A world-changing experiment in London’s poorest borough shows how to break out of our disastrous spiral of alienation. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 24th January 2019 If …
Source: Mutually Assured Salvation
Month: January 2019
In praise of the next generation – and the newest generation
Thank you for reaffirming my faith in the coming generations.
I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to watch many, many young people become responsible, engaging, and impressive adults. I’ve experienced this with 2 sons, 21 nieces and nephews, children of our friends, and literally hundreds of my students over 30 years as a university professor. I can say without reservation that our future is in good hands with the next generation. They are making a difference in every facet of our economy. Some have started their own companies, which blows my mind. Others are IT professionals, teachers, civil servants, health care providers, lawyers, managers, editors, fashion consultants, environmentalists, international development workers, fund raisers, or working in a wide range of service industries. They are following their passions and exploring new ones. They run, cycle, travel, participate in music, coach and play in sports teams, learn new languages, get involved in their communities, contribute to charities, and, without…
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Obesophobia
In 1976, we ate more than we do today. So why are we fatter? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 15th August 2018 When I saw the photo, I …
Source: Obesophobia
Removing poverty
Such a simple idea but so loaded with prejudice it just doesn’t get an educated discussion. Too Bad!
Contrary to what some politicians might like you to believe, it is easy to remove most poverty. Simply give poor people, indeed everybody, enough money to subsist. It’s called basic income.
How to pay for it? There are two ways.
1. Pay out of current government moneys
There are many benefits to the economy:
- more economic activity, so more taxes
- less need for benefits, so less government costs
- reduced minimum wage, so more employment, so again more taxes
- less crimes of desperation
- more intelligent behaviour from the poor (yes)
- disincentive to immigration, as would apply to citizens only; there is also less incentive for people to move from other countries with a similar policy
- reduced inequality means reduced discontent with governments
- of course, you would net off against current tax and benefit schedules so that most people were not directly affected and continued to be paid the same as previously
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Testeria
Fearful masculinity harms both men and women. There are better ways of growing up. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 16th January 2019 What strikes me most is …
Source: Testeria
Life, Death, God & Meditation
Life, Death, God & Meditation
by Bill Harris
Excerpted from the Life Principles Integration Process
When you meditate all the things the mind does to convince you that the world is made of separate things begins to calm down, and you begin to see more than just a limited view of reality.
Even without meditation, you can just switch over to seeing the world in this other way, but it requires you to give up seeing it in the old way, and most of you are so attached to the old way, so used to it, so convinced that it’s the only way to see things—even though it is the main source of all your problems—that you’re reluctant to give it up.
I mean, after all, everyone else you know is operating under the assumption that this old way of seeing things is the way it really is, and who wants to be a weirdo and go off on some strange tangent where there are no things and no events and all of that. Well, the only one who wants to do that is someone who, first of all, is really, really curious about what the truth is, and…
…doesn’t just want to take someone else’s idea as the truth without testing it.
And the other kind of person who wants to take the leap into another way of seeing things is someone who really wants to jump out of the world of suffering and…
…into the world of inner peace and happiness.
Scrape Off the Window of Your Mind
I want you to give up the idea of light and good and dark and evil as being irreconcilably different and realize that they are one thing.
If you have a picture of the sun painted on your window, you’ll have to scrape it off to let in the real sun. In the same way, your image of reality, your image of God, your image of anything, really, will have to be…
…scraped off the window of your mind if you’re to experience the real thing.
This is where meditation comes in. Meditation is one way people have come up with to get past the concepts and to see “what is” directly. Meditation balances the brain and when the brain is balanced, you begin to see how things are connected…
…instead of perceiving them as separate and at odds with each other.
Those who have meditated a lot, and have developed the flexibility in the brain that allows you to make a lot of Alpha and Theta brainwaves, create this bridge between the conscious and the unconscious.
This puts you in touch with the unconscious, which is where you create your reality and where you become increasingly aware of exactly how you do so. Those who are in rapport with their unconscious mind…
…feel safe, happy, peaceful, and are in control of how they create their life.
Another interesting thing is that making slower brainwaves allows you to more easily see the off part of things and not just notice the on, in the same way that when other wavelike or on/off-like aspects of reality slow down—such as day and night, or life and death—you’re able to notice the off part of the wave.
Since when you notice both parts of the wave (the crest, and the trough) or both parts of on/off, you are seeing things the way they really are, your ability to create and be aware when you make these slower waves…
…allows you to see reality more directly.
Meditation and Vibration
Let me introduce another piece of information, one that is widely misunderstood, and which I get a lot of questions about. Most of you are familiar with the idea that when you become more conscious or become more spiritually “advanced,”…
…your frequency of vibration increases.
This comes from the Eastern meditation idea that you are, as is everything else in the universe, vibrating energy, and that your level of conscious awareness is determined by the…
…vibratory rate of your energy field.
In the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist schools of thought, this energy of vibration is carried in a series of channels in what they call the subtle body. These channels are called nadis, and there are supposed to be 365 million of these channels.
The more gross level of the nadis is what the Chinese doctors treat when using acupuncture. In this school of thought, these channels eventually come together in plexes in the spine called chakras.
Initially, these channels are tight, due to the person’s lack of conscious awareness.
And, just as a taut guitar string plays a high-frequency note, the nadis of such a person vibrates at a high frequency. Then, as the person meditates or does some other spiritual practice that creates conscious awareness, the ways of seeing the world as composed of separate that are, it is said, embedded in the nadis, are released and as a result, the nadis relax and loosen…
…and vibrate at a lower, slower rate of vibration.
As this happens, the nadis are able to carry more significant and greater amounts of energy, and as this happens, the person perceives more and more how…
…all the power in the universe is one thing, one process.
All the Energy of the Universe
Eventually, with a lot of work, the nadis become totally relaxed, the person becomes totally conscious, and because they are able to channel all the energy of the universe through their nadis, they see everything as being all one thing…
…and experience being that one thing.
You cannot be otherwise than at one with everything. Everything in the universe is connected in a giant matrix of energy and matter. You don’t need to take my word for this since physicists have been saying the same thing for decades. Even better, do the spiritual practices that allow you to…
…find out for yourself experientially.
It is, therefore, a mistaken impression that you are separate. That’s why they call the discovery of who and what you really are self-realization. It’s not that you achieve something when you become awakened…
…you just come to realize what is already true.
Bill Harris
Thanks Bill for sharing your wisdom.
Wayne
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Area Man Dies Having Spent 93% Of The Miracle Of Existence Bitching About Immigrants
Love the satire.
Don Mitchum. Seen here unable to enjoy a starry night for fear that someone else might also like to enjoy it.
Don Mitchum, 82, of Burlington, Ontario, died fitfully today in his childhood home, after a long and unfulfilling life spent worrying that people with names he refused to try and pronounce might come and live in some proximity to him.
Best known amongst his contemporaries as not really having all that much nice to say, and mostly just being the kind of guy you steered clear of once you got to know him, Don was well remembered. If not fondly.
“We didn’t called him ‘Bitchin’ Mitchum’ for nothing,” says lifelong acquaintance, Timothy Hawfield, who pointedly asked to not be referred to as Don’s friend. “He was always complaining about one group of people or another. In the 50’s, when we were teenagers together, it was the Italians and Portuguese…
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Musings and Wonderings 