A Spot For Thought

My fellow Americans

2011-10-13T12:49:00.444-05:00

My fellow Americans, I'm coming to you today because I know many of you are hurting. The global economy is continuing to slow and it is having a noticeable effect in your lives. Jobs are hard to come by. The thought of owning a home seems like an impossibility. The wealth gap is growing and you're not happy about it.

America, don't worry. I have a plan.

First, as you know, I'm putting forth a jobs plan that will cut taxes for working Americans and small businesses, put people to work rebuilding roads, bridges and schools, help towns keep their teachers, firefighters and police officers, and extend benefits to the long-term unemployed.

My jobs plan will give a much needed boost to the economy... if it passes. But it will not. Congress is more divided than ever and due to politics as usual, Republicans can't afford to let me have any victories.

America, don't worry. The failure of the American Jobs Act is part of my plan.

What I'm going to do is continue to push for the entire jobs bill in the face of certain defeat until everyone has voted on it. I will then campaign against Republicans as the do-nothing party.

It will be a close election, but I will probably win. I'm well liked, I'm good at campaigning, and I have a pretty good point that Republicans are the do-nothing party.

With that said, there's a chance I may lose.

America, don't worry. Win or lose, this is all part of my plan.

In my second term (or my opponent's first term), I (or they) will fight to push through small pieces of legislation that will benefit the economy. These pieces of legislation, while beneficial, will be too small to make any noticeable impact on the economy.

America, don't worry. Eventually the economy will, for one reason or another, start heading in a positive direction again.

But don't be mistaken. This economic recovery is not permanent. It is only a matter of time before the economy goes through another down-turn. And then we get to do the same thing all over again.

Now I understand this sort of plan is what thousands of you who are "occupying" cities around the nation are expressing frustration with.

To you I say this:

I understand your frustration. I came to office hoping for change, and I've done the best I can. Unfortunately I'm finding that creating change from Washington is a slow frustrating grind and the best I can do is admittedly not enough.

America, that should worry you.

So I challenge you:

If you want change, you're going to have to do it yourselves.

Look around you, look at what you truly need to live, and you'll find that the power the 1% holds is almost entirely imaginary.

Take control of your destiny. Don't wait for Washington to act.

You are the 99%, prove it.

.

Perspectives & the 12 Niches of Ecology

2011-04-06T18:38:00.001-05:00

Perspectives are the points of view within the clearings that we are.
And perspectives get more inclusive as we grow/evolve.

Three Perspectives
What, How & Who?
Ontology, Methodology, Epistemology
Body, Mind, Spirit

These 3 exist in each quadrant, and create the 12 Niches of Ecology

UL:
Pneuma - Spiritual Experiences
Psyche - Psychological Dynamics
Soma - Somatic Realities

UR:
Skillful-means - Effective Actions
Action - Intentional Conduct
Movement - Physical Movements

LL:
Commonwealth - Compassionate Perspectives
Community - Worldviews
Communion - Intercorporeal Dimensions

LR:
Matrices - Subtle Systems
Institutions - Social Systems
Intersections - Natural Systems

Communicating Integral Sustainability Seminar by Barrett Brown

2011-04-01T18:41:00.001-05:00

Below are notes from a seminar entitled "Communicating Integral Sustainability" by Barrett Brown. They outline the best sources & the best-fit approach to reaching people at each color value system (as presented in Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck), as well as the "cold buttons" that each color value system responds negatively to.

Purple - The "Eco-Guardian"

Best Sources:
- Counsel from revered elders, the caring chieftain or shaman
- From within the family/tribe/clan; an insider
- Through signals and omens from the spirit/natural realm
- The word of ancestors and their ways
- The collective sense of supportive peers

Best-Fit Approach:
- Refer to traditional rites, rituals, ceremonies, icons,
- Reference mystical elements, superstitions, magic
- Appeal to extended family, harmony, and safety
- Honor blood bonds, the folk, the group, taboos
- Utilize familiar metaphors, drawings & emblems
- Rely very little on written language
- Use storytelling, fables instead of facts, emotions, drama, songs, dances, richly imaginative two dimensional images

Cold buttons:
- Speak ill of chief or tribe
- Step on or desecrate sacred grounds
- Violate taboos or ritual ways
- Introduce ambiguity
- Isolate and force accelerated change and uncertainty
- Threaten family (animals & plants included)
- Disrespect elders or ancestors
- Don't try to understand

Red - The "Eco-Warrior"

Best Sources:
- Person with recognized power
- Straight talking Big Boss
- One with something to offer
- Respected, revered, or feared other
- Celebrated "idol" with reputation
- Someone of proven trustworthiness

Best-Fit Approach:
- Demonstrate "What's in it for me now?"
- Offer "Immediate gratification if..."
- Challenge and appeal to machismo/strength
- Point out heroic status and legendary potential
- Be flashy, unambiguous, reality-based & strong
- Use simple language and fiery images/graphics
- Appeal to narcissistic tendencies

Cold Buttons:
- Challenge power or courage
- Shame or put down person/group
- Move onto turf uninvited
- Display more powerful weapons
- Make gestures and name call; be derisive and laugh
- Make the other lose face
- Taunt as an outsider
- Appear or talk weak
- Make excuses

Blue - The "Eco-Manager"

Best Sources:
- Rightful, proper kind of authority
- Higher position on the One True Way
- Down the chain of command
- According to the book's rules & regulations
- Person with position, power & rank
- In compliance with tradition & precedent
- As directed by a divinely ordained Power

Best-Fit Approach:
- Invoke duty, honor, country; images of discipline and obedience to a higher authority; being a good citizen
- Call for self-sacrifice for a higher cause or purpose
- Appeal to traditions, laws and norms; stability and order
- Draw upon propriety, righteousness and responsibilities, being prepared
- Show how this sacrificial behavior will insure future rewards and require delayed gratification
- Point out that this behavior will assuage guilt with its correct consequences
- Speak to the organized, well-structured, orderliness of nature

Cold Buttons:
- Attack religion, country or ethnic heritage
- Desecrate symbols or Holy books
- Put down the One True-Way
- Violate the chain of command
- Disregard rules and directives
- Appear unfair or sleazy
- Use profanity
- Demean the standards

Orange - The "Eco-Strategist"

Best Sources:
- One's own right-thinking mind
- Successful mentors and models
- Credible professionals and "gurus"
- Prosperous, successful, elite contacts
- Sources which are advantageous to the self-image
- Sources which result from one's own observations
- Sources based upon tried-and-true experience & experimentation

Best-Fit Approach:
- Appeal to competitive advantage and leverage
- Draw upon success motivations and the chance of achieving abundance, growth, progress; the challenge!
- Call for bigger, better, newer, faster, more popular
- Cite experts and selected authorities
- Use scientific data, calculated risks, proven experience
- Show increased profit, productivity, quality, results; offer a greater chance of winning; better business strategy
- Demonstrate it as the best of several options
- Treat like a VIP; appeal to status; state-of-the-art; fashionable
- Show as way to preempt government intervention in markets

Cold Buttons:
- Put down profit or entrepreneurism
- Talk about collectivization
- Challenge compulsive drives
- Deny rewards for good performance
- Force sameness
- Remove the cost of prestige
- Trap with rules and procedures
- Seem inflexible or ordinary
- Treat as one of the herd

Green - The "Eco-Radical"

Best Sources:
- Consensual, communitarian norms
- Enlightened friend/colleague
- The outcome of participation and sharing
- The result of enlightenment, becoming
- Observation of events
- The here and now
- Appeals to affect/feelings/emotions

Best-fit Approach:
- Enhance a sense of belonging, sharing, group harmony
- Show sensitivity to human issues and care for others
- Call for an expansion of awareness and understanding of inner self as well as liberation of the oppressed
- Draw upon symbols of equity, humanity, and bonding
- Use gentle languaging and nature imagery
- Build trust, openness, exploration, passages for growth
- Present real people and authentic emotional displays
- Encourage participation, sharing, involvement, consensus, inclusion, teamwork, community involvement
- Refer to social responsibility, political correctness, corporate citizenship
- Symbiosis, cooperation, communication

Cold Buttons:
- Assault the group's goals & ideals
- Try to get centralized control
- Reject the collective for individual accountability
- Deny affect & feelings
- Degrade quality of life or environment
- Rely on "hard facts" to the exclusion of people factors
- Act elitist or exclusive

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: Communicating to multiple value systems simlutaneously

5 P's for Multi-Developmental Level Communication

Purple- Bond
Red - Express - Personal Power
Blue - Manage - Principle
Orange - Strategize - Profit
Green - Harmonize - People
Yellow - Align - Planet

Abigail Huston's Development of Aesthethics:
Accountive - Storytelling; concrete observations about the environment woven into a narrative; colored by emotions and drama
Constructive - First framework for looking at the environment. The world should look the way it's "supposed to."
Classifying - Categorize, explain and rationalize the environment using facts and figures
Interpretative - Seek a personal encounter with the environment; use feelings and intuitions to let the meaning emerge
Re-creative - Seeing the environment with a flexibility and a not-knowing, combining personal contemplation with universal concern

2011-02-28T22:46:00.002-06:00

http://offbeathome.com/2011/02/downsizing

The New World We Live In

2010-11-09T22:55:00.003-06:00

"We are concerned no longer with cultural inflections, but with a passage from one culture stage to another. In all previous ages, only restricted portions of the surface of the earth were known. Men looked out from the narrowest, upon a somewhat larger neighborhood, and beyond that, a great unknown. They were all, so to say, insular: bound in. Whereas our view is confined no longer to a spot of space on the surface of this earth. It surveys the whole of the plane. And this fact, this lack of horizon, is something new."

Leo Frobenious in Monumenta Terrarum (1929)

The Retro-Romantic Approach

2010-11-07T12:55:00.003-06:00

"other theorists then go further and maintain that most of humankind's problems came with the invention of farming itself, because with farming the human animal began to deliberately alter the biosphere for its own gratification, produced a written language that ensconced power in the dogmatic text, produced an agricultural surplus that allowed some individuals to begin to economically control and enslave others, and began the wholesale subjugation of women. And, indeed, most of that did begin with agrarian farming.
So, these theorists maintain, we really should never have gone past hunting-and-gathering societies. The delightful things then said about these societies--some of which were peace-loving and rather egalitarian, and some of which were not--are, at the least, astonishingly one-sided. Until other theorists carefully point out that precious few of these societies were actually egalitarian, that warfare most definitely existed, that the very seeds of sexist subjugation were planted here, that slavery was not unheard of...
We really should have never gone past gorillas, who at least don't deliberately sacrifice their own or engage in renegade warfare, where slavery is nonexistent and no animal is alienated from its own labors. Until you realize...
And so it goes, scraping layers and layers of depth off the Kosmos looking for a Garden of Eden that ever recedes into a shallower darkness.
My point is that it is one thing to remember and embrace and honor our roots; quite another to hack off our leaves and branches and celebrate that as a solution to leaf rot. So we will celebrate the new possibilities of evolution even as we gasp in horror--and try to redress-- the multiplicity of new pathologies."

Ken Wilber in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

Michael Murphy on Beyond Awakening

2010-10-05T02:23:00.002-05:00

Below is a snippet I grabbed from Terry Patten's interview with Michael Murphy on his wonderful new Beyond Awakening (free) teleseries. Check it out here.

A Description of the Nondual State

2010-09-18T12:23:00.004-05:00

"The first time this became even fleetingly obvious to me was at a sesshin, or intensive Zen retreat. On the fourth day there appeared, so to speak, the state of the witness, the transpersonal witness that steadily, calmly, clearly witnesses all arising events, moment to moment. Even in dreaming, one merely witnesses: One can see the dream start, proceed, and end (what Charles Tart has called "translucent dreams"). Roshi, however, was thoroughly unimpressed with all this "makyo." "The witness," he said, "is the last stand of the ego."
"At that point, the whole stance of the witness absolutely disappeared. There was no subject anywhere in the universe; there was no object anywhere in the universe; there was only the universe. Everything was arising moment to moment, and it was arising in me and as me; yet there was no me. It is very important to realize that this was not a loss of faculties but a peak-enhancement of them, it was no blank trance but perfect clarity; not depersonalized but transpersonalized. No personal faculties--language, logic, concepts, motor skills--were lost or impaired. Rather, they all functioned, for the first time, it seemed to me, in radical openness, free from the defenses thrown up by a separate-self sense. This radically open, undefended, and perfectly nondual state was both incredible and profoundly ordinary, so extraordinarily ordinary that it did not even register. There was nobody there to comprehend it, until I fell out of it (I guess about three hours later)."

From "Odyssey: A Personal Inquiry into humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology" by Ken Wilber, printed in The Simple Feeling of Being, page 40.

The Paradox of Change

2010-09-18T12:21:00.001-05:00

"The paradox is that the more one attempts to be who one is not, the more one remains the same. Conversely, when people identify with their current experience, the conditions of wholeness and growth support change."

From the Wikipedia article on Gestalt Therapy

Tell me: Who are you?

2010-09-15T17:33:00.003-05:00

"Let your mind relax. Let your mind relax and expand, mixing with the sky in front of it. Then notice:the clouds float by in the sky, and you are effortlessly aware of them. Feelings float by in the body, and you are effortlessly aware of them as well. Nature floats by, feelings float by, thoughts float by ... and you are aware of them all.
So tell me: Who are you?
You are not your thoughts, for you are aware of them. You are not your feelings, for you are aware of them. You are not any objects that you can see, for you are aware of them.
Something in you is aware of all these things. So tell me: What is it in you that is conscious of everything?"

Ken Wilber, Boomeritis, 336 (TSFOB, 31)

John Mackey of Whole Foods discusses how to create High Trust Organizations

2010-09-08T15:01:00.002-05:00

A Critique of Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

2010-08-25T09:15:00.007-05:00

I finished listening to the audio book Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright (available free here thanks to zappos.com) which presents the 5 stages of corporate tribes depicted below.

The descriptive aspects of the book were right on, based on research, and useful to know. For instance, I found it interesting, though not surprising, that dysfunctional tribes (stages 1 - 3) make up a whopping 75% of the corporate world. (While at first glance it seems like only the first two stages are inherently dysfunctional, Stage Three "I'm great" is dysfunctional because of the inherent corollary "you're not great." This "I'm great and you're not" dynamic creates a tribe of defensive, isolated, overworked, and angry people.)

Though I agree with the authors' mapping of corporate stages, unfortunately, as is the case with a lot of non-fiction literature, things went a little awry when the authors got prescriptive. Specifically, the authors present the solutions to the dysfunctions of Stages 1-3 as primarily a change in mindset to be initiated by a "Tribal Leader"-- the leader just needs to lead the confused worker out of their funk, and voilà, they'll create a more positive work atmosphere. Which is a bit of a truism.

For instance, the book says if you're leading a group of people from Stage 2 "My life sucks" to Stage 3 "I'm great", you'll want to spot and work with the few members who want things to be different and explain that you see potential in them and you want to start working with them on developing leadership. However, the authors warn us that "depending on how long he has been at stage two, he may have developed an immunity to praise believing it to be a technique of manipulation." Their solution to this: lead them (manipulate them?) into thinking they're not being manipulated.

What's missing here is an understanding of the complexity of the situation. The fact is, when it comes to stage two, their lives probably do suck. They're probably working jobs that make use of none of their potential. They're probably working for companies who are focused on making money. They're tired of being a cog in someone else's machine. They're tired in general. And leading this miserable person into stage 3 by getting them to place their frustration on to someone else seems like a strange technique to advocate.

The book justifies this by saying that once the frustration is lifted from their own life and placed on to those who aren't as good (Stage 3), they can then push through to Stage 4 "We're great" whereby everyone in the tribe's frustration is again displaced-- this time on to the tribe's competitors.

This seems to make sense. However, these stages are not a fully developmental sequence: not all businesses start at level 1 and then move on to level 2, and so on. A brand new business could exist anywhere on the scale. So if a business could potentially start up at level 4, why all the talk about needing to drag employees through all the lower stages?

It's because many, if not most, jobs out there are hard to make satisfying. And once you're unsatisfied, it's an incremental process to making yourself feel better. If you're life sucks because of your job the one thing you can do is work to become better than other people- and then at least you'll feel a little self worth, if only in relation to those who have lesser worth than you. And once you realize you're better than most at your sucky job, and you're tired of being around people who suck, maybe then you'll have a break through and realize the people you work with don't suck as much as the people at that other company. Maybe then you'll have successfully tricked yourself into thinking that things aren't so bad at your sucky job... of course, this would all be much easier if you didn't have to trick yourself, and instead you had a tribal leader to do all the tricking.

I mock, but the fact is, a full treatment of these stages would involve all of the physical, social and institutional factors that cause people to be satisfied or dissatisfied with their jobs and wouldn't focus solely on the internal psychological patterns for coping with job dissatisfaction.

*************************************************

The Author, Dave Logan, responded(!):

*************************************************

Co-author's Response

Hi everyone,

The thoughtfulness of this discussion is refreshing.

Three quick points. First, Tribal Leadership is only about the lower left quadrant (culture). We argue, consistent with the thinking on this topic going back to Ed Schein, that culture cannot be measured directly, so we use language and structure of relationships as a proxy. The point about the subject needing to more complex is right on. For a business to move from "stage two" to "stage three," for example, requires address all of the other quadrants, including systems (lower right), individual behavior (upper right), and individual interior development (upper left). So why right an incomplete book? Because as people familiar with the integral movement have noted, almost all the action is on the two right quadrants. A lot of the self-help books get at the upper right quadrant, although with a stunning lack of insight. So culture has remained relatively unexplored in the mainstream business market. Not surprisingly, organizations often create new strategies and systems that cannibalize culture, resulting in an impotent organization. We wrote Tribal Leadership to fill in this gap, and as I mentioned to Ken when interviewing him for the book, as an "integral light" book.

Second, on the point about "why not get it right from the start," that's valid, and in fact, we devote a significant part of the book to that topic. Unlike the "Good to Great" argument, we didn't find that a culture can be built great and that it remains great. Unless it is constantly attended to, culture erodes, down to stage three or two. Most big companies have big, dumb cultures that can't innovate or motivate people. The challenge in those cases is to elevate their cultures as they also work on upgrading systems, strategies, individual performance, and hopefully, developing people through the individual stages that are familiar to people on this web site.

Third, on people's lives sucking, all of the points made here (including in the comments) are valid. Pragmatically, it's not about giving them a pass or manipulating them, it's about empowering them in a way that they can then empower others. We're not proponents of "stop sucking or lose your job," or any kind of trickery. It's about giving people opportunities and then seeing what they do. I've been in cultures that were so stuck in the mud that the victim mentality became invisible to people, including to me. This is not about creating blame, but we have to recognize that organizations can be, to quote the critical literature on the subject, "psychic prisons." Look at the recent numbers on employee engagement. Many people feel that their lives suck, in part, because we put them in rigid job descriptions, ask them to do mindless and uncreative work while tightening their belts and remaining motivated. Those same organizations reject ideas not invented by the people in power. So there is a sense where management needs to take responsibility for creating environments that pull people down to stage two ("my life sucks").

Anyway, thanks for the comments. My life sucks--time for coffee. :)

************************************************

I like his response.

Selflessness

2010-08-20T11:50:00.004-05:00

"The Buddhist teaching of no-self says that the person I think I am is, in a certain way, not real, at least not in the way I conceive it and enact it in my daily life. But it's important to understand that this isn't a doctrine or a theory, it's just a description of what Buddhists generation after generation have verified as true. The "self" is an aggregation, a collection of sub-components that can be broken down endlessly. Similarly, anything your mind can identify as a discrete item is actually an accumulation. There is no real self anywhere, not in you, not in anything you sense or can identify."
...
"So what is the experience of selflessness? It is simply the act of not seeing a collection of constantly shifting phenomena or perceptions as a single fixed entity. What is it really? It is actually a collection of phenomena or perceptions."

Why is Indian Philosophy ignored by Western educational institutions?

2010-08-14T14:07:00.004-05:00

"An addendum and parting shot at the opposition. As mentioned, most
of us are acutely aware of our philosophy colleagues’ ignorance of Indian
philosophies, which is, particularly after the labor of Potter and others,
disappointing. My own take is that much of the problem is due to the
prevalence of cultural relativism, the presumption being that Indian
philosophy has to be very different. Here ethnocentrism is evident. An
assumption of ‘‘otherness’’ blocks interest on the part of philosophers.
Too much history would have to be learned, and connections to current
interests seem unlikely. Thus by opposing cultural relativism in the way
outlined here a larger goal of our subfield may be served, broader
recognition of classical Indian accomplishment and better integration into
a standard philosophy curriculum."

-the closing paragraph of a paper entitled The Indian Demise of Cultural Relativism by Stephen H. Phillips Professor of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of Texas.

In this paper he argues that while such things as philosophical judgments or ethical standards are derived from human conditions within various cultures, they are not by necessity relative cultural creations. Just as within various cultures objective logical or mathematical rules have emerged, so do certain ethical standards & philosophical judgments.

Life in School by Matt Groening

2010-08-13T02:01:00.000-05:00

Csikszentmihalhyi on Enhancing Personal Creativity

2010-08-03T09:44:00.004-05:00

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has a book entitled Creativity: Flow and Psychology of Discovery and Invention. For this book he interviewed highly creative people from a variety of disciplines (including Ed Asner, Stephen Jay Gould, Jane Loevinger, Jonas Salk, Ravi Shankar, and Edward O. Wilson) and used their testimony to develop and present a deeper understanding of Creativity. Admittedly, I have not read the entire book, but the last chapter titled Enhancing Personal Creativity he gives great advice for becoming more creative and I've outlined it below:

Enhancing Personal Creativity
Acquisition of Creative Energy
Curiosity and Interest

Try to be surprised by something every day.
Try to surprise at least one person every day.
Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others.
When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.

Cultivating Flow in Everyday Life

Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable.
To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.

Habits of Strength

Take charge of you schedule
Make time for reflection and relaxation
Shape your space
Find out what you like and what you hate about life.
Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate.

Internal Traits

Develop what you lack.
Shift often from openness to closure.
Aim for complexity.

The Application of Creative Energy
Problem Finding

Find a way to express what moves you.
Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible.
Figure out the implications of the problem.
Implement the solution.

Divergent Thinking

Produce as many ideas as possible.
Have as many different ideas as possible.
Try to produce unlikely ideas.

Choosing a Special Domain

Try as many domains as possible
Focus on domains that fit your interests

True Humor is Laughter at One's Self

2010-07-29T14:28:00.002-05:00

"In the words of a Chinese Zen master, "Nothing is left to you at this
moment but to have a good laugh!" As James Broughton put it:
This is It
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That.(4)
True humor is, indeed, laughter at one's Self—at the Divine Comedy,
the fabulous deception, whereby one comes to imagine that a creature
in existence is not also of existence, that what man is is not also what
everything is. All the time we "know it in our bones" but conscious
attention, distracted by details and differences, cannot see the whole for
the parts."

From Alan Watts' The Book

Tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique

2010-07-27T14:17:00.004-05:00

Key:
EB - Eyebrow
SE - Side of Eye
UE - Under Eye
UN - Under Nose
Ch - Chin
CB - Collar Bone
UA - Under Arm
BN - Below Nipple
Th - Thumb
IF - Index Finger
MF - Middle Finger
BF - Baby Finger
KC - Karate Chop

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is essentially a meditative practice combining physical & mental triggers for personal compassion and mindfulness. The way it is packaged, using terms like "energy systems", is a little too new-agey for my taste; but I've tried the technique and have been pleased with it.

Self Awareness: Breaking the Bonds of Memetic Servitude

2010-07-27T03:01:00.002-05:00

"Beyond the illusion of ego exists a deeper conceptualization of self: the universe consists of a swirling, dynamic dance of power-relationships, with the black-and-white construct of the individual giving way to the grayer concept of the individual as a nexus of these connections. No true separation between individual and environment remains. Our consciousness has developed as a tool used by other entities, but it has provided the ultimate tool for our use to which no other nexus has access: self-awareness. The understanding that self-awareness exists to serve the meme breaks that bond of servitude—it acts as the realization of enlightenment. Re-read the last sentence. The individual re-emerges as a discrete point of true awareness—not delusional ego-awareness, but awareness of our status as a nexus in the dance of power-relationships. Every atom in our body changes, replaced with new matter through the course of eating, metabolism and elimination—we literally do not consist of the same substance today that we did last year. At death we remain physically the same structure, but not the same entity. These examples illustrate that we exist as much more than a complex assemblage of particles. Our true substance seems to more closely resemble a hub and relay to vast webs of power-relationships. While we exist in a constant state of physical flux, we remain a stable, self-aware nexus. Coming to terms with our existence merges science and spirituality, leading ultimately down the classical path of enlightenment-beyond-ego. This realization will set us free."

From Jeff Vail's A Theory of Power (Available online here)

Education and Spontaneity

2010-07-26T13:48:00.004-05:00

Initially, knowledge acquisition, especially through formal education, snuffs out imagination & spontaneity. This leads many people to decry education. They see the dulling of imagination as a wrong that has been done to them. A part of them has been brutally neglected by the powers that be. But that is not a completely honest telling -- while it is true that imagination and spontaneity decrease during the time of your life devoted to acquiring knowledge within school walls, this is a necessary step to bring your self into the rational world space. The person who mourns the death of their imagination and blames 'the system' has wrongly assumed that personal growth ends when formal education ends. Formal education is the beginning, it provides the rather dull foundation upon which the rich colorful world you tasted as a child can be rediscovered.

Central Ideas of the Major Epochs

2010-07-23T14:58:00.005-05:00

"Every great epoch of human evolution seems to have one absolutely central idea, an idea that totally dominates the entire epoch, and summarizes its entire approach to Spirit and Kosmos, and tells us something altogether profound. And each seems to build upon its predecessor. These ideas are so simple and so central, they can be put in a sentence.
Foraging: Spirit is interwoven with earthbody. Foraging cultures the world over sing this profound truth. The very earth is our blood and bones and marrow, and we are all sons and daughters of that earth--in which, and through which, Spirit flows freely.
Horticulture: But Spirit demands sacrifice. Sacrifice is the great theme running through all horticultural societies, and not just in the concrete form of actual ritual sacrifice, although we certainly see it there as well. But the central and pervading notion is that certain specific human steps must be taken to come into accord with Spirit. Ordinary or typical humanity has to get out of the way, so to speak-- has to be sacrificed--in order for spirit to shine forth more clearly. In other wods, there are steps on the way to a more fully realized Spiritual awareness.
Agrarian: These spiritual steps are in fact arrayed in a Great Chain of Being. The Great Chain is the central, dominant, inescapable theme of every mythic-agrarian society the world over, without exception. And since most of "civilized history" as been agrarian history, Lovejoy was quite right in stating that the Great Chain has been the dominant idea in most of civilized culture.
Modernity: The Great Chain unfolds in evolutionary time. In other words, evolution. The fact that Spirit was usually left out of the equation is simply the disaster of modernity, not the dignity nor the definition of modernity. Evolution is the one great background concept that hangs over every single modern movement; it is the God of modernity. And in fact, this is a tremendously spiritual realization, because, whether or not it consciously identifies itself as spiritual, the fact is that it plugs humans into the Kosmos in an unbroken fashion, and further, points to the inescapable but frightening fact that humans are co-creators of their own evolution, their own history, their own worldspaces, because:
Postmodernity: Nothing is pregiven; the world is not just a perception but also an interpretation. That this leads many postmodernists into fits of aperspectival madness is not our concern. That nothing is pregiven is the great postmodern discovery, and it plugs humans into a plastic Kosmos of their own co-creation, Spirit become self-conscious in the most acute forms, on the way to its own superconscious shock."

From Ken Wilber's A Brief history of Everything (322-23)

Can we skip steps of development?

2010-07-07T09:45:00.003-05:00

Ken wilber quoting Sri Aurobindo:

"The spiritual evolution obeys the logic of a successive unfolding; it can take a new decisive main step only when the previous main step has been sufficiently conquered: even if certain minor stages can be swallowed up or leaped over by a rapid and brusque ascension, the consciousness has to turn back to assure itself that the ground passed over is securely annexed to the new condition; a greater or concentrated speed [of development, which is indeed possible] does not eliminate the steps themselves or the necessity of their successive surmounting."

Aperspectival Madness: Hiding Behind Irony

2010-06-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

“Aperspectival madness” might fairly well describe much of the last two decades of art, art criticism, lit crit, and cultural studies. Irony is one of the few places you can hide in a world of aperspectival madness -- say one thing, mean another, therefore don’t get caught in the embarrassment of taking a stand. (Since, allegedly, no stand is better than another, one simply must not commit -- sincerity is death). So skip sincerity, opt for sardonic. Don’t construct, deconstruct; don’t look for depth, just hug the surfaces; avoid content, offer noise -- “surfaces, surfaces, surfaces is all they ever found,” as Bret Easton Ellis summarized the scene. No wonder that David Foster Wallace, in a recent essay that received much attention, lamented the pervasiveness of the art of “trendy, sardonic exhaustion” and “reflexive irony,” art that is “sophisticated and extremely shallow.”

From Ken Wilber Online: Here

Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants: The Basics

2010-06-06T17:32:00.004-05:00

"Okay. Let's say i have a thought of going to the grocery store. When I have that thought, what I actually experience is the thought itself, the interior thought and its meaning--the symbols, the images, the idea of going to the grocery store. That's Upper Left.
While I am having this thought, there are, of course, correlative changes occurring in my brain--dopamine increases, acetylcholine jumps the synapses, beta brain waves increase, or whatnot. Those are observable brain behaviors in my brain. they can be empirically observed, scientifically registered. And that is Upper Right.
Now the internal thought itself only makes sense in terms of my cultural background. If I spoke a different language, the thought would be composed of different symbols and have different meanings. If I existed in a primal tribal society a million years ago, I would never even have thought "going to the grocery store." It might be, "Time to kill the bear." The point is that my thoughts themselves arise in a cultural background that gives texture and meaning and context to my individual thoughts, and indeed, I would not even be able to "talk to myself" if I did not exist in a community of individuals who also talk to me.
...
But culture itself is not simply disembodied, hanging in idealistic midair. It has material components, which as my own individual thoughts have material brain components. All cultural events have social correlates. These concrete social components include types of technology, forces of production (horticultural, agrarian, industrial, etc.), concrete institutions, written codes and patterns, geopolitical locations (towns, villages, states, etc.), and so on. And these material, social, empirically observable components--the actual social system-- are crucial in helping to determine the types of cultural worldview."

-- From A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber, pg. 80-81

Story of a Planet - Laboring for Air

2010-05-25T12:37:00.001-05:00

A video I created about a fictional planet where "these guys" labor for air.

A red lense sees no red

2010-05-18T23:22:00.002-05:00

"As St. Thomas put it, "Whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature." Thus, if the eye were colored red, it wouldn't be able to perceive red objects. It can see red because it is clear, or "redless." Likewise, if we can but watch or witness our distresses, we prove ourselves thereby to be "distress-less," free of the witnessed turmoil. That within which feels pain is itself pain-less; that which feels fear is fear-less; that which perceives tension is tension-less. To witness these states is to transcend them. They no longer seize you from behind because you look at them up front."

Ken Wilber, No Boundary, p.116

Timeless Present or Fleeting Present?

2010-05-14T10:10:00.004-05:00

"Because we demand a future, we live each moment in expectation and unfulfillment. We live each moment in passing. In just this way the real nunc sans, the timeless present, is reduced to the nunc fluens, the fleeting present, the passing present of a mere one or two seconds. We expect each moment to pass on to a future moment, for in this fashion we pretend to avoid death by always rushing toward an imagined future. We want to meet ourselves in the future. We don't want just now--we want another now, and another, and another, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And thus, paradoxically, our impoverished present is fleeting precisely because we demand that it end! We want it to end so that it can thereby pass on to yet another moment, a future moment, which will in turn live only to pass."

Ken Wilber in No Boundary

Derek Sivers: How to start a movement | Video on TED.com

2010-04-20T17:18:00.000-05:00

Energy Burn

2010-04-16T17:24:00.003-05:00

The following excerpt is from Being Human: An Entheological Guide to God Evolution and the Fractal Energetic Nature of Reality by Martin Ball where he discusses energy flowing through the body:

"When working with medicines in a seated position, your main
concern is to keep the above issue of uncrossed appendages in mind in
order to maximize your smooth energy flow. This means if you are
seated in a chair, keep both feet planted firmly on the floor, ideally
keeping your feet flat. Energy grounds out through your feet and
keeping your feet flat allows for a smoother transfer of energy, as
opposed to being on tip toes, for example. Keep in mind that large
energy discharges can create “energy burns” on your toenails. It
doesn’t hurt (though it might prick and tingle), but it can make toenails
look pretty ugly. Keeping your feet flat can help minimize the
possibility of this happening. If it does, don’t worry – your toenails
will eventually grow out and look pretty again!"

When I first read this, I was skeptical. When I hear people talk about energy flowing through the body, I assume they don't mean it literally. However, almost 3 months ago, soon after I read this, I was throwing a party at my apartment and I had quite a bit to drink - too much to drink, in fact - and I began to feel as though energy was running through my body at an uncomfortably fast pace. This normally would have been the point where I panic slightly and hang out in the bathroom until the discomfort subsides. However, having read Being Human, I decided not to panic and just let the energy flow freely through my body. So I went to my bedroom and sat in a comfortable position, letting the energy flow. I did this for a few minutes and the discomfort subsided to a small degree. Though I was still not feeling great, I decided to return to the party. When I returned, some people were playing one of my favorite video games Geometry Wars: Pacifism. The game is a very simple retro-style game; it uses one joystick and the only goal is to avoid a mass of predictable blue shapes and stay alive as long as possible. I'm really quite good at it-- it's one of those games where I can 'flow' as Csikszentmihalyi would say (according to him Flow happens when a person is totally immersed in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to their abilities). I decided I wanted to play; I thought it would allow me to focus the still highly volatile energy I could feel inside me. So I was sitting cross-legged in front of the television and as I played I started feeling the energy flowing more furiously through my body, which was not a pleasurable feeling. As the game increased in intensity, so too did the discomfort. It felt as though there was loud music blaring inside me and somebody kept turning the volume louder & louder. I tried staying calm and to just let things flow, but it just kept getting more intense until finally I felt the energy shoot through my leg and out of my foot- it pushed me up out of my seated position in a flash. I decided to retire to my bedroom for the remainder of the night.

A few days later I noticed what I thought was a dirt on the toenail of my big toe, after trying to clean it I realized it wasn't dirt, but appeared to be a small ruptured blood-vessel under my toenail; the toenail on the same foot where I felt the shock. Here's a picture 3 months later:

Closing thoughts from the movie Food, inc.

2010-04-13T22:01:00.004-05:00

When you go to the supermarket, choose foods that are in season.
Buy foods that are organic.
Know what’s in your food. Read labels.
The average meal travels 1500 miles from the farm to the supermarket. Buy foods that are grown locally.
Shop at farmer’s markets.
Plant a garden (even a small one).
Cook a meal with your family and eat together.
Everyone has a right to healthy food. Make sure your farmer’s market takes food stamps.
Ask your school board to provide healthy school lunches.
The FDA and USDA are supposed to protect you and your family. Tell Congress to enforce food safety standards and re-introduce Kevin’s Law.
If you say grace, ask for food that will keep us, and the planet healthy.

The "Big Three" -- I, WE & IT

2010-04-12T01:49:00.002-05:00

Below is a table showing ways in which various thinkers touched on the "Big Three" -- I, WE & IT -- that make up Ken Wilber's Four Quandrants.

Bottom-up & Top-down: Two sides of a coin

2010-04-11T19:56:00.004-05:00

I came across an old conversation with my friend Elliott where he linked me to an article titled "The Dialectic of Bottom-up and Top-down Emergence in Social Systems" by Christian Fuchs & Wolfgang Hofkirchner. It provides a more integral approach to understanding evolutionary systems and social systems, and provides answers to the questions -- Do evolutionary systems dominate the elements and thus create the way the elements are currently organized? or do evolutionary systems emerge out of the way the elements are currently organized? --and similarly -- Do social systems constrain and enable us, and thus create us as we are? or do our actions create social systems as they are? The answer is both to both sets of questions.

Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps to Financial Freedom

2010-04-10T01:30:00.003-05:00

After being turned on to Dave Ramsey by a friend of mine, I read through his Money Answer Book and I read through this site which has fairly in-depth looks at each of his 7 steps. I'm sold on his advice.

The steps are:

Tips on Decision Making

2010-04-09T17:22:00.006-05:00

I read a great series of posts by Laird Schaub on the following four questions (he devoted a post to each question):

1. How to choose a decision-making process (in what contexts should groups adopt consensus, and in which contexts shouldn't they)

2. So you want to make decisions by consensus? (basic definitions of what this means and choices the group has in how to go about it)

3. Consensus decision-making from soup to nuts (highlights of the key steps—agenda setting, initial discussion, delegation/committee work, proposal generation, conflict resolution, decision-making)

4. But who seconded the motion? (recommendations for how minutes should be structured for consensus process meetings)

Relationships: John Gottman's Four Horsemen

2010-03-24T16:04:00.008-05:00

John Gottman is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington known for his work on marital stability. By observing couples' emotions and micro-expressions he has been able to predict with 90% accuracy which couples will remain married and which will divorce four to six years later.

Gottman has determined there are four destructive elements that can lead to relationship failure. He calls them The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and they are:
Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness & Stonewalling

1. Criticism
Criticisms often start with: “you always…” “you never…”“you’re the type of person who …” “why are you so …” A criticism differs from a complaint in that a complaint is about something specific & a criticism is a generalization about a person's character. A complaint says "I don't like that you did this"; a criticism says "I don't like who you are".
2. Contempt:
When we communicate with contempt we are being disrespectful or mean; often using sarcasm, mockery, insults, ridicule, &/or eye rolling.
3. Defensiveness:
Protecting yourself from a perceived attack without actually listening to what your partner has said. Making excuses, cross-complaining, yes-butting & seeing yourself as the victim.
4. Stonewalling:
Withdrawing and shutting down as a means to avoid conflict. This creates distance and separation.

Also, for some proactive ideas David Parkinson's most recent post points towards some principles we might adopt when trying to get something good happening with a group of people.

Dave Pollard's Manifesto

2010-03-22T23:17:00.003-05:00

"I am not a consumer. I am not, as my friend Jerry Michalski acerbically puts it, “a gullet who lives only to gulp products and crap cash”. I am not here to use stuff up. I measure myself by my ability to live light upon the land, to consume as little as possible in the process of living, comfortably, sustainably, responsibly, joyfully, sufficiently. If I consume more than I must to live this way, then I am failing in my responsibility to all-life-on-Earth. When you, politicians and corporations, measure how much we humans collectively produce and consume, you are measuring the collective failure of our species to live responsibly and within its means, not its well-being."

Get the full text here.

visit Dave's blog at http://howtosavetheworld.ca

Peace of Mind from being the Chooser and the Doer

2010-03-21T19:55:00.006-05:00

"First, they realized that if they wanted to have a loving organization, they could not define seemingly opposite roles, for example workers and owners, as the responsibility of different people, as if these roles could be separated in time and space. Are not we all both full co-owners and co-workers of the planet at all times before we are anything else?

To have easy and freely chosen one-mindedness, it is best if the owner and the worker in a business are the same person. If I am the person who decides what movie to go to and you are the person who goes to the movie, that will seem ludicrous to us. In this example, we easily can see that to separate the choosing and the doing from one another in time and space (into different bodies) brings fear into the relationship. We will each fear that the other will not be sensitive enough to our needs and wants. The potential for conflict is great.

If I am the chooser and the doer, however, I have no fear at all. I know I will be sensitive to my needs and wants so the relationship between the chooser and doer, being both in me, is peaceful. This inner peace is the result of my freedom; the capitalist in me is happy.

If you and I are going to a movie together and we both are the chooser and the doer, then our relationship can be timeless and spaceless. If we are lovers and you want to go to movie A and I want to go to movie B, we will talk about it. If you want to go to movie A more that I want to go to movie B, we will decide to go to movie A. We will both be happy — yet in the material world I did not get anything I initially wanted while you got everything you first wanted. We are happy because we freely acted as if we had one mind. The limitations of the material world are fully accepted; we could only go to one movie together. There is peace in the relationship. This peace is the result of solidarity; the democratic socialist in us is happy."

From Mondragon: The Loving Society That Is Our Inevitable Future thanks to Dave Pollard for the link.

Four Different Ways, Four Quadrants

2010-03-21T12:35:00.005-05:00

In Walter Truett Anderson's "Four Different Ways to Be Absolutely Right" he discusses four different world views:

"The four worldviews are (a) the postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed; (b) the scientific-rational, in which truth is "found" through methodical, disciplined inquiry; (c) the social-traditional in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western Civilization' and (d) the neo-romantic in which truth is found either through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self. Each of these has its own set of truths, and its own ideas about what truth is-- where and how you look for it, how you test or prove it."

I've been listening to Ken Wilber's interviews in an audio series called Kosmic Consciousness, and after re-reading the above article I'm struck by how well the Four Different Ways fit into Wilber's four quadrants:

The neo-romantic would be I
The scientific-rational would be IT
The social-traditional would be ITS
The postmodern-ironist would be WE

Meditation Notes from Ken Wilber

2010-03-19T14:30:00.002-05:00

Higher Consciousness Level 1: Unified Bodymind (Body/Mind/centaur level)

Lie down on your back, arms alongside, legs slightly parted, close your eyes, breath deeply and easily

Give direct feeling-attention to different parts of the body; feel the deep body sensations; not conceptual thinking about those parts of the body

Draw deep breaths from the throat all the way down to the abdomen; breath = "vital force"; inhale as charging up the hara/naval-abdomen with energy; exhale as pleasure/joy radiating throughout your body and out to the entire cosmos

"Once this cycle becomes full, then start to allow all thinking to dissolve in the exhalation and pass to infinity. Do the same with all distressful feelings, with disease, with suffering, with pain. Allow feeling-attention to pass though all present conditions and then beyond them to infinity, moment to moment to moment."

Discover blocked areas: numbness, lack of feeling, deadness, tightness, tension, rigidity, or pain; common areas of tightness and tension: neck, eyes, anus, diaphragm, shoulders, lower back; common areas of numbness: pelvic area, genitals, heart, lower abdomen, or the extremities

"Every block, every tension or pressure in the body, is basically a muscular holding-in of some taboo impulse or feeling."; common meanings bottom TEKW p.79, each part of the body associated with a different emotion

"Forced relaxation" does not work, although all of these are under voluntary muscle control; give your full attention to that area and actively and consciously attempt to increase the tension; release the buried emotions associated with the tension area; remind yourself that you are actively trying to hold something in (this will usually force the release), try to increase the resistance (which will make it give way)

"The block is released when feeling-attention can flow though that area in a full and perfectly unobstructed fashion on its way to infinity."

From Meditation Notes from Ken Wilber on IntegralWorld.net

Permaculture Design: Course Outline & Reading Materials

2010-03-15T00:04:00.003-05:00

CLASS OUTLINE: here

READING MATERIALS:
Spiral Seed Permaculture
“1491" by Charles Mann
Rainwater Harvesting Traditions in Desert Southwest
Water in Permaculture
Water Harvesting Principles
Our Home Flowering Tree
Forests in Permaculture
Permaculture in Arid Landscapes
Permaculture in Humid Landscapes
Permaculture on Islands
Permaculture Techniques
Species Niche Analysis Check List
Lots of Life in One Place

From Pulmaculture.org, sign up for the class here

You are not "the thinker"

2010-03-14T23:38:00.004-05:00

The beginning of freedom is the realization

that you are not "the thinker."

The moment you start watching the thinker,

a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.

You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm

of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a

tiny aspect of that intelligence.

You also realize that all the things that truly matter --

beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace --

arise from beyond the mind.

You begin to awaken.

Eckhart Tolle from Practicing The Power of Now

Why I'm Not a Rational Materialist

2010-03-12T12:28:00.005-06:00

"The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don't truly understand."

From Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything

The Healthy, Happy Human Being Wears Many Masks

2010-03-07T00:23:00.006-06:00

"the value that society places on a coherent identity is unwarranted and possibly detrimental. It means that the heterosexual must worry over homosexual leanings, the husband or wife over fantasies of infidelity, the businessman over his drunken sprees, the commune dweller over his materialism. All of us are burdened by the code of coherence, which demands that we ask: how can i be X if I am really Y, its opposite? We should ask instead: What is causing me to be X at this time? We may be justifiably concerned with tendencies that disrupt our preferred modes of living and loving; but we should not be anxious, depressed or disgusted when we find a multitude of interests, potentials and selves."

From The Healthy, Happy Human Being Wears Many Masks by Kenneth Gergen

"Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

The Transition Handbook, Resilience

2010-02-28T04:55:00.006-06:00

I just started reading The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins:

"If (at that time) Hunza were to be cut off from the world and the global economy's highways of trucks packed with goods, it would have managed fine. If there were a global economic downturn, or even a collapse, it would have had little impact on the Hunza Valley. The people were resilient too, happy, healthy and with a strong sense of community.

I do not intend to romanticise or idealise it, but there was something I caught a glimpse of when I was in Hunza that resonated with a deep genetic memory somewhere within me. I grew up in England when the fossil fuel party was in full swing, in a culture ceaselessly trying to erase all traces of resilience and rubbishing the very idea at every opportunity, portraying country people as stupid, the traditional as 'old-fashioned' and growth and 'progress' as inevitable. In this remote valley I felt a yearning for something I couldn't quite put my finger on but which I now see as being resilience: a culture based on its ability to function indefinitely and to live within its limits, and able to thrive for having done so."

Tasting a Tangerine

2010-02-07T15:55:00.004-06:00

"Often, instead of tapping in to our direct experience, we substitute concepts. An exercise we sometimes do in one of my classes at Naropa University to highlight this phenomena involves mindful eating. Many Buddhist teachers encourage their students to try this exercise on a regular basis. In class, we might take a tangerine and begin by silently looking at it. We examine the texture, color, and shape of the particular piece of fruit in front of us. We pick it up and notice what it feels like in the hand. We might hold it up to our ear and see what sounds occur as we roll it in our fingers. Slowly, we begin to peel it. We sniff and notice its aroma. When thoughts arise of past tangerines or imaginings about how this one will taste, we notice them and let them go, by coming back to this tangerine in this moment. Carefully, but not too carefully, we separate out a section, and taking our time, we bring it to our mouth. We continue the exercise by noticing the spontaneous preparations that the mouth takes as the section of tangerine approaches. Then we taste it as if we've never tasted a tangerine before--and in fact, we never have tasted this tangerine before. We continue in this way until we've eaten the entire tangerine, letting each moment be unique.

This exercise highlights not only the details of the present moment of eating a tangerine; it also reveals, often rather pointedly, how often we miss the present moment. All too often, instead of tasting the tangerine, we taste our ideas about it. For example, I "know" that I don't like tangerines. I even have good reasons for my distaste: tangerines are acidic, they sting my chapped lips in the winter, they can be messy. However, if I just do the above exercise, and taste a particular tangerine, it is quite different from my mental tangerine."

-Karen Kissel Wegela from The courage to be present: Buddhism, psychotherapy, and the awakening of natural wisdom

Teach Me

2010-02-01T04:23:00.009-06:00

I would love it if I could go to a website, type in something I'm interested in learning- say, "19th Century Philosophy" - and then immediately be taken to a curriculum composed entirely of on-line information -- articles, full texts, videos, lectures, tables & pictures. The curriculum would start with the most basic information about the subject - and once the visitor felt like they fully understood the basics they could graduate themselves on to the next level.

Right now I spend a lot of time reading books and watching videos that contain repeated or irrelevant information, and I'd like it if there were a service that arranged relevant information in a sequential & complementary fashion so I could learn it more quickly.

The article Every Shareholder Should Read This Now contains a suggested reading list of books on investing, organized in this way:

Emotional Freedom Technique - Tapping

2010-01-28T02:13:00.005-06:00

I've done this the last two days, and I'm pretty much sold on it -- though, this video is not the greatest. It has already made me feel better about some things that were causing me stress.

Alan Watts - A Conversation With Myself

2010-01-15T18:22:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Eric Dubay for the link, he has the entire thing posted here.

Dr. Quantum: Double Slit Experiment

2010-01-12T18:30:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Cameron for the link

Waking Up: Liberation from Ego

2010-01-12T18:10:00.003-06:00

"Waking up to the true nature of your being means essentially
only one thing, and that is liberation from the confines of your ego,
thereby letting yourself be more fully yourself and more responsible for
your personal experience of the reality game. Waking up does not
mean developing paranormal powers or anything mystical or
mystifying at all. It simply means liberating yourself from your ego
and thereby living a happier and more satisfying life. It doesn’t mean
you’ll be able to “manifest” anything you want, or “create your own
reality,” as are popular beliefs among New Age aficionados. Nor does
it mean developing psychic powers as Buddhism and Hinduism claim.
And it especially does not mean developing an ability to travel in astral
realms or visit alien civilizations or any such fantastical nonsense.
Waking up is simply about being fully present and authentic with your
energy at all times and is best described as being energetically open.
When you can do that, your ego will no longer have a hold on you.
When your ego no longer has a hold on you, you won’t be taken in by
fantasy and ego-projection. You won’t engage with others’ self-created
dramas and power-plays and you’ll understand how to avoid making
ones of your own. You will be happier and you will feel supreme love
for yourself and for God (which are one and the same). You will be at
peace."

Martin Ball, from Being Human

John Gray on Life

2010-01-12T02:58:00.004-06:00

Eric's Esoterics

2010-01-05T02:58:00.001-06:00

Eric linked me to another Eric:

http://ericdubay.blogspot.com/

Good stuff.

Venus's Orbit and Its Harmonic Relation to Earth

2010-01-04T05:51:00.004-06:00

"Venus rotates extremely slowly on her own axis in the opposite direction to most rotations in the solar system. Her day is precisely two-thirds of an Earth year, a musical fifth. This exactly harmonizes. . . so that every time Venus and Earth kiss, Venus does so with the same face looking at the Earth." Eight Earth years equals, exactly, thirteen Venus years, the five kisses between them crafting a perfect pentagon, carved out of space. The numbers 5, 8, and 13 belong to the Fibonacci sequence, defining Phi.

Every 243 years, Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun twice in eight years-- a pair of "Venus transits," visible to the naked eye. In our own time, an initial transit occurred on June 8, 2004, to be matched by a second on June 6, 2012. The Venus transits also reflect the harmonic relation between the two orbits--in those 243 Earth years, exactly 365 Venus days will have passed.
-- From 2012 by Daniel Pinchbeck

The Weather Underground

2010-01-03T03:19:00.005-06:00

A great documentary on the Weather Underground -- This really was an interesting watch for me after reading Dave Pollard's recent posts on serious resistance to the destruction of the Alberta Tar Sands combined with my hopes for an (r)evolution in consciousness.

From the clip above:
"I still have hope. I don't think we're going to have a revolution in 5 years like I did in 1970 but I definitely think that people never stop struggling and never stop waiting for the moment when they can change the things that make their lives unlivable."

Amit Goswami, Quantum Physics & Consciousness

2009-12-30T03:43:00.003-06:00

The Roots of Consciousness

2009-12-30T02:30:00.004-06:00

The Roots of Consciousness by Jeffrey Mishlove, PHD

Can't wait to read more - the section on Consciousness and the New Physics is very thorough.

Understanding Being

2009-12-20T02:29:00.005-06:00

Please stop trying to understand Being. You have already had significant glimpses of Being, but the mind will always try to squeeze it into a little box and then put a label on it. It cannot be done. It cannot become an object of knowledge. In Being, subject and object merge into one.

--Eckhart Tolle, Power of Now, 88

Isolated and Broken

2009-12-19T17:46:00.003-06:00

"A 2006 American Sociological Review study ("Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades") reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.) Sociologist Robert Putnam, in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone, describes how social connectedness is disappearing in virtually every aspect of U.S. life. For example, there has been a significant decrease in face-to-face contact with neighbors and friends due to suburbanization, commuting, electronic entertainment, time and money pressures and other variables created by governmental-corporate policies. And union activities and other formal or informal ways that people give each other the support necessary to resist oppression have also decreased."
-- Bruce E. Levine

From Alternet.org "Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression"
Thanks Dave for the link

How to do all things:

2009-12-17T17:18:00.002-06:00

At any given moment in time, we are what we are; and we have to accept the consequences of being ourselves. Only through this acceptance can we begin to evolve further.
[...]
In general, mankind almost always acts with attachment; that is to say, with fear and desire. Desire for a certain result and fear that the result will not be obtained. Attached action binds us to the world of appearances; to the continual doing of more action. But there is another way of performing action, and that is without fear and without desire.
[...]
People often confuse non-attachment with fatalism, when in fact, they are opposites. The fatalist simply does not care. He will get what is coming to him. Why make the effort? But the doer of non-attached action is the most conscientious of men. Freed from fear and desire, he offers everything he does as a sacrament of devotion to his duty. All work because equally and vitally important. It is only to the results of work - success or failure - that he remains indifferent. When action is done in this spirit, Krishna teaches, it will lead us to the knowledge of what is behind all action, behind all life: the ultimate Reality. And, with the growth of this knowledge, the need for further action will gradually fall away from us. We shall realize our true nature, which is God.

Appendix II, The Gita and War
Bhagavad-Gita: The Song of God
translated and appendix presumably written by: Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

.........

"My God, give me the grace to perform this action with You, and through love for You. In advance I offer to you all the good that I may do, and accept all the difficulty I may meet therein."

The Direction of Intention
St. Franis DeSales

Going to Salesianum (House of DeSales) High School, I had to say this at the start of every day and every class. Simple and profound, and highly compatible with the above sentiments.

Who's Crazy Here?

2009-12-17T16:36:00.003-06:00

Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?

—Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42–3

If what is at issue is not truth but happiness and freedom, why must philosophy have the last word? Why should not faith and myth have equal rights? Formerly philosophers sought peace of mind while pretending to seek the truth. Perhaps we should set ourselves a different aim: to discover which illusions we can give up, and which we will never shake off. We will still be seekers after truth, more so than in the past; but we will renounce the hope of a life without illusion. Henceforth our aim will be to identify our invincible illusions. Which untruths might we be rid of, and which can we not do without? -- that is the question, that is the experiment."
—John Gray, Straw Dogs, 83

Meditation Notes from the Writings of Ken Wilber

2009-12-16T12:08:00.004-06:00

"Slowly begin to silently recite the following to yourself, trying to realize as vividly as possible the import of each statement:"

"I have a body, but I am not my body. I can see and feel my body, and what can be seen and felt is not the true Seer. My body may be tired or excited, sick or healthy, heavy or light, but that has nothing to do with my inward I. I have a body, but I am not my body."
"I have desires, but I am not my desires. I can know my desires, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Desires come and go, floating through my awareness, but they do not affect my inward I. I have desires, but I am not desires."
"I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions, and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler. Emotions pass through me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have emotions, but I am not emotions."
"I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. I can know and intuit my thoughts, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts."

Affirm as concretely as possible:

"I am what remains, a pure center of awareness, an unmoved witness of all these thoughts, emotions, feelings, and desires."

From http://www.integralworld.net/meditation.html

Jams and Jellies - Jefferson General Store Jefferson, Texas

2009-12-13T19:39:00.001-06:00

A commercial I made for Jefferson General Store

What on Earth Could That Be?

2009-12-11T21:32:00.006-06:00

Click here for article with a crazy video of this event

**An ominously beautiful spectacle, created by a failed Russian missile launch.

Thanks to Jesse for the link

K. Wilbs

2009-12-08T00:20:00.002-06:00

Ken Wilber:

"There is nothing spooky or occult about this. We have already seen identity shift from matter to body to mind, each of which involved a decentering or dis-identifying with the lesser dimension... consciousness is simply continuing this process and dis-identifying with the mind itself, which is precisely why it can witness the mind, see the mind, experience the mind. The mind is no longer a subject, it is starting to become an object [in the perception of] the observing self. And so the mystical, contemplative and yogic traditions pick up where the mind leaves off... with the observing self as it begins to transcend the mind."

"The contemplative traditions are based upon a series of experiments in awareness: what if you pursue this Witness to its source? What if you inquire within, pushing deeper and deeper into the source of awareness itself? What do you find? As a repeatable, reproducible experiment in awareness? One of the most famous answers to that question begins: There is a subtle essence that pervades all reality. It is the reality of all that is, and the foundation of all that is. That essence is all. That essence is the real. And thou, thou art that. In other words, the observing self eventually discloses its own source, which is Spirit itself, Emptiness itself... and the stages of transpersonal growth and development are basically the stages of following this observing self to its ultimate abode."

Q: "How do you know these phenomena actually exist?

A: "As the observing self begins to transcend... deeper or higher dimensions of consciousness come into focus. All of the items on that list are objects that can be directly perceived in that worldspace. Those items are as real in [that] worldspace as rocks are in the sensorimotor worldspace and concepts are in the mental worldspace. If cognition awakens or develops to this level, you simply perceive these new objects as simply as you would perceive rocks in the sensory world or images in the mental world. They are simply given to awareness, they simply present themselves, and you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out if they're real or not."

"Of course, if you haven't awakened to [this] cognition, then you will see none of this, just as a rock cannot see mental images. And you will probably have unpleasant things to say about people who do see them".^[10]

For Argh Moments, Like The Current One

2009-12-07T21:14:00.002-06:00

Suffering the gloom, inevitable as breath, we must further accept this fact that the world hates: We are forever incomplete, fragments of some ungraspable whole. Our unfinished natures — we are never pure actualities but always vague potentials — make life a constant struggle, a bout with the persistent unknown. But this extension into the abyss is also our salvation. To be only a fragment is always to strive for something beyond ourselves, something transcendent. That striving is always an act of freedom, of choosing one road instead of another. Though this labor is arduous — it requires constant attention to our mysterious and shifting interiors — it is also ecstatic, an almost infinite sounding of the exquisite riddles of Being.

To be against happiness is to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is a call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight.

-Eric G. Wilson

Trading Meaning for Explanation

2009-12-07T15:45:00.004-06:00

Indifference and skepticism are two potent forces in the modern mentality. We have elevated them to the status of values. They are part of the way we have learned to inure ourselves from shock--what Benjamin calls "the price for which the sensation of the modern age may be had: the disintegration of the aura in the experience of shock." They furnish us with a certain shabby level of comfort. Franz Kafka wrote: "there is an infinite amount of hope--but not for us." To be an "indifferent skeptic" is to have reached the end of a certain evolutionary line--for a passionate skeptic, or even an indifferent believer, there might still be hope. For an indifferent skeptic, all that remains is the piling up of fact and statistic, to be sorted into categories of explanation.

-Pinchbeck, 2001, p134

Needing a Return to the Feminine

2009-12-03T02:05:00.003-06:00

From the Tao Te Ching:

Know the male,
yet keep to the female:
receive the world in your arms.
If you receive the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you will be like a little child.

"Our one-sided fixation on mechanized progress is the result of our civilization's ingrained habit of prioritizing the "rightness" of masculine rationality, seeking to dominate nature, over the "leftness" of feminine intuition, preferring to surrender to it. Edinger writes: "Everything 'feminine' (earth, nature, body, matter) underwent a profound depreciation with the onset of our aeon.... The fact is that the 'depreciation of the feminine' is one of the ways by which the Western psyche has evolved; and we can only assume that it was necessary for the required sequence of events." The "depreciation of the feminine" includes, not only women, but the intuitive and shamanic forms of thought denigrated by our rigidly masculine rationality, as well as nature itself, which is treated as the soulless object of the scientist's alienated gaze. This domineering attitude continues to underlie--and belie-- our mechanistic progress." -- Daniel Pinchbeck, p114 of 2012

Our Psyche

2009-12-02T20:47:00.006-06:00

"Technology, its poisonous by-products, weapons of mass destruction and inhumane repercussions are projections of the human psyche, expressing our current stage of development. They express not only our consciousness, but also our unconsciousness. "Look at the devilish engines of destruction!" Jung wrote, "They are invented by completely innocuous gentlemen, reasonable, respectable citizens who are everything we could wish. And when the whole thing blows up, and an indescribable hell of destruction is let loose, nobody seems to be responsible. It simply happens, and yet it is all man-made" -Daniel Pinchbeck, pg. 107 of 2012

It seems to me that the evil of the world is headed for a major downturn. The most innovative and popular technologies -- the Googles, Firefoxes, Twitters & Youtubes -- are projecting a much different psyche than the one described above. I'm confident that the psyche of my generation will be much different than the old-man psyche that gave birth to the destructive culture we currently live in. The fact is, the world we want is a much different world than the one we have, and I fully expect (in a very moral sense) for future technologies and business practices to reflect that.

**I realize this is an optimistic view, but it seems to me that an optimistic psyche has a better chance of success than a pessimistic one.

Mandelbulbs - Three Dimensional Mandelbrot Fractals

2009-12-02T03:07:00.003-06:00

More images at http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html#renders

Thanks to Martin for the link

Rob Hopkins: Transition Movement Founder - TED Talk

2009-12-01T04:16:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Dave Pollard for posting this

Belief Salad

2009-11-29T20:22:00.001-06:00

Why are some things easier to believe than others?

We certainly believe in the things we perceive physically, and those which seem “obviously true/commonsensical” to us, mostly based on experience and tradition and consensual reality.
How are beliefs about the afterlife/lack thereof any different than those that characterize regional and ethnic struggles, those obvious struggles in which it is obvious to the outsider that neither side is “right”?

I have found belief in a great, vast, mysterious world outside our own limited, consensual reality because I have no choice but to believe. Fortunately, this vast world offers ample room for all competing ideas - where there is paradox, there is a greater system by which the opposing parts are assumed into a greater whole.

Ideas from every culture and every belief system have begun to fit nicely into my newly constructed framework: Christianity (the wisdom of Jesus, unlimited compassion, “being a child of God”, end-of-time ideas), Islam (submission to ‘God’), Buddhism (wisdom, reincarnation, karma, simple living), Hinduism (creative and destructive forces, the third eye), shamanism (connection to Earth, levels of consciousness, spirit realms), new age (healing, prophecy, universal consciousness), astrology, science, etc. Anything earnestly believed may reside in “true” reality without negating the others. At the very least all must at least be considered, no matter what your current beliefs (which tend to fall into a “this is it” type of assertion). Be careful though: much belief is human invention. It is important to find the kernels.

What about UFO encounters? These have recently moved from the realm of ridiculous to the realm of the sublimely possible (in my view).

Firstly, a simple reading on the subject indicates the the phenomenon has much more depth, breadth, and width than I would have previously imagined. Skeptics more stony-hearted than I have been converted by direct experiences or accumulated knowledge of mystery.
Something has happened to these people to inspire belief. They’re not all bumpkins; they’re not all freaks; they’re not all followers. Considering that the idea of “abduction” has been reported throughout times in terms related to culture and period, I’m curious as to whether there is a outside-normality explanation.

If you don’t want to belief anything but the few sparse facts science has unearthed, that is, of course, your prerogative. But try, if you can, the alternative: living mythically and mystically, seeing meaning where you see it, and keeping a very open mind. Not all people whose ideas are unbelievably different than yours are crazy [, NTs I know].

Fractals, Coincidence, Prophecy, New Agey Weirdness

2009-11-29T20:05:00.006-06:00

Coincidences happen, yes? “Do they have meaning?” is a more difficult question. Synchronicity, and by association the fractal nature of reality that is such a common vision for psychonauts, and is such a recurring motif for New Agers, intuitively holds the key. For this post, the question will be reworded as Is reality fractal? with the collarary being “Are coincidences meaningful in that they refer to a higher system of meaning?”

A constituent element of a fractal is the ability for the part to mimic or represent the whole. Any arm in a spiral fractal can be found to contain spiral arms of itself which in turn contain their own identical spiral arms, and so on.

Is reality much the same?

For example: I see the like/dislike spectrum of human experience to be very associated with negative and positive charges inherent in atoms themselves. Even on the smallest level, matter divides itself into “attract/repel”, two opposites with no consciousness of their own, but which perceive, and act on perception.

Also, I sensed it while tripping. So did Jeff.

Similarly, you see this in studies by which humans instantaneously are attracted to or repelled by an object or concept, only after which are they able to find reasons for the attraction of repellence - a type of reverse causality in consciousness. Perception is the true king, with rational thought following nude and silly as the Emperor.

Matter knows matter. On what level? According to astronomy, gravity entails every particle affecting every other as space-time bends. According to quantum mechanics, particles become entangled and never part perception, despite distance or time - it is possible that the entire universe is one entangled mess on the sub-sub-sub-atomic level. We’re all connected by the forces that govern the universe. What forces and laws do we not yet know? And what implications may they have?

This, incidentally, makes prophecy theoretically possible, if you accept that reality is fractal, and that the fractals can be perceived (usually in altered states of consciousness). By being able to sense the greater pattern’s rhythm and form (which has to be done on an intuitive level, considering the greatness and complexity of existence on our one planet, much less the universe), it may be possible to see how the lowliest and most mundane phenomena can be related to the future and past events on a grander scale. Reading such signs... is most likely impossibly difficult without using a different form of consciousness. Dreams? That's where a lot seem to come from, and it's where all my deja vu has its genesis.

Other people’s beliefs in these phenomenon give me hope. I‘d rather not divide the world into “rationals” and “others”, considering how the definition of rational has changed throughout history. It is a short-sighted person indeed who believes that not only can all be known, but that reality can be extrapolated by the things we’ve figured out in the last couple hundred years.
I think I’ll put my faith in what has been figured out in the last couple thousands of years.

And finally, do coincidences have meaning? THE ANSWER!!!!: maybe.

First 7 Insights from the Celestine Prophecy

2009-11-23T02:25:00.007-06:00

From the Wikipedia page for The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (I edited parts of the following so that it makes more sense to me).:

The First Insight... A Critical Mass

A new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture; an awakening brought about by a critical mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding, a journey in which we are led forward by mysterious coincidences [aka the fractal nature of reality].

The Second Insight... The Longer Now

This awakening represents the creation of a new, more complete worldview, which replaces a five-hundred-year-old preoccupation with secular survival and comfort. While this technological preoccupation was an important step, our awakening to life's coincidences [aka the fractal nature of reality] is opening us up to ... real human life on this planet, and the real nature of our Universe.

The Third Insight... A Matter of Energy

We now experience that we live not in a material Universe, but in a Universe of dynamic energy. Everything extant is a field of sacred energy that we can sense and intuit. Moreover, we humans can project our energy by focusing our attention in the desired direction, in that where attention goes, energy flows, influencing other energy systems and increasing the pace of coincidences in our lives. It is possible to see this energy enveloping all living things.

The Fourth Insight... The Struggle For Power

To gain energy, we tend to manipulate or force others to give us attention and thus energy. When we successfully dominate others in this way, we feel more powerful, but they are left weakened and often fight back. Competition for scarce human energy is the cause of all conflict between people.

The Fifth Insight... The Message of the Mystics

Insecurity and violence ends when we experience an inner connection with divine energy within, a connection described by mystics of all traditions. A sense of lightness or buoyancy along with the constant sensation of love are measures of this connection. If these measures are present, the connection is real; if not, it is only pretended.

The Sixth Insight... Clearing the Past

The more we stay connected, the more we are acutely aware of those times when we lose connection, usually when we are under stress. In these times, we can see our own particular way of stealing energy from others [or having our energy stolen by others]. Once our manipulations are brought to personal awareness, our connection becomes more constant and we can discover our own evolutionary path in life, and our spiritual mission, which is the personal way we can contribute to the World.

Here the four main "control dramas"—the Interrogator, the Intimidator, the Aloof and the Poor Me—are discussed.

The Seventh Insight... Engaging the Flow

Knowing our personal mission [can] further enhance [or enrich] the flow of mysterious coincidences [aka the fractal nature of reality] as we are guided toward our destinies. First we have a question; then dreams, daydreams, and intuitions lead us towards the answers, which [can be] synchronistically provided by the wisdom of another human being.

Eckhart Tolle, "The Current Economy"

2009-11-22T02:17:00.002-06:00

Striving for the Mundane

2009-11-21T18:55:00.004-06:00

"when we alter our state of consciousness, we can get closer to the baseline state that is pure God consciousness. From my personal experience, this is best achieved through the ingestion of 5-MeO-DMT and is far more effective than any meditation regimen or other “mystical” practice. 5-MeO-DMT is about as altered as any human being can get, but from the God perspective, that state of consciousness is simply the way things actually are. In other words, that state of consciousness of complete mystical union is actually the super-mundane state of reality. It’s the most ordinary, non-fantastical thing. It’s the reality game that we’re playing here in embodied form that is fantastical, given that it’s all a complex and grand illusion."

-Martin W. Ball from Being Human: An Entheological Guide to God, Evolution and the Fractal Energetic Nature of Reality, P38

Buy his book online here

Thoughts on a Blog / a Story

2009-11-20T23:39:00.003-06:00

Reading over my first blog post is damning. Who am I arguing with? In my mind, probably my roommate. He has a "piss n' shit worldview" (his words), and my recent mental and psychic explorations are either offensive or pointless to him. So... I must argue my points in order for them to feel valid.

But I don't truly wish to argue. What I am going through right now is on a deeply personal level, and even if all the specifics are wrong, the quest of the thing opens up a new world of real possibilities [of life experience and knowledge].

Here is a brief story that holds all facets of the newfound quest:

During my trip, I perceived in my matter the greater universe, and suddenly all the religions, prophecies, science, mysteries, and philosophies I have ever mulled and dismissed unified into a coherent whole whereby the universe's structure and processes are both weirder and more complex than I could have ever imagined on my own. In my last post, I said no one knows The Truth, but what I really should have said is that the billions of Truths out there are all fragments of Totality.

So was I whacked out or what? In previous trips, I have made great personal discoveries, abandoned my fear of death, saw the Earth from space, etc... but I never ventured outwards. But this time, by the end of the night I started to believe in things that I never could before. A meaningful, full, complex universe full of unknown (but explorable) dimensions. The death of my parents at a young age eliminated all meaning besides perceivable, mechanical process. A purposeless universe made sense to me, because their deaths were very purposeless. Not to say there was no joy: at the very, very least I came from nothing to exist for awhile before the inevitable return to nothing. Joyful existensialism was what I called my philosophy (although it wasn't so joyful during my long and frequent bouts of despair and depression).

Anyway, this caused my a lot of anxiety in the following days. I was going to have to give up my sardonic irony and nihilism to embrace sincere, real beliefs. Were the mushrooms truly "mind-expanding" or was I just experiencing bizarre neurochemical interactions? Was the profound Truth I experienced during the trip real in any empirical way?

Reading Daniel Pinchbeck, Stanislaus Grof, and a couple other advocates for psychadelics made me take the idea seriously - these were people in similar situations who have compiled a large body of writing on the subject. The ideas matched up in very convincing ways - the spiraling, fractal nature of time, the approaching "new age" (bleh, too many connotations with that phrase, but close enough), the oneness of it all. Similarly, talking with Jeff about the experience made me realize even during that strange night, I was not alone in following impossible thoughts. But still... I wanted a sign. A real, unambiguous sign like I'd read about that if I opened my senses and consciousness, the universe would manifest to me.

I had a dream:

I was at a party thrown by the Christian God of the Old Testament (at my Godmother's house). Wild revelry, drunken spectacle, late into the night. Eventually the party wound down, and I made my way downstairs to the basement with a man and a woman.

The basement was filled with mutilated corpses. As we stood there, God came down the stairs and shot his arm T-1000-style into the chest of the man and ripped out his heart. I knew I was safe, and so did the woman, but all three of us (woman, God, and myself), knew that what he had done was wrong.

As we sat silently, suddenly my cellphone rang. I took it out of my pocket and looked at the caller ID. It said, bursting with "meaning":

DETECTIVE
217 - ..............

I could only make out the area code. I answered, and a voice told me he was coming for God. God glared at me with blazing eyes, and I knew in that moment that He wanted to kill me.

I woke up sweating. I rarely remember my dreams, but I had asked for a sign, and I had received a name and number. I wrote them down and fell back asleep, thinking that I would find 217.

Two days later, I lay in my girlfriend's bed, looking at her bookshelf. On it was a Bible, and I figured that it would be worth looking at, considering all the Christian imagery in the dream. I flipped to page 217, but there was nothing there - not that I was expecting there to be, page numbering was too arbitrary. My mind wandered to a conversation I had with my Grandmother the night before. I had never humored her borderline fundamentalist beliefs before, but before the call ended we had gotten into a conversation about Acts of the Apostles - she was going to Bible Study that night, and it was the book they were analyzing. If there was one book I should check (before I ran to the bus to get to work), it would be that one, my inner something said. I found Chapter 2, Verse 17 and an electric shock ran through me:

Acts of the Apostles 2:17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

There could not be a more meaningful or unambiguous passage to describe what I was going through.

The meaning of the dream became clear. I was the detective, and I must do what a detective does: search for truth.

It could be a coincidence. As I've said, none of us know. But... if it is a coincidence, it is the most profound of my life, right when I asked for it.

Now what?

Blogging, I guess.

Acting Mythologically

2009-11-20T08:57:00.005-06:00

In the "in-itself" there is nothing of "causal connections," of "necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom"; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule or "law." It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed "in itself," we act once more as we have always acted--mythologically.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Quoted in 2012 by Daniel Pinchbeck p50

Eric Has Landed (Somewhere)

2009-11-16T22:00:00.000-06:00

Thanks, Jeff. Glad to be here.

Now...

I am tired of using my forebrain. It's still new (evolutionarily speaking), and the kinks have not yet been worked out. My emotions affect my reasoning, as does the weather, the people around me, my health, and my location. So do about a million other things, too varied and subtle to name. Cultural bias, yes, strongly. Genetic wiring of the thinking hardware, definitely. Hormones, color, music, stress, peer pressure. Context.

Value judgments. They are subjective, entirely. "Good" and "bad" are not empiric qualities. You feel first, rationalize second. You didn't like "Titanic"? A lot of people did. They're not wrong. You're not right. It simply is, and all value-laden adjectives are a projection of your own values and personality. It's a post-modern world out there, and no one has a clear view of it all (although everyone thinks that they do).

I yearn for the world beyond words and reason. The insane chaos of existence we try to keep at bay with technology, comfort, mind-numbing drugs, and sureness in our beliefs. Do you yearn, friend?

I do not know how many people intuit naturally. I suspect it is present in all to some degree. But how do you interface the truths that bubble out of your subconscious with that which your mind/history/psychology tells you is actual truth? The forebrain speaks in words. Your intuition has no need for such prisons of meanings - but it speaks nonetheless.

Recently, my life has changed. My intuition went into overdrive on the last trip I was on with Jeff, and I realized that I could/should no longer suppress my deepest feelings with culturally-biased mental-rationalism regarding the reality that was presenting itself to me. It is a reality that is not of myself (I hope), but of the Earth/universe working through me, a amalgam of ancient matter that can perceive and feel and perhaps understand itself on a global/universal level. I wish to transcend the realm of context, and know the all/one.

What this means both practically and spiritually... will be the subject of the next ten thousand blog posts.

Am I writing to anyone? For anyone, or against anyone? I do not yet know. I am simply writing for anyone who peers around the edges of modern "reason".

Evolving our Awareness

2009-11-16T21:39:00.000-06:00

"Many [scientists] have spoken powerfully regarding the type of intent needed to give rise to a more integral science. For Bohm, the imperative is to evolve our awareness, so that it might naturally become more whole, more in line with our connectedness to the world. Without such awareness we're blind to the impact of our current ways of thinking. "Thought," as Bohm often said, "creates the world and then says, 'I didn't do it.'" Einstein spoke of the "optical delusion of our consciousness," whereby we experience ourselves "as something separate from the rest." "Our task," he said, "must be to widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." Maturana's work embodies his commitment to "a manner of co-existence in which love, mutual respect, honesty, and social responsibility arise spontaneously from living instant after instant." He says that we become more human through realizing "that we do not see the world as it is but as we are" and reminds us that "no human being has a privileged view of reality." When we forget our contingent view of reality, we lose our capacity to live together; as Maturana says, when one person or group asserts that only they see "what is really going on," they are actually making a "demand for obedience.""

From Presence by Senge, Scharmer, Jaworksi & Flowers, p 202-203

New Contributor

2009-11-16T21:22:00.002-06:00

My good friend Eric will now be contributing thoughts to the spot-
Welcome, buddy!

A Trip, Some Conclusions

2009-11-09T21:40:00.009-06:00

Psychedelic mushrooms heighten whatever my natural reaction would be to a given scenario. So if a certain conversation makes me uncomfortable, that same conversation would make me really uncomfortable while on mushrooms; or if something is beautiful to look at normally, it would be strikingly beautiful on mushrooms. One other effect mushrooms have on me is that they allow me to see more clearly the causal (or fractal) nature of the world and my mind-- I am able to see more clearly the causes of my thoughts, the consequences of my words, the effects of stimuli, and the natural emergence of life.

I posted this quote from Ernst Casserer, two posts ago:
"Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves, man is in a sense conversing with himself. He has so engulfed himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythic symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything without the interposition of an artificial medium"

David Abrams in The Spell of the Sensuous says that the big leap in man's symbolic activity occurred when man invented alphabetic language. Before the existence of alphabetic language, man would say a word and it would have a direct relation to the physical thing:
Word ---> Physical thing
After the invention of alphabetic language there was an artificial intermediary, the alphabetic word:
Word ---> The alphabetic word ---> Physical thing
At first this seems like a trivial difference, until you realize the profound consequences it has. Suddenly, the mind can stop short of the physical thing, and operate in a completely human realm -- it no longer needs the physical landscape from which all language sprang. Thus, "man is in a sense conversing with himself"

It is important at this point to note that the argument above isn't stating that once symbolic activity is invented, physical reality immediately disappears- but rather there is a proportional shift; as our use of symbols advances, physical reality recedes. The invention of alphabetic language is just one of the most notable historical occurrences of the advancement of symbolic activity.

When I recently took mushrooms, I noticed a causal (fractal) link between symbolic activities and deep feelings within me of stress and discomfort. When my mind strayed to things like advertisements, office jobs, fashion, pop-culture, or comedy bits, I would find myself in a deeply uncomfortable mindset; which, as I said previously, is just a heightened version of my normal reaction to these things. On our trip we walked to the lake; The walk there, along Belmont, was intense & stressful- but as soon as we arrived at the lake the stress and discomfort fell away from me. I was suddenly overcome with feelings of deep pleasure, comfort and belonging-- again, a heightened version of my normal reaction. While at the lake, my mind wasn't cluttered by any symbols and so I was able to clearly experience the moon appearing just above the horizon, I was able to smell the fallen leaves, to hear myself breathing, to feel the air on my skin, feel the ground beneath my feet-- i felt as if I was no longer chained by the world of symbols but free to be myself: a physical, sensuous being in a physical world.

At that moment it was abundantly clear to me that symbols have no real existence. When I give them power, they overwhelm me and pull me away from the world where I feel most at home. As such, I have lost all patience for people or institutions who force their symbols and subsequent stress & discomfort into my life. I just can't be a victim to a non-existence force-- so I'm taking the reigns to my life back. I'm going to be more forceful in the acquisition of the things I need to be happy and more discriminating in the activities I involve myself in.

Using Drugs to Find Your Authentic Self

2009-11-07T01:31:00.004-06:00

http://entheogenic.podomatic.com/entry/2009-10-26T16_55_21-07_00

I'm a little embarrassed with how much I find myself believing what this guy is saying.

**Update, I'm no longer embarrassed.

Google Wave

2009-11-07T01:00:00.004-06:00

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html#video

Google's long video about Google Wave

The future!

As Symbols Proliferate, Physical Reality Diminishes

2009-11-06T02:29:00.003-06:00

"Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium."

Ernst Cassirer
quoted in Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

How to organise a Children's Party

2009-10-29T19:20:00.002-05:00

Pulled from Chris Corrigan's website

The Answer is in Physical Reality, not a Utopian Vision

2009-10-11T18:13:00.006-05:00

the practice of realignment with reality can hardly afford to be utopian. It cannot base itself upon a vision hatched in our heads and then projected into the future. Any approach to our current problems that aims us toward a mentally envisioned future implicitly holds us within the oblivion of linear time. It holds us, that is, within the same illusory dimension that enabled us to neglect and finally to forget the land around us. By projecting the solution somewhere outside of the perceivable present, it invites our attention away from the sensuous surroundings, induces us to dull our sense, yet again, on behalf of a mental ideal.

David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, p 272

Example of Symbols

2009-10-11T18:02:00.003-05:00

If I say that I live in the "United States" or in "Canada," in "British Columbia" or in "New Mexico," I situate myself within a purely human set of coordinates. I say very little or nothing about the earthly place that I inhabit, but simply establish my temporary location within a shifting matrix of political, economic, and civilizational forces struggling to maintain themselves, today, largely at the expense of the animate earth. The great danger is that I, and many other good persons, may come to believe that our breathing bodies really inhabit these abstractions, and that we will lend our lives more to consolidating, defending, or bewailing the fate of these ephemeral entities other than to nurturing and defending the actual places that physically sustain us.

David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, P 265

"We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human"

2009-10-11T17:48:00.003-05:00

From an animistic perspective, the clearest source of all this distress, both physical and psychological, lies in the aforementioned violence needlessly perpetrated by our civilization on the ecology of the planet; only by alleviating the latter will we be able to heal the former. While this may sound at first like a simple statement of faith, it makes eminent and obvious sense as soon as we acknowledge our thorough dependence upon the countless other organisms with whom we have evolved. Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth-- our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.

David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, p. 22

Analytic Knowing v. Primary Knowing

2009-09-02T18:11:00.003-05:00

In the "analytic picture offered by the cognitive sciences, the world consists of separate objects and states of affairs, the human mind is a determinate machine which, in order to know, isolates and identifies those objects and events, finds the simplest possible predictive contingencies between them, stores the results through time in memory, relates the items in memory to each other such that they form a coherent but indirect representation of the world and oneself, and retrieves those representations in order to fulfill the only originating value, which is to survive and reproduce in an evolutionarily successful manner."
By Contrast, "primary knowing" arises by means of "interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of timeless, direct, presentation" rather than through stored "re-presentation." "Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself," said Rosch. Acting from such awareness is "spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making," and it is "compassionate... since it is based on wholes larger than the self."
As Rosch told Otto, all these attributes--timeless, direct, spontaneous, open, unconditional value, and compassionate--go together as one thing. That one thing is what some in Tibetan Buddhism call "the natural state" and what Taoism calls "the Source."

From Presence by Senge, Scharmer, Jaworksi & Flowers - Quoting Eleanor Rosch - p 98-99

Jim Henson

2009-07-06T16:12:00.002-05:00

“I cannot say why I am good at what I do, but I can say
that I work very hard at it. Nor am I aware of any
conscious career decisions. I’ve always found that one
thing leads to another, and that I’ve moved from project to
project in a natural progression. Perhaps one thing
that has helped me in achieving my goals is that I
sincerely believe in what I do, and get great
pleasure from it. I feel very fortunate because I can do
what I love to do.”

-Jim Henson

"Giving in is so damn comforting

2009-05-22T06:32:00.005-05:00

and so we go on with our lives
We know the truth but prefer lies
Lies are simple,
simple is bliss
Why go against tradition when we can admit defeat?
live in decline
Be the victim of our own design
The status quo, built on suspect
Why would anyone stick out their neck?"

The Decline by NOFX

This song really spoke to me as a 17 year old & the part above still hits home.

Lucky the Dog

2009-05-12T01:48:00.005-05:00

read the story of Lucky the Dog:
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/04/02.html#a685

"We are all, in a real sense, like Lucky. Most of us, all over the world, struggle every day, and put up with a huge amount of stress and unhappiness in our lives. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who lived for millions of years before modern civilization, we work much harder and longer to make a living, we face much more physical and psychological violence (in our neighbourhoods, in our workplaces, in our war-torn world, and sometimes even in our homes), we suffer from many more physical and psychological diseases and illnesses, we live in crowded, polluted, mostly run-down communities, in constant fear (of an infinite number of things, most notably not having enough), and we are oppressed with hierarchies, laws, rules and restrictions that would have driven our ancient ancestors quite mad.
Why do we put up with it? Because it's the only life we know." -Dave Pollard

Life Itself

2009-05-01T05:09:00.004-05:00

"Becoming equals the shifting combinations of varying configurations of "power constellations" interconnected at higher and lower levels. At certain points these constantly changing combinations yield sorrow for an individual from his or her perspective, at other points these changing combinations yield joy. The totality of these shifting combinations is *life itself*."

http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/80254/Nietzsche/W_P_2.html

Jeff Vail - A Theory of Power

2009-04-30T13:20:00.006-05:00

Jeff Vail's - A Theory of Power

http://www.jeffvail.net/atheoryofpower.pdf

-- Free online book, 50 pages long, things everyone should understand about the world we live in

"With genes and memes manipulating us, using neurochemical releases and emotional states to ensure their survival, we find ourselves faced with difficult, penetrating questions about our identity. What does it mean to experience a feeling if we can rationally understand that the emotion stems from nothing more than a chemical response evolved to ensure that we act as efficient hosts and vectors to genes and memes? What of our hopes and goals? Do these hopes truly belong to us, or do they serve as nothing more than effective strategies to propagate bits of cultural code? Would we still love our children if the resulting nurturing didn’t increase the chance of our genes’ survival? What of our egos versus the reality of genetic and memetic power-relationships: do we exist as nothing more than vectors for power-complexes? Do we have free will and an individual identity, or should we see our individuality as merely a construct of how our genes and memes use us to propagate themselves through the unconscious mechanism of natural selection? These represent difficult questions. The scope of their impact on our lives serves as an indication that we stand to uncover fundamental relationships governing our existence. At this point the ego and rational understanding come into direct conflict—will we retreat back to a comfortable but now conscious delusion, or continue this exploration?7 Can our ego survive if it learns the form of its own inner workings? Inside the psychological maze of self-knowledge stands the unknown; the path out may lead to fulfillment or misery. We will come to appreciate the concept of blissful ignorance as we press our inquiry." p.14

Mr. Furry Fur Fur and his friendly earth friends

2009-04-22T12:47:00.005-05:00

A childrens show with environmental themes -- created by two amazing new friends.

buy their DVD:

http://www.friendlyearthfriends.com/

The Importance of Living

2009-04-05T04:16:00.005-05:00

A practical guide for good living:

The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang

Google book

Authentic Leadership

2009-03-09T04:19:00.003-05:00

"When we are authentically present and true to our own internal compass, we are able to bring out the best in others. We are able to communicate without pretense and manipulation because we are not hiding behind ego or driven by fear. We are confident because we trust in the natural intelligence and goodness in ourselves and others. Seeing clearly what is and what could be, we are able to act decisively and effectively."

-- from the Authentic Leadership in Action Institute website
http://www.aliainstitute.org/institute/about.html

Thanks to Elliott for pointing me to it

What if your work achieves nothing?

2009-03-02T22:44:00.005-06:00

From Margaret J. Wheatley's Eight Fearless Questions -- mentioned on Dave Pollard & Chris Corrigan's sites:

What if your work achieves nothing? Thomas Merton, a great writer and contemplative in the Catholic tradition, said, "Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not, perhaps, results opposite to what you expect.

"As you get used to this idea of your work achieving nothing, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as, gradually, you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."

Creatures of Circumstance

2009-03-01T15:32:00.001-06:00

"Today we feel good because things are going well; tomorrow we feel the opposite. Where did that good feeling go? New influences took us over as circumstances changed: We are impermanent, the influences are impermanent, and there is nothing solid or lasting anywhere that we can point to. What could be more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions: do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? Our mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: It comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past."

Sogyal Rinpoche from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, (27)

2009-02-10T03:16:00.005-06:00

http://www.gandydancerproductions.com/videos/solution.mov