma Tao is my basic personal religion, so every year on Sunflower Seeding Day I tell myself how on 12 December 2012 I woke up in the middle of the night with the clear intention to write a book.
Over Christmas I had visited my father in the hospital. We were still unaware that he was terminally ill. Leaving the hospital I started asking myself questions about the use of all the philosophical and spiritual books I had been reading over the years. If they were not useful in such a moment of crisis, did they have any value at all?
My father and mother divorced when I was about 5 years old. Growing up in two different households contributed to my desire for harmony and aversion towards unsurmountable divisions. As a student in Rome I experienced a kind of spiritual awakening when I read Heraclitus’ ideas about the harmony of opposites.
That night of 12 December 2012 I had a vision to bring new life and harmony into all religions and philosophies.
I recognise now that it was quite a grandiose idea. In the middle of the night you can easily become detached from ordinary reality. When similar high spirited ideas arise in my mind, my own critical thinking usually brings them back to the ground soon enough. This time, however, the illness of my father had created a sense of urgency. It felt like now or never. I am still amazed how in the following weeks all the pieces of the puzzle magically fell together into what has now become the Gamma Tao.
All this time the Gamma Tao continues to be a great source of inspiration and support for me. It captures the essence of what I believe is important in all the wisdom traditions that I have studied and it has opened my mind to many others.
If there was some spark of missionary fervour in the original vision to harmonise all wisdom traditions, this has now receded well into the background. I feel a strong connection with the interfaith movement, but I am not actively promoting the Gamma Tao in any way.
The Gamma Tao is composed of perennial and universal insights, but it remains very personal and intimate. It will never be institutionalised. That would create only more division. Instead of becoming something new, the Gamma Tao is intended to inspire people to become active within their own traditions.
I like to think of the Gamma Tao as a silent γ, a consonant that does not need to be pronounced. A silent breath of fresh air.
As stated on the introduction page everyone can consider oneself a γHumanist, γTaoist, γChristian, γBuddhist, γMuslim, γJewish, γHindu, γPagan, γAtheist or any combination of these and other wisdom traditions by simply minding the minimal principles of the Gamma Tao.
Anyway, Sunflower Seeding Day is a great day to plant some fresh ideas and intentions in your mind, so in the coming days they can germinate into New Year’s resolutions.
While I will continue to celebrate this special day for me today, I wish everybody already a Happy New Year!
It is a day to celebrate the launch of this website, exactly five years ago.
It is a day dedicated to human flourishing and diversity.
In the last five years this website and the Gamma Tao itself have continued to evolve. Its pace, however, has been rather slow, much slower than I intended at the beginning. Back then I even had missionary ideas on how the Gamma Tao could bring more unity to our divided human world.
In recent years the focus has gradually shifted from this external mission to my own personal growth.
External mission
The external mission is still alive. More than ever than ever humanity needs to find common ground to face the huge challenges of this age. While technology is connecting us more and more, we seem to become hopelessly divided. Strong opinions matter more than open mindedness. The willingness to listen to each other’s point of view is fading.
This website is not a place to make strong statements or affirm personal opinions. It is strictly dedicated to the Gamma Tao, a dynamic model or symbol, a wisdom compass based on universal principles. Nothing more and nothing less.
Personal growth
I would love to have more time and means to build a better, more sophisticated platform for the Gamma Tao, but even then I already have enough work to do to fully integrate its fundamental principles into the practice of my own daily personal life.
Next to this, I spend a lot of time transcending the Gamma Tao by freely exploring all wisdom traditions. The Gamma Tao is an excellent starting point for such explorations. It offers a solid common ground to stand on. It is like a spiritual safety belt.
The Gamma Tao helps me to get a better understanding of wisdom traditions. These days it is leading me towards a new appreciation of the Christian Trinity.
I am becoming ever more interested in debates on the nature of human consciousness. It will probably take some time before I get my head around the hard problems that are often discussed at the quantum level. I would love to write about this here one day.
Events around the world
One of the best things the Gamma Tao has brought into my life in the last five years is the discovery of many interesting events that take place around the world.
Due to the Corona Pandemic many of these events have moved to the digital domain. In the last months I have been able to attend several online events like Wisdom in Times of Crisis by Science and Nonduality (SAND), HowTheLightGetsIn and the Rebel Wisdom Festival.
Thanks to the non local quality of the internet, you can now be in different places at the same time!
If the Gamma Tao had developed into a community or organisation, it would probably be a partner now. This initiative expresses exactly the external mission I had in mind five years ago.
The fact that Sunflower Day coincides with World Unity Week is for me an extra reason for celebration.
This week the UN Interfaith Harmony Week is observed for the 10th consecutive year. All over the world people with different religious backgrounds are invited to hold interfaith events and reach out to each other.
Since one of the objectives of the Gamma Tao is to build bridges and create more harmony among religions and life philosophies I fully support this initiative. Last year I proposed to exchange or offer sunflower seeds as a symbolic act during these interfaith encounters. In my enthusiasm I even submitted this idea to the platform of the World Interfaith Harmony Week.
It was just an idea and not a real event, so it did not qualify.
I still believe it is a nice and simple symbolic idea that could help to increase the awareness of the Interfaith Harmony Week.
Exactly seven years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a determination to write a book about religion and philosophy. It was the seed for what a few months later became the Gamma Tao.
It was a moment of exaltation. I was full of ideas and felt an urgency like never before to put them out to the world. I thought my ideas could contribute to interfaith harmony, restore wisdom traditions that had fallen into disrepute and even make the natural world a little sacred again.
Nothing of this happened.
The world seems more divided than ever. The reputation of wisdom traditions has not improved at all and our relation with nature is turning more and more into an existential crisis.
I also did not write a book (yet). Instead I built a website that on a day to day basis does not receive many visitors. I am not actively promoting it either. Only occasionally I find the time to post something.
So, what is there to celebrate?
A lot, actually.
Since that 27 December in 2012 the Gamma Tao has been an almost magical journey for me.
In little more than three months my ideas for a book merged into one unifying symbol. I am still amazed by the way the Gamma Tao developed itself in my mind. And it continues to evolve to the present day.
The Gamma Tao started as one unified theoretical symbol. A few years later it also got a practical form. This year the Gamma Tao expanded even further, going beyond itself with a vision on the lights of higher spiritual paths (the “Gamma Trinity”) on the one hand and the shadows of excessive behaviour (the “Lambda Path”) on the other.
I still believe that the Gamma Tao can be useful to others. It is basic, open, visual, non-dogmatic, practical and easy to understand. It is compatible with wisdom and scientific traditions. I cannot think of a better tool to start a wisdom journey.
Compared to other attempts to integrate wisdom traditions, it is also unique in its modesty. It is only a lower path. The γ is like a silent consonant. It is seldom pronounced. The Gamma Tao does not replace anything and yet it can support everything.
Anything loud and new would only create more division, while we just need a basic connection that underlies our flourishing diversity.
While there has been limited resonance from the outside world, the Gamma Tao now really flourishes inside of me.
The Gamma Tao has turned out to be exactly what I need for my own personal development. Its values and principles are a daily source of inspiration and, more than that, it continues to lead me to new sources of inspiration. The Gamma Tao even helps me to go through difficult moments.
In religion and philosophies of life I have always been a free spirit. I grew up as an Atheist. As a student I started to consider myself an “Epicurean Stoic”. After a spiritual awakening during a study year in Italy I became a “spiritual humanist” and later, when I started to explore Eastern traditions, I often called myself a “Socratic Buddhist”.
All these traditions still resonate with me, but the Gamma Tao has opened me up to so much more. My aversion for the Abrahamic traditions has disappeared and the wisdom of Indigenous traditions inspires me more and more.
Thanks to the Gamma Tao I am open and better prepared to leave the intellectual comfort zone of sceptical rationalism and freely explore spirituality.
At the same time my interest in the natural sciences has grown.
The Gamma Tao supports all this. It is a perfect way to develop spiritual, emotional and rational intelligence.
Thanks to the Gamma Tao, my personal wisdom journey has become more interesting and profound. I have read more books, listened to more lectures and attended more events on religion, science and philosophy than ever before.
Two highlights were my visit to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto in 2018 and the Science And Nonduality (SAND) Conference in San José this year. I am also very glad to have discovered the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival. I attended the last four editions of this philosophy festival in Hay-on-Wye and London. I am already looking forward to the next edition.
As I try to absorb all the information I receive during these activities, I become more and more aware of how little I know and how much there still is to discover from the limited perspective of a free spirit in a gigantic universe.
My wisdom journey may seem very eclectic and superficial. It is a kind of criticism that is often used against free spirits that do not stick to a particular tradition, but I do not just pick and choose what I like. The Gamma Tao and its values are coherent and dynamic. They give me direction and strengthen my commitment to explore in depth various spiritual and philosophical paths.
The Gamma Tao offers me a stable common ground to keep my balance while I climb the heights of multiple wisdom traditions.
In these seven years the Gamma Tao has really become my basic personal religion or philosophy of life. In the end religion is something deeply personal. My own inner wisdom journey is at least as important as any external success the Gamma Tao may or may not have in the future.
Apart from this, I think that any personal religion or philosophy should always be grounded in universal values. It is something different than a set of opinions.
The Gamma Tao is both personal and universal. Tailor-made for me, ready-made for others. Its values set a standard that also challenge me. I am often not grateful enough, my compassion still needs to grow and sometimes my behaviour is excessive. I am not a saint, nor a guru. I am not perfect.
The Gamma Tao is also not perfect. “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen). And yet, the way it came to be was some kind of magic.
Enough reasons for a celebration.
The Gamma Tao needs a few rituals. Apology Week has become a meaningful tradition and I observed it also this year. Gamma Day on the April 1st remains the most important day to celebrate the Gamma Tao, but without a seed no sunflower.
This website remains open like a temple. Visitors and fellow travellers are always welcome.
At this moment I am inside the Pantheon in Rome. I am on a pilgrimage visiting a few holy places. It is Gamma Day today.
Exactly six years ago the conception of γ symbol was complete in my mind. It was really an eureka moment for me in which everything seemed to fall into place. Ever since April 1st is a day of celebration for me.
The Pantheon is the holiest place of my personal pilgrimage today. This magnificent monument represents perfectly the idea of harmony that lies at the heart of the Gamma Tao:
harmony between religions: this temple was originally dedicated to all the gods (from Greek Πάνθειον, Pantheion: “of all the gods”)
harmony between church and state: apart from the fact that it is a church now, the first two secular kings of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, are also buried here
harmony between man and nature, in this case through art, symbolised by the tomb of the famous Renaissance maestro Raphael, that says:
“Here lies Raphael, by whom Nature herself feared to be outdone while he lived, and when he died, feared that She herself would die”
Apology Week comes to a close today. Since I posted the picture above on December 15th, I refrained from several pleasures, like sweets, entertainment and music, ate mostly vegan food and meditated about collective guilt. After three years Apology Week has now become a more or less established personal tradition. It is a part of the Gamma Tao and, just like the Gamma Tao itself, it is always open for others. It would certainly help my own practice of Apology Week, if other people would join next year. It is a bit awkward to observe a period of fasting nobody knows about. Especially during a week in which all kinds of Christmas sweets are already coming your way. It is hard to refuse them and even more complicated to explain why.On the other hand the timing of Apology Week is perfect. It leads right towards Winter Solstice and precedes all the religious celebrations from the Northern Hemisphere that are related to the return of light. Apology Week has become a very meaningful tradition for me. I even believe it has some potential beyond my own personal Gamma Tao. To my knowledge there is nothing like Apology Week in this world. A tradition of collective regret could help to improve relations between human beings. Apology Week addresses a lot of suffering that exists in the world, both in the present and from the past. Apology Week in its present personal form is not about reconciliation. I do not go out and apologise to people. Apology Week is about collective guilt, not personal guilt. In our interconnected world we do not have to play an active role in order to be part of something bad. In some cases we contribute only a very small part to a bigger problem, in other cases others may do or did the dirty work for us. Apology Week is for me a way to recognise that I have a share in the suffering that, along with all the good things, my species, my nation, my tribe or any other group that I am a part of or related to, has done in this world. It is most of all a mental practice to develop a deeper environmental awareness and more empathy. Apology Week is still a personal tradition in development. My own practice of it last week was still far from perfect. For next year I plan to collect stories, films and other materials that can help me focus better on the themes of the day. Especially here participation of others could help. It would be nice to receive dedicated guided meditations. This week I realised that a form of Tonglen meditation could be helpful for the purposes of Apology Week.
Today it is five years ago that the gamma symbol was completed and became a guiding compass in my life. For the rest of my life I will probably celebrate the first day of April as Gamma Day.
After five years this celebration has already become a fixed ritual of my personal religion. The word religion means different things to different people and I know that this can create a lot of misunderstanding. Here religion stands for the way we reconnect (Lat.: religare) in our minds to our universal origin. The Gamma Tao is also a personal philosophy. The main objective of this philosophy (philo- “loving” + sophia “wisdom”) is to create a wisdom mindset.
For me religion and philosophy have become two sides of the same coin.
On this day I always try to visit a special place. Two years ago I was in Delphi and last year I visited the Pantheon in Rome. This year I went to the Spinoza museum in Rijnsburg. The famous Dutch philosopher Spinoza had interesting ideas about how we are all connected to the substance of the universe and the way emotions, reason and intuition shape our perception of life. He had also much to say about freedom of speech.
It is of course also Easter today.
Actually, 5 years ago, when the gamma symbol took its final form, it was Easter as well. Since then there has been a special connection in my mind between Gamma Day and Easter. In fact, the Gamma helped me to obtain a deeper understanding of the spiritual meaning of Easter and to see Christianity in a new light.
Wisdom has many sources. The Gamma Tao is a key to all wisdom traditions.
Exactly five years ago I woke up in the early morning with the urge to write a book on religion and philosophy. I did not write a book, but this “awakening” was the seed for this website and the Gamma Tao.
That is why December 27th has become a special day for me.
It is “Sunflower Seed Day“.
Sunflower Seed Day is a day to plant new ideas and initiatives in your head. The timing is perfect for New Year’s resolutions.
This year Sunflower Seed Day is even more special, because I just finished a complete revision of the basic texts on this website.
