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JOURNAL 2011 Monday, January 10, 2011 2:13 PM Violence in Tucson, Curing Violence I would say that the cause of violence is the Greatest Lie, that words hurt people. When people believe this lie they hold back their truth or their frustrations until that frustration comes to an explosion of violence. The cure to violence is to confront the lie that words hurt people and thereby encourage people to speak out or vent their frustration, pain and suffering. If someone is speaking out with hatred then the compassionate heart will listen until they can hear the wound or hurt within that person and they will address that hurt or the delusions that cause that hurt. This shooting here has captivated my thinking since it happened. I again am looking at “what can I do to help” and again I have seen things, particularly today on my hike up the mountain overlooking the mall where the shooting happened. I have even been talking to people who know or knew some of the victims. This is very real stuff for me right now. As I was sitting on the top of the mountain again my mind went to what caused this violence? The government solution is always more guns, more cops to protect us from the crazies with the guns or bombs or knives or whatever. To me this is a stupid solution, we have to look to what the real problem is, not cover it up with the band-aid of police protection. The way to Cure Violence is to look at why any person would want to harm another. I have found that people who are able to express themselves, to vent their frustration or hurt in a peaceful way will not use violence. The most violent societies are those that discourage free expression and in freer societies the most violent people tend to be “quiet, shy type” who never speaks out. When frustrations and hurts never get expressed or vented it builds up until it explode in violence. I have found that those who are most silent are those who have been taught that words hurt people, which is what I call The Greatest Lie. It is the fear of hurting others or being hurt with words that keeps people silent and ensures this type of violence. If those who believe this lie don’t explode in violence then they turn their hurt or rage inward on themselves until they make themselves very sick. I am very passionate about confronting this Greatest Lie. I was imagining I was at the shopping center when the shooting occurred, what would I do? The first thing to do in that kind of situation is to stop further damage from being done. So I would have confronting the shooter. After that was taken care of then I would have addressed the injury of those hurt by the shooter; stop the bleeding where I can. Next I would stop the further damage that was being done by how people were reacting emotionally to the thought of the violence, getting people to calm down, breathe deeply and relax. The emotional trauma is the longest lasting damage to any event like this and most people have NO idea how to address that; psychologist are really only have primitive understanding of how to deal with this. But this progression is important to this writing project here. First thing to do is STOP further damage from being done. To me that means to confront the Greatest Lie and those who perpetuate that lie. This is a major step toward solving this problem. In my personal effort to overcoming the world’s ability to push my buttons or cause me any emotional injury I kept reminding myself of the truth with this mantra, “Words cannot harm me, only my reactions can cause me harm.” This mantra itself is really all a person needs to get free, although the other steps sure do help. So when it comes to structure of this book I really do want
to confront this Greatest Lie first and foremost, and
I want to confront those aspects of society that encourage or perpetuate this
Greatest Lie. We can Cure Violence, but it takes courage and a commitment to first being honest without ourselves and then with others. We have to be honest with ourselves that it is not people’s words that hurt us, but our reactions to those words that cause us harm. Then we have to be honest with those around us and not tell them we are sorry for hurting them by being honest with them, but remind them that they have the power over words whenever they choose to be honest with themselves. As this honesty grows in our world then violence will
diminish. Until then we will only have
conflicts and violence. Friday, January 14, 2011 5:21 PM Letter to Tucson and America I was at the memorial last night here in Tucson for the victims of the shooting last weekend. It was sad to see very little mention of the one person who was most responsible for all of us being there. I am, of course, referring to the one who demonstrated that he did not know love when he shot those people on the Saturday morning: Jared Loughner. America failed Jared. We failed to show him what love is, for if Jared had known love he would have had no interest in shooting anyone. Last night there was no mention of even the first step in demonstration to Jared that we know love, that first step being forgiveness. We cannot love another if we cannot even love ourselves. And it is not love to ourselves to hold on to anger or animosity toward anyone. We are learning that many times Jared cried out to those around him, even Congresswoman Gabriele Gifford, in an effort to be shown what love is. we, as individuals, as a community of Tucson, and as a nation failed to respond by demonstrating love. To forgive Jared and others like him is not just for Jared’s sake but because we love ourselves enough to not want to hold on to that anger or animosity toward him or anyone. Thi is what Jared never learned, to let go of the wrath, bitterness, anger and animosity that he felt toward Congresswoman Gifford and others. Jared did not learn this because no one showed him that they could love themselves enough to even forgive themselves. Jared is not the first of his kind nor will he be the last
unless we can start to demonstrate what love really is. A recent President once called for “a
gentler, kinder nation”, which is a good step.
Maybe it is time for us to become a nations of
lovers and a light to the world again. But that would mean we would have to focus more of our
attention on love and less on making money.
Monday, January 17, 2011 3:18 PM Idolatry: Tear down their images, destroy their idols. Christians put Jesus up on a pedestal so far that nobody could see him anymore. I had to tear him down off that pedestal so that I could follow him. To tear him down as I said to myself, “Jesus did not use toilet paper, which made me look at him as a human being, before he was deified by his followers. Fear of God: Be still and know that I am God. We fear being still that we might hear the still small voice within us that today we call our conscience. It is those who have faith in that still small voice within who will find the kingdom of heaven that is AT HAND as Jesus talked about. The fear of the judgment of ‘God’ is the fear of our own conscience, which is why some people cannot be still for they fear their own conscience, that still small voice within. Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:06 AM Consequences: what are the consequences of NEVER seeing yourself as Spirit/God? If you never give yourself the rest and peace of not being an individual that is separate then you will constantly be creating tension within yourself. This tension eventually manifests as ‘dis-ease’; mental, emotional, physical, social and even environmental disease. Holy Health: Why Jesus’ Democratic God is Healthier then the God of Abraham. Jesus very clearly distinguished the differences between his Father and the Father of the Pharisees & Sadducees, even the Father of the Pharisee called Saul of Taurus, who changed his name to Paul and called himself an apostle. Jesus’ image of God was very different than the image of God that the conservative religious people of his time had. [Jesus’ Democratic God; and why it is holier/healthier than the God of Abraham.] [start the article out by talking about the universal language of health to talk about things of the spirit. Use the quote from Obama.] We need a rigorous debate about our traditions and ways. Then we should evaluate the model or theology of the various traditions using this language of health. For instance, Jesus saw some problems with the model of God that was created by Abraham, so he came up with a new model, which he called his Father. And this model for God is different than even the model of his followers, particularly Paul, who still subscribed to the model of God that Abraham created. Those who created Christianity followed the model of Abraham and not the model of Jesus. We use our models of God as a method to fit ourselves in our world, so that we can have an understanding of where we fit in the universe. What is the model of our inter relations within ourselves and within our social relationships, with issues such as life and death and morality. Idolatry: all theology is a form of idolatry. And yet for the unawakened, undeveloped mind idolatry is a necessary tool or step. Just as a person has an idea in their mind of a house they are going to build, and they may put it down on paper before they start building it, we do the same in our psychological and emotional world. We build a world on paper of what we THINK we want and we call it theology or scripture and we try to apply that to the real world. This is not the purest way to function but it is the way we do function at the stage of development most of humanity is at at this time. Democratic God: Jesus God model was non hierarchical and distributive. There is or was no structure that would enable slavery to exist, even the form of slavery most common today. In an autocratic society it is a top down ruler, the king or dictator, and basically everyone else is a slave, and the leader dictates to society how things are going to be run in that society. Because of this ridged structure the society is not able to adjust quickly to changing situation. Because an autocratic society is very slow to react they usually resist any type of change and are therefore very conservative. We learn in business school that when you are in a very dynamic environment you want to lower the decision making process to the lowest level, closest to the actually situation. For environments where it is pretty stagnet autocratic structures work best. In today’s very dynamic environment most people recognize that decentralized decision make processes are best to serve the needs of society. The Abrahamic model for society is that there is one ruler, God, and all worldly rulers get their authority from that one God. It is autocratic in nature and inefficient in nature, not serving the needs of humanity but does serve the needs of the ruling classes who are appointed positions of privilege and want to keep it. Hence, the ruling classes will always promote the Abrahamic model of society.\ Jesus recognized the unhealthy, unholy nature of this autocratic model for society and offered a more democratic model in his/OUR Father and that we are all one with this Father and one with one another. Any model for society that creation division or classes of people will only create dis-ease in the society and is therefore unhealthy/unholy. Jesus’ model is one of a more loving deity that is he to serve us and not we are here to serve him and those He appoints over us. As Jesus said, “I and my Father are one,” and “If you have known me you have known my Father.” Then he went on to say, “I come to serve and not be served.” Jesus Father/God or model puts all of us as part of that God, and we are all part of the decision making process. This model takes the power out of the hands of the elite and distributes it to all humanity. So peoples and societies that still embrace the autocratic model for God and society tend to be very conservative and have a diminished quality of their life experience. These people live in fear of this tyrannical ruler/God and his appointed human rulers. These people believe that governments are here to have dominion over the people instead of the people having dominion over the governments. And if it is not the government’s job to have dominion then it is the elite ruling classes that can and should use the government to have dominion over the masses. Spirit is undifferentiated reality. Jesus’ way was so simple compared to the complexity of the Pharisees and Sadducees, which creates confusion in the minds of the masses. This complexity is part of Paul’s way of thinking and part of the strategy to confuse the people so as to make them pliable or susceptible to easy manipulation. Confusion darkens the mind and destroys the light or quality of the life experience. Confusion creates a lot of fear which is a dis-ease in the mind that will manifest into the body and into society. Jesus’ way was to keep things simple as it is for children; be like the children to enter the kingdom of heaven. What motivates a person to be attracted to a different idea of God? Why would someone be attracted to the mean, vengeful God of the Old Testament? And why would other people be drawn to the images of God that is loving and kind? Others might be drawn to the Hindu idea of God while still others fully reject any idea of God. We can see that if a person is raised in a mean and vengeful family and society then their habit would be to go toward that which is familiar, a mean and vengeful God. If a person was raised in a kind and loving environment then their habit would be to be drawn to a more loving and kind image of God. We want to see a God out there that reflects us, for we want to our God as made in our image. If you were the oldest sibling in your family there might have been the requirement for you to have control over your other siblings at times, and if the only way you knew how to do that was with force and intimidation then you would want to see your God as one that uses the same methods to justify your own use of these methods. Title: Grow Your Courage The Value of Mysticism As there are more and more people on this planet there are going to be more challenges for humanity to deal with. There will be more complexities and competition for increasing limited resources. The law of supply and demand dictates that as we have more people on the planet there will be less appreciation for those people; human life will become cheaper and cheaper. Those who are able to deal with this increased competition and complexities, which are able to be flexible and flow or adapt to these changes, they will be the ones to survive and thrive in the future. Those who resist change will be the ones who will perish. Those who cling to old and outdated philosophies, theologies, organizations and social structures will not be able to adapt quickly enough with the increased dynamic environment they will find themselves in. These will be the ones “left behind” in the coming turmoil. Who will be the strongest and most capable of handling this turmoil; the mystics of the world. The mystics are the ones who are the most comfortable with the unknowns of the world. They don’t have to have any structure or philosophy or theology to guide them, they just allow the Spirit to guide them directly, without needing to know what to do or where to go. The mystic has practiced being comfortable with the unknown. The others, the religious, the conservatives or those who believe the institutions will save them, they will struggle and perish. They will cling to those philosophies and theologies like people clinging to the deck of the Titanic. Einstein says that problems cannot be solved at the level at
which they are created. Thursday, January 20, 2011 9:59 AM God is a mythological character created by immature people to justify a paradigm of slavery of the masses. Ronald Reagan was right when he said that government is not the answers to our problems, but he was wrong when he said that government is the problem. Government is not the problem it is those of us who VOTE for government or who support government by paying taxes and those of us who believe in governments who are the problem. WE have created or manifested this government into our world and we support and perpetuate its existence. We are the ones creating the problems and we are our own worst enemies and we can solve this problem ourselves within ourselves. The answer to this problem is not in institutionalizing force and aggression that we call government. The answer is in education, what is being done right now. And why don’t more people stand up and speak out? I say it is because they are afraid, they are afraid of the criticism, judgment and rejection that will come at them for their outspokenness. And what they are really afraid of is themselves and their REACTIONS to that criticism, judgment and rejection. And until we overcome our fear of ourselves that problem will persist. Relationship to God: no matter how one defines the concept of God, even the atheist will define this concept as a very big idea, much greater than their ‘self’. When we think about ‘growing’, particularly growing spiritually we are talking about growing in our definition of our ‘self’ until that self becomes one with Self or God, which again is a very big idea. As our self expands it starts to include all the other aspects of self that we call ‘others’. Unconditional Love:
Religions always talk about conditional love, which is inferior to
unconditional love. Conditional love has
some requirement before there can be forgiveness, mercy, compassion or
love. Religions create an idea of God
that is based on the inferior idea of conditional love
and justice. A perfect God would not
base their love on justice but would have no foundation for love. A perfect God would have perfect,
unconditional forgiveness, mercy and love.
So the God of Abraham, the Jewish, Christian
and Islamic God is not a perfect God and therefore is an inferior God. Monday, January 24, 2011 9:33 AM
Monday, January 24, 2011 1:56 PM Dreams are for people who are sleeping. The people who believe in the American Dream
are asleep want to acquire the wealth of the world because they believe that
money can buy them things that will bring them happiness, joy, love, peace and
freedom. People who
are asleep dream of relationships, family and friends that will bring them
happiness, joy and love. This
belief is, of course, a lie that if exposed for what it is will bring down the
whole slave support structure that supports people believing these lies. Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:26 PM As I said before, for the religious to dare to even look at
any point of view that is outside of what their little religion says, by that I
mean their particular church, would mean they would have to expose themselves
to something that... might refute their little religion's beliefs. If they did that and saw that the foundations of their
beliefs were lies they would lose respect for their traditions. BUT, and this is a very BIG BUT, if they did that then
their whole emotional support structure, which is based on those lies, would
crumble. And because they have stored their treasures
here on earth in their families, churches, scriptures and community they feel
they would be of a total loss without that support structure.
The Antichrist (Christianity) teaches that they should resist the evil one (James 4:7) while Jesus (the one they call Christ) teaches the exact opposite "Resist NOT the evil one." (Matt 5:39). Because their tradition discourages them from questioning the authority of the church or the bible their minds are not sharp, they have been dumbed down to the point that they cannot see the stupidity of what their Antichrist teaches them. And now they are so miserable in their own lives they don't even care to look at the truth that will set them free to enjoy and love all that life has to offer. This radically transformation of thinking, repenting, is what Jesus called them to do so that they could find the kingdom of heaven that is AT HAND, here, now, today. But because the church has destroyed their faith they don't think there is any chance of them finding it in this life. The only thing that keeps them going is the hope for a life after death in heaven. Friday, January 28, 2011 4:16 PM Title: The Power of Honesty Tuesday, February 01, 2011 2:41 PM The power of story comes to my mind again today. My story of how I overcame the world and its ability to push my buttons. Therefore a new frame of reference in writing my book might be: How I OVERCAME THE WORLD and it ability to push my buttons. Saturday, February 12, 2011 9:29 AM Title: Look, Think, Live: Outside the Boxes Saturday, February 12, 2011 2:59 PM What I Want: I want
POWER, worldly power to help other people find what they want. It is my impression that all people want
happiness, joy, love, peace and freedom.
So I want to have the power to help them find
this. Wednesday, March 02, 2011 9:25 AM One of the values of the concept of God is that if the clergy can get people to believe that ‘God’ can only be reached in their place of worship then people will feel a need to go to that place of worship to be ‘close to God’. And those who hold the keys to that place of worship can make money off the people’s perceived need to get close to God. But if God is only a concept that
anyone can access from any location then those clergy will lose their
business. Hence, the clergy have no
desire for people to actually know what God is, for
they will lose their business. Sunday, March 20, 2011 1:40 PM Stupid Jesus quotes: render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s. But everything is
God’s so there is nothing one should give to the government. Tuesday, April 05, 2011 3:27 PM I don’t consider myself a
writer. I consider myself an asshole and
want to write or teach other people on how to deal with assholes like me, since
the world is full of people like me. We
can run and hide in our isolation chambers we call home or we can deal our
reactions to what people say by overcoming the world and its ability to push
our buttons. Thursday, April 07, 2011 11:14 AM Title: Guru Busting A documentary about a man who impersonates an Indian guru
and builds a following of real people in the Southwest. Premiering
at SXSW 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4vCvOVYyWE&NR=1 Part 1
interview of actor & producer Tuesday, April 12, 2011 12:42 PM From Anna at OpenAwareness: spirit
of evolutionary enlightenment Thursday, April 14, 2011 1:26 PM “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein So the problems created by religion cannot
be solved by religious people, for they cannot see that they are part of
the problem. To rise above the tribal
perspective one must first leave that perspective by no
longer identifying as a member of any tribe, like a religion. Monday, April 18, 2011 12:02 PM Religion is for people who cannot handle reality. Wednesday, April 20, 2011 11:00 AM Book: Daniel Goleman - Social
Intelligence Wednesday, April 20, 2011 1:20 PM Responding verses reacting to what the world is offering. Saturday, April 30, 2011 9:42 AM I see that there are two perspectives out there on how to deal with social problems. Let us take the situation where some people tyrannize others with guns in a society. The prevailing theory is that society is more peaceful when everyone is equal. One solution is to disarm those with the guns and thus, in theory, making them as equals to everyone else. The other solution is to arm everyone else and again, in theory, to make everyone equal to everyone else. Disarming everyone in a society has been tried and has never worked; at least some people, such as criminals and governments, will always find a way to acquire guns and thus maintain an imbalance. Arming everyone has its challenges too, for even if some people have a gun they are too cowardly to actually use it to defend themselves or others. If the people are all armed then they can band together to protect one another, the power being with the people. If the government and criminals are the ones armed then the power will be with the government (and criminals) and they will naturally use that to abuse the people. This is not about the ownership of guns, but about solutions to social problems; do we empower the masses or disempower those who are taking advantage of the disempowered masses? It would seem the framers of the Bill of Rights thought that it was better to empower the people by giving them the right to own guns. Yet, those who have advantages over others do not easily give up that advantage. So they use the institutions at hand, church and state, religion and government, to disempower the masses and thus keep their privileged status of empowerment. I can see this being played out in the world of school bullying. Those who want to disempower the bullies are on the side of the ruling classes that want to maintain their privileged status as ones who subtly use the weakness of the masses to bully them into submission. But there are others who want to empower the masses to overcome the power of others to bully them. And those ‘others’ that bully them would include the ruling classes. This latter perspective would disempower the bullies and the
ruling classes and take away their privileged status of dominion over
others. Naturally
they will resist this idea. Saturday, April 30, 2011 1:11 PM courage = Andreia in Greek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism Tuesday, May 03, 2011 7:05 PM Title: Beyond God; why God works and why we don’t need God anymore. Monday, May 09, 2011 4:32 PM I once heard a story of a man on a London train one Sunday
morning. It was quiet with only a few passengers when at one stop and
father and three kids came on board. The kids
immediately started to run up and down the train making all sorts of noise and
disrupting people in lots of ways. The father just sat there looking down
and did not seem to notice or care what his kids where doing. Thursday, May 19, 2011 9:08 AM Emotions and Imaginative Capacity It is my experience that emotions are physiological reactions in the body
to thoughts in the brain. Those physiological reactions come from
conditioning. Generally people do not like
negative reactions for they are painful to some degree and people are attracted
to positive reactions for they produce pleasure. I simplify my definition
of emotions so that it is easier to understand emotions and work with
them. Again, it is my experience that since we don't
like the negative emotions we naturally want to avoid them or rid ourselves of
them when they come. And to do this all we have
to do is 'reverse' those emotions. So someone
who understands this would say that one should practice love where there
usually is hate or fear. The popular definition of
Emotional Intelligence indicates that all one has to know is how to define the
different emotions or recognize them within themselves, which is fine with
me. Awareness is the first step in awaking. Emotional Mastery is
the next step where someone gains control over them emotions and can create any
emotional state on demand. This takes practice. To master emotions
one practices contracting and relaxing both the mind and the body. There
are many methods taught that teach one how to relax the body, hatha yoga
probably being the best or most popular, but not the quickest and probably not
the most effective. Meditation is one method of relaxing the mind or
nerves of the body and there are many different methods or levels of
this. Again, meditation is good and popular but probably
not the quickest or the most effective. It is my experience that whenever
the mind focuses in on anything or thought that process is channeling
energy alone the neurons in the brain/body that associate with that thought,
which causes those neurons to contract as do the muscles associated with those
neurons. This contraction (the emotion), if held too long or if very
intense is experienced as negative. So in order to reverse this
contraction one simply has to de-focus their attention off those neurons, which
can be done by several methods. One method is to
change your focus to a mantra or focus on a positive attribute or any thought
that usually causes you to have a positive experience (like say a loved
one or a deity). Again, this method is probably not the
most effective but the most common and easiest. It is my experience that our limitation with imagination is that, at least I have many ideas that float through my head but I don't 'catch' them or don't have the power to do anything with them. But I find that when I am highly charged with emotions that they memory of those ideas is more firmly imprinted in the brain. Science has proven this to be true, that emotional charge precipitates the quality of the memory. I find that ALL humans are exactly alike in essence, but in time, space and form they differ just as do snowflakes, which are all just made of frozen water but all differ. So although we differ in to what degree we use our imaginations or how we use it, the imagination process is still the same for everyone. With training and practice all can develop these skills more. With understanding we can and will develop methods that will enhance our emotional and imaginative capacities. It is only a matter of time. The book I am working on now details more about what I have written in the last two posts about emotions and imagination. Great example you use of 'anger' there. And your point that for those who do not hold those values
then they will not have to complicate feelings. Unfortunately, most
people only focus in on the complicated values or causes of their emotions and
never really resolve them or master them but are subjected to their power
because they can't get a handle on the 'why' of the emotion. I would say that the
process of "dissecting and refining" our definition of emotions only
does a disservice to people because it creates a MORE focused mind and hence
more tension, contraction and negativity. Tuesday, May 31, 2011 4:30 PM The Declining Value of Human Life It has often been pointed out that we seem to appreciate human life less today than we did in the past. I recently heard an interview of a WWII veteran who seemed appalled at how today in combat people take lives without as much concern as they apparently did during WWII. [I find that particularly humorous since there were MILLIONS of people killed during the four years of WWII yet there were only hundreds of thousands of people killed in the ten plus years of the Viet Nam War or the Afghanistan war.] Still, the point I want to make here is that given the law of supply and demand, the more supply you have of something the less value that something has, it is only natural that with the ever increasing population of humanity our appreciation and valuation of human beings will naturally decline. We value water excessively in a drought but in a flood water is very cheap. This planet is being flooded with human beings so it is only natural that we will value those human less than we did before the flood. Of course, we may not like this fact because it confronts our own survival instinct, yet it still is a fact and sooner or later we will have to face it. I was interested to note that in many countries of the world, particularly Middle Eastern countries, over seventy percent of the population is less than thirty years old. That means that in the last thirty years their populations have increased approximately three fold. So is it any wonder that the young people of those countries are so willing to commit suicide? And since there is no movement in those countries to counter the population explosion there we can only expect much more of the same from people. I remember once listening to what is called ‘gangster rap’ whose main audience seems to be poorer people of color. It was pointed out that a lot of the themes of this type of music seem to be hostility toward women and other people of color. It seemed only natural that this would be so since from a global perspective it is poor people of color who are doing most of the baby making in the world. And, although we really don’t like this idea, women are the controlling factor in baby making. The poor people of color are the first ones in society who are experiencing the effects of the explosion of population, and they feel it at an instinctive level, even if they are not fully conscious of it. Why are women the ‘controlling factor’ in baby making? Well, imagine we have two islands some place some place in the world. On one island you put one hundred women and one man while on the other island you put one hundred men and one woman. Now come back in a year and see what you get. On the first island you will have one very happy man and probably one hundred and sixty or more other people. On the other island you will have probably less than fifty men who will have survived and no women. Obviously the quantity of women is the controlling factor in our population growth. I would say this plays out in both India and China today where people generally value female babies less than they do male babies. Since both of these countries are heavily over populated and are feeling the crunch of that overpopulation, the people will naturally value women less. Unfortunately women are blamed for something that in most cases they have little control over, yet their very existence is a controlling factor. I would also like to point out that various subcultures, particularly religions, still promote the idea that baby making is very important. These cultures cling to outdated ideologies from a time when survival was dependent on increasing populations. That time has surely passed but these subcultures still cling to these now unhealthy (unholy) beliefs. So naturally the people of these religions are getting the brunt of people’s animosity. We see this in the increased conflicts between religious peoples and the more civilized world. Another primitive ideology that contributes to this ever increasing problem is our over emphasis on keeping people alive. We hear stories about nature taking its course in various parts of the world where people are starving to death because there are too many people in that area because the land cannot produce enough food to feed them. So the compassionate but narrow minded people rush in foods to support these people, which only add to their problem. For these people then become dependent on those food contributions and they go about making more babies, compounding the problem further. We all see this ideology at work in our hospitals and medical industry that is making every effort to keep old or sick people alive long beyond the time when the quality of their life was worth living. These stupid ideologies are in direct confrontation with the gut feelings of most people particularly those who are experiencing the negative consequences of our population explosion. Hence, poorer cultures and subcultures are becoming more violent toward one another. And in the so called developed world we SAY we value human life but we are increasingly voting either with our money or our votes to make less effort to save lives and we are even making conscious and unconscious choices that are leading to the destruction of human lives. Naturally an intelligent solution would be to make a conscious effort to decrease our rate of population growth. In both China and India they have done just that but in the rest of the world we are not doing it. In fact, in many places like the US they are still making a conscious effort to INCREASE population growth. In the US that is mostly a product of reactionary influences of the conservative (religious) cultures. The more educated (and therefore less religious) people tend to have less children but they still support the unconscious ideology of saving lives at every cost, a product of their immature attachment to their own bodies or lives. As it is in China, education seems to be of the greatest value in confronting the problem. But also, as it is in China, that education will have to be ‘forced’ upon those who are the least interested in listen to a rational solution, those baby making subcultures of poor people of color and religious people. This education process can start by raising the level of debate and discussion in our societies. Part of this process will come from starting to judge people who are having more than one child per couple and publicly ostracizing them. This may seem harsh, but as my step-father always used to say, “Sometimes you have to hit a jackass over the head with a two-by-four to get its attention.” Yet, most people resist the idea of judging one another
since they themselves are afraid of judgment, or afraid of themselves and their
reactions to judgment. Thursday, June 09, 2011 9:36 AM I really have enjoyed this discussion lately, and I should
thank Pete or Lewis for stimulating me to watch this process again. Admittedly I have been too lazy to even watch this process
let alone write about it, but this discussion is motivating me onward. I
think one of Pete's questions really stimulate me, something
to the effect of 'what is the value of doing this observing of the brain
activity' or something like that. I spent hours last night just
watching the body/brain mechanism and watching for the benefit in that
observation. I saw so much benefit and because of it feel so much lighter
today. Yet, as I sit here this morning my mind does not recall those
benefits, all that I can feel in this moment is the lighter feeling from
observing those subtle thoughts. It is kind of like watching a sunset and
feeling the beauty of it yet later not being able to describe that beauty but
still feeling the effects of the appreciation experience while watching the
sunset. I do remember this morning’s meditation and feeling a
tension in the right part of my spine about the middle of the back and followed
that tension to see that it stimulated the desire of answers Pete's
questions. The tension flowed up the spine to the left back bottom part
of the brain where the thoughts started to materialize and eventually came into
the conscious mind as "Pete's questions". It was very
interesting to watch the thoughts as they materialize and THEN the conscious
mind put them together into coherent thoughts which I am labeling as
"Pete's questions". It was like there was a screen with the creation process on one side slowly building a thought and eventually projecting that 'thought' onto the screen where the mind then becomes aware of it. "I" could watch both sides of the screen and see the building of the thought and then when the 'person' or mind became aware of the thought. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. I am wondering what it is that motivated you and I to observe the working of the brain/body instrument they way we do and why others don't seem to have that motivation. It really does not matter that Pete does not feel the motivation to observe this phenomena within himself, his interest may be in only learning from other as we develop the ability to articulate our experience. In a way this could be very beneficial for humanity and might open of many people to this process. So I think Pete's challenges here are valid and I for one want to come up to them. So back to our motivation for doing what we do. Or HOW did you come to be first aware of this process? For me, it just happened because I wanted to know what was REALLY happening in the human instrument when "I" practiced various spiritual practices. I was not satisfied with just words I wanted to see basic motivations. P: Do you feel that every time that you think? No, only when practicing awareness. I also have no desire to always be feeling this process.
Are you still talking of thoughts moving through your
brain? I would say that we are talking about the process of the creation
of thoughts, the stimulation for their creation AND the motivation for
following that process. Sunday, June 12, 2011 8:16 AM Thank You for Your Feedback I want to thank those who have been so generous with their feedback, criticism, judgment and even persecutions of me. These greatest of all possible gifts are been very good for me. I recognize that no feedback, criticism, judgment or persecution can harm me, only my reactions to them can do me harm. But they can point out to me how my reaction to them might be doing myself harm. To be honest I have not always enjoyed and love these challenges. I am now. This morning I woke up and realized again the gift that this feedback, criticism, judgment or persecution is to me. So I am grateful for all those who questioned my integrality, honesty, sincerity, empathy or compassion. I recognize that what I want is a beautiful life filled with appreciation, joy and love. And I recognize that the measure I give is the measure I receive, so if I am appreciating, enjoying and loving what life is offering me then my life will be filled with the light of that appreciation, joy and love. It is easy to love those who love me; even the dualists can do that. But there is so much greater spiritual benefit or profit to be able to love those who criticize, judge and persecute me. And to me there can be no greater gift than this feedback. I do hope that all will continue to give me their light, insight, wisdoms, criticism, judgment and even persecutions. For I recognize that I am forever falling asleep and this feedback is what can help awaken me from that sleep. Should I take offense, resist or defend my “self” then I know that I have again fallen asleep. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Monday, June 20, 2011 2:22 PM Nice joke, Roy. I beg to differ on the ‘personal interpretation’ part of looking at the differences. I think it was Lewis who recently brought up the ‘goal’ or purpose of our evolution. I would say that we all feel inherently within us a calling or striving for improvement or betterment of ourselves and of humanity. And part of the process of seeking that improvement is to examine what has already happened to see how we can improve upon it. Those who cling to old ideas of what is the ‘goal’ or even what is progress we call religious, and generally smart people disregard them. So looking at various teachers is just a part of that process of evolving or improving. I remember many times sitting in the audience of a satsang with some teacher and ‘feeling’ the rest of the audience as they looked upon the teachers. For instance, I could feel how they would worship the ‘guru’ and put that guru on a pedestal. The higher they pushed the guru up on the pedestal the more inwardly depressed they became about their own prospects of getting free; for they believed they could not be like that guru high up there on the pedestal. I have yet to see any teacher confront the stupidity, which is why I have always been one to do that wherever I go. And it saddens me to see the timidity of so many people toward the process of confrontation, which is what I think Jesus was talking about when he spoke of the “Baptism of Fire”, a ‘fire’ that purifies and moves us onward in our evolution. Wednesday, October 26, 2011 2:02 PM Power to the People The Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements have at least one thing in common; they are complaining about the eroding of the power of the people or the individual and the concentration of power into the hands of organizations, whether they are corporations or government. Often I have heard people say, “My vote does seem to count for much anymore.” And, of course, they are right, for the power of our vote has diminished over the years and it is only going to diminish more unless we change the structure of our system. …………………….| …………………….| Decisions are made mostly at the top of the hieratical pyramid but the people at the bottom do not have to be so far away from those decision. Money is Power It has been said that money is power and power corrupts. When we focus the money/power in the hands of the few and take it away or distance it from the many we create an unhealthy country. The Erosion of the Power of Our Vote When our present constitution was written by those who wrote the Federalist Papers, they wrote that to ensure that the power of the vote of the people be maintained, no US Representative should have more than 60k constituents. Today, each US Representative now has over 700 thousand constituents. Tuesday, December 20, 2011 4:54 PM To Ana Holob In my experience, the heart expands and embraces while the mind contracts and rejects; the heart says YES and the mind says NO. The heart plays or dances while the mind fights or spars. My heart has been expanding out to you for many years and yet your mind keeps rejecting my heart’s effort. I suspect I am not the only person your mind closes off. I feel that you have a lot to offer the world but you hide in a shell your mind has created, which opens to very few people. I once had that problem where my mind rejected all sorts of people, but this mind awoken and realized it had to get out of the way so that the heart could feel when others reached out. It was through embracing my mind that it was able to awaken to its limitations and allowed it to get out of the way so the heart could feel. I have seen you as somebody who has a lot to offer the world, if you could only come out of your shell. I recognize that you have a cultural handicap where the culture you come from encourages exclusivity allowing only “like” minded people to get close to you. My heart has felt your trapped-ness and partially out of compassion, I reach out to you. There is an old story about a guy who has fallen into a pit and cannot get out. People pass him by but do not bother to stop to help him out. Finally, a friend comes by and sees him down there after hearing his cries for help, so he jumps down in the pit with him. The first guy admonishes him for his fool heartedness but the second guy says, “it is alright, for I have been down here before and I know the way out.” This is what I say to you, “I have been trapped in my mind and I know the way out.” Wednesday, December 21, 2011 10:42 AM Yesness Mission Statement What am I going to do with this site? Wednesday, December 21, 2011 8:19 PM Fear or Love of Ourselves I wonder how many people realize they are afraid of themselves, they are afraid of how they will react to what people say to them or what life offers them. I see this as one of the biggest problem we human have; fear of themselves. The solution to this problem, of course, is to practice loving yourself, particularly when you are being most abusive to yourself. And we are being abusive to ourselves when we take offense at someone or are being angry or pessimistic. It takes consciousness and practice to change a behavior that is not really serving us, like the behavior of abusing ourselves. However, the effort is worth it...YOU are worth it. Loving ourselves is not easy, particularly if we have been taught to hate and abuse ourselves. Most people have been taught that there is something wrong with them, that they are lacking something or that they are sinners or some other nonsense. People tell us that because THEY want us to be something other than we are or THEY want to use us in some way. As children we are gullible and believe what we are told, we believe we are flawed or lacking or sinners. However, as adults, we can question the ideas, and if we do, we will find that they are nonsense, assuming of course that we truly question them. So let us say that we have questioned those judgments of us and found that the criteria for them were faulty, based upon faulty assumptions. So what do we do now to stop abusing ourselves and start loving ourselves? How Do We Start Loving Ourselves? Conceptually this is easy but the practice of this takes concentration, awareness and dedication, for all your life you have develop certain habits and those habits are deeply engrained, it will take some work to retrain yourself to healthier, more loving habits. I like to use an arithmetic like scale to visualize the process. On the left side of the scale are the negative numbers, in this case the negative experiences. In the middle is zero or neutral experiences and on the right side are the positive numbers or positive experiences. The further from center one goes the larger the absolute value of the number and the greater the intensity of the experience. We all want positive life experiences and at least we are open to neutral experiences like peace and contentment. So we naturally have a desire to move to the right on this scale, from the negative to the positive or from the more negative to the less negative or from neutral to the positive or from the less positive to the more positive. Here is what it looks like. So how do we go from the negative to the positive? First off, we look at WHY something is experienced as negative and this will tell us a lot about how to go from negative to positive. If we watch ourselves closely when we are experience some intensely negative experience, say fear, we will notice that we are uptight and/or contracted. Our mind is very narrow-minded focused and contracted too. And if we were to observe ourselves when we are feeling great we would notice that our body is relaxed and feels expanded; and our mind is expanded, embracing the big picture of life. Therefore, from this we realize that to move from the negative/contracted state to the positive/expanded state is to change the focus of our mind and to make an effort to relax the body. I will talk more about how to do this later, but here I want to say that in essence it take consciousness of when we are tense, uptight and narrow-mindedly focused usually on ourselves or our interests and see how this behavior is not pleasant but is actually abusive to ourselves. The more we do this the more we will fear ourselves. We can start making a choice now; start to move away from this habit and towards a more loving behavior toward ourselves. The choice is ours and the power to choose comes with
practice. Friday, December 23, 2011 12:06 PM There can be no peace without justice, and there can be no
justice without truth or honesty. So how
can anyone expect to find peace if they are blaming
others for their own behaviors or reactions to what life is offering? By blaming others for our choices, even if
those choices are unconscious, we are only trapping ourselves in a cycle of
self-inflicted pain and suffering. Monday, December 26, 2011 9:53 AM Health Priorities Is our health a priority or should it be? If health is a major, if not the majority, then what should be our first priority related to health? Friday, December 30, 2011 6:29 PM A healthy mind says YES to what
life is offering. Sunday, January 01, 2012 10:14 AM Yesness is about health, primarily about optimizing our ways of thinking as the first priority in getting ourselves healthy of mind, emotions, body, social relations, financial and even environmental. There will be two ways in which Yesness will distinguish itself from other sites: 1 We will examine how our ways of thinking effect the quality of our life experience and our overall health; 2 We will confront those aspects of society that encourage unhealthy ways of thinking and unhealthy practices. Part of this latter element of Yesness will be to make videos of actual confrontations of individuals and institutions that encourage unhealthy ways of thinking and other practices. Yesness will also show people how to get healthy and stay healthy of mind, emotions and body. Confrontation is only when one has faith in their ability to not be agitated (or dis-eased) by what others might say to them. This, I feel, is a very powerful element of what I have to offer, what my book will be about, the ability to Overcome the World and its ability to push our buttons. Sunday, January 01, 2012 11:48 AM Political Moral High Ground In this political season that is coming upon us we are being called to make decisions about our political and social future which forces us to examine where we want to go. In that decision process we usually encouraged to think about our economic future. If we were to look at the majority of society, the middle class, would usually vote with the Democrat Party, for on economic matters the Democrat Party usually supports the middle and lower classes while the Republican Party usually supports the upper class. So why do so many of the middle and even lower class vote for Republican candidates? People often vote against their own economic interest because social issues sway them, and today that might include abortion, gay rights and the environment. As our country has gained in wealth we have also gained in our fearfulness, fearfulness that a change, any change, will bring about the loss of that privileged status that wealth brings. This fearfulness produces the conservatism that infects even all classes of our society. If the Democrats want to reframe the political discussion to bring back those of middle class who have been swayed by the conservative social agenda they are going to have to examine the very nature of the liberal and conservative agendas. Conservatism is regressive and conservatives have always
been on the losing side of every great moral victory in history. Social conservatives were against the
emancipation of the slaves in the Civil War era, for they wanted to keep their
privileged status in the hierarchy. |