Answer to a soldier upset about economics and Pledge of Allegiance

I didn't serve because of a 4-F rating. But many of my friends died in the Nam conflict. And I do believe in and serve as best I can the purported ideals of this Country by taking part in the political scene and volunteer work in the community.

I am also aware of history. Whatever first brought folks here, this Country that we love was founded by rich white men primarily on the ideals of commercial enterprise and the oppression of commerce in the colonies exemplified by, say, G. Washington having to send cotton to England to have it made into clothes as that was not allowed to be done here by King George. Slavery and indenture were common, as we know, and even Jefferson, whom we look to for our best Democratic ideas was a slave owner. In fact, it is arguable in some respect that this Country is still a corporation founded and owned by Great Britain.

I am, as an independent business man and entrepreneur who has made his own living for the past seven years, quiet aware as well of what is required of one to make a living by wits and talent in this economy. And being 63 years old and starting my life in a DP camp and then living in a ghetto and successively twice after in primarily black neighborhoods, I also know a bit about poverty. And having co-managed two multi-million dollar estates I know a bit about wealth. And my Dad being active in politics at every level for all of his life, I know a bit about that scene as well.
From this perspective I can readily say that though there are a few people who are lazy and feel entitled in the lower classes that we publicly rail about, this feature of human immaturity is, I greatly assure you, endemic in every class. The difference is that not only can those who have money, lots of it, protect themselves by legal entitlements under other names, eg subsidies to oil, corn, and tobacco corporations, they can also use their wealth to ever extract more from those who have less and vote themselves more. If you can read history books and interpret the news, you know this.
We have, in fact, in this country and adversarial plutocratic republic, and no one wishes to openly talk about the elephant in the room because guess where campaign funding comes from?

And even on the local scene, as I know from attending City Council and County Board of Supervisors meetings when I can, the people who have an actual and living concern with outcomes are busy working while lobbyists who are paid to push special interests swarm over such meetings and even have influence behind close doors, which we have plentiful evidence of.

So while I'm one who believes that people such as you, and others who have served by putting their lives on the line, perhaps have a claim to citizenship and the vote above the common person, I have my serious doubts, even supported by the views courageously expressed by Dwight Eisenhower, that our astonishingly expensive and invasive military tactics go a bit beyond the ideals of the Democracy they are purported to serve. Indeed, 1/40th of that budget could easily erase the health and social security concerns we now face. And remember, the next largest military budget in the world is 1/4 ours and belongs to an ally. The budgets of our "enemies" are crumbs compared to ours.


And as for blaming Obama? Where were the blamers during Bush's administration, and going back to Reagan when the safety net now proved to be an essential part of our society was first attacked? Indeed, look at the records Republican Congresses, which were a great majority from that era to this, and see who spent how much. In fact, the things now in the public eye as fear factors regarding where our money is going were generated by financial favors to the very rich at the disproportionate expense of the middle, which is why that exceptionally stabilizing element in a healthy society is dissolving in ours. And the very very rich. And beyond that rich. If you are not familiar with a thing called the "L" curve, I encourage you to take a look at it.

Am I against people having money? NO, I am not. I am against people who have the power to vote themselves favors doing so at my and your expense and blaming their own kind who have less as the culprits in problems while they often get rewarded beyond our financial imagination for doing us the favor of stealing from us. This is exactly what Jefferson predicted 200 years ago would be the end of Democracy. I might suggest that the battle for that Ideal may not be for the most part on foreign soil, but in our own systems.

Re: the Third Jesus

Respectful greetings, Abaase,

I use that salutation advisedly, because I know from my own experience that sincerity of inquiry takes great courage in an enviroment that does not necessarily welcome it, especially in certain forms. I started on my own journey of inquiry while attending a Catholic high school. In retrospect, a triad of events sent me looking for answers that were not forthcoming from the source that I had considered infalible and inexhaustabel to that point. It seemed I had, despite its good service and good intentions, broke the camel's back. After some time I could no longer even bear to attend the mass I had loved so much, as it only reminded me that I had hit a wall of impenatrable opacity within the Church. This was mitigated later, but in an unexpected manner.

I was not so fortunate as you as to have such a book as "The Third Jesus" to use as one of my mile markers, though I did have other exceptional resources. I also framed my question in somewhat wider terms than you did. Having made a similar observation to yours about the complexity involved not only in Catholicism, but in other faiths as well, my inquiry centered on the matter of "How do I know God directly?" I was, as you might suspect, aware of the injunction that "No man enters Heaven except through me." Well, that statement became a bombshell of exceedingly great proportions, and the portal through which I entered a profound rebirth of understanding.

I must say here, that though I only heard it much later, it was when it was already impossible to turn back that I heard the following injunction: "The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." Also this one: "Spirituality is not a child's play. My words will tear apart anyone who listens to them." Though they were spoken by Nisargadatta, and not the words of my own Mentor, I understood from my own experience what this meant.

We are primarily mental creatures, as far as our perceptions of the world go. This means that in order to survive, as children we internalize by unconscious imitation the ideas and dynamics that form our environment. These are somewhat mitigated by our inborn propensities, wherever those may come from. The meaning of the above statements bear direct consequense on one's perception of the world. I had the imense good fortune to be with a Mentor who knew that as the false perception of Reality is disassembled as a scaffold for experience, the structure of Truth must already be there to enliven the experience of the seeker.

All that is to say that not only did I find a more profound Way of understanding the significance of Jesus, salvation, and all the galaxy of ideas that go with that, but I saw clearly and incontrovertably that the whole of religion as I formerly knew it was an innocently or deliberatly degraded husk of something that is fundamentally profound and miraculous, yet knowable. Indeed, the conjoining of the [I]feeling [/I]of knowing and the ability to see a clear cognative line of understanding precipitated for me a completely different world view than is common among our friends and loved ones. It resloved many seeming contradictions and gave a profound depth to both science and religion that both had previously lacked for me. This also brings with it a profound sense of the void between the fundamentalist practitioner of any form of christianism or strict scientism, even on one who has no more than an intellectual, but clear and certain understanding of the Third Jesus of whom Chopra speaks.

His line of reasoning has no doubt led you to some ideas that are different and disturbing in terms of the Catholic faith. They are mild compared to what is actually the difinitive experience behind them. I urge you to be careful in your desire to discover, because if you continue on this path you will change profoundly. You will become a pink monkey in the pack of furry brown ones. You will not feel seperate from them as you will see that we are all God's creatures, but they will not return that affection. Au contrair. We are a race that tends to crucify its saviors and innovators, or disdain and ignore them at best. It is not for nothing that what you might be embarking on is sometimes called "The Path of Ultimate Responsibility" or "the Way of the Lonely Ones."

You will have to come to the realization that your sole/soul friend is your own eternal Essence. There will be others like you, but they are few and far between with few exceptions. But like my Mentor said, "If you want a friend, be one/One!"

Yet this is the most glorious, if not also the most frustrating in terms of everyday life, aspect of it. One gains an experiential understanding of the root of the Golden Rule in both its forms, and one is found on an unshakable base for a real morality free of dogma. I think it is what has been refered to as "The Peace that passeth understanding" and "being above the Law." It is not that one is without rules, it is that "Thy Will is written in my heart, oh God" and one is rendered incapable of doing harm.

It is this aspect of the Law and Will being in one's own heart that has a transformative value. It is the knowledge and experience of what that means that may distinguish you from the majority of others.

I do not know your age, disposition, or support system as to any profound questioning you might undertake. I simply urge you to be careful, because you are talking here about taking the red pill, in case you have seen a movie called "[I]The Matrix[/I]." Though the merit of the sequels is dubious, the first part has some very significant analogies to the discovery of the true state of Man in the spiritual sense.

So, there you have it in brief. I can be a resource for you if you wish, but it may not be easy for you. I can refere you to others, if that is more helpful. In any case, you have my profound good wishes, as you seek to be a.....what? Something words cannot describe, other than as a transparency to the Divine

Response to "The Pagan Chist"

I was going to post this on Catholic Answers Forum in reply to someone who couldn't understand the idea that Jesus was 100% both and each God and man. In Catholic theology this teaching is called the hypostatic union. Here is my answer, which is still oversimplified, but touches the main points as best my understanding and language permit. This is something I've been avidly looking into since high school, when three experiences set me on that path. I've also signed and dated this monograph some time ago as wishing to take responsibility for its contents.

I would also like to quote here a pertinent statement from my Mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, who said "All of the logic in the world could never unbind the fetters that systems of belief have engendered in the lives of mankind. Of course, those in high places of power are always trying to keep from those who inquire the actual truth of what is happening, and there is nothing more insidious than to have partial truths." This tract, being written word, is inherently incomplete, but is an attempt to point to the Living Presence that constitutes the reason and manifestation of the reader. It also points to what I have come to feel to be my own Truth.

"Here is a perspective I've not seen on here regarding all of these questions. I figure it is OK, since this is the "Non-Catholic Religions" part of the forum and we can allegedly say here things that others believe in order to put them on the table. If that is [I]not[/I] OK with you, stop here and go read something else, because this one was a depth charge for me. It is posted in the spirit of the Sage who said [B]"The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." [/B]That is how serious this is. I'm assuming you are not on here to play, as this search is analogus to taking the red pill, for those who have seen the first installment of The Matrix.

This all goes along wiith the proposition that man is a rationalizing animal. It also goes with the proposition that a single act of creation followed by a period of temporal maintainance and an attempt to "fix" a broken part of that Creation is inconsitent with an eternal God. Eternality has NO component of duration. It is also a low level logic and lack of introspection that to presume that life forms are the demonstration of life. LIFE is a constant unchanging pressure that will seek out every possible form and function of energetic combination as an expression of itself above, below, and including the frequency range of the perceptions of Man. This holds, whatever the opinion, based on limited frequency response and intellectual/affective ability, of any specific examples of its own manifestations.

"The point of view I will try to delineate here is that of the growth of the component in the human we call "awareness." I am distinguishing it here from a word often used interchangeably with it. That word is "consciousness." Here, awareness refers to the ability to experience as an individual. Conscious-ness refers to that quality in the abstract, taken as an underlying Reality.

"As simply put as I can, here it is: Since man has had the ability to reflect on himself, he has had a masculine and feminine component to his awareness as manifested in the two halves of the brain. In the womb, these function as one, and there is only the unawakened feeling of "I." At birth, the awareness must start to distinguish between "this" and "that" in its myriad senses in order to function. This is the knowledge of duality, or of +&-, or of "good and evil." This engenders the sense of being a discreet individual, or "me" as distinct from "you" or "it," etc. The feminine, intuitive side, "eats" of this experience and brings the male component into a dualistic sense of existence, casting the entire [I]sense[/I] awareness from its Eden of wombish bliss as it receeds into the background. The male side goes about the world suffering the pangs of a subject-object awareness, taking the female [I]side[/I] with it. This is especially so in patristic societies, e.g. the church and Western christianist culture.

"The Ancients had among them a few who understood the split within man and knew that healing lay in raising the feminine intuitive to reunite with the masculine logical as an experience in Consciousness. (The experience of the brain surgeion who witnessed her own stroke as the rational portion of her was damaged points to this aspect of awareness.) This healing ( Jesus was in older translations refered to as "Healer" as distinct from more current translations,)constituted "salvation" or [I]realization[/I] of the sense of unity within oneself. This brought with it an ability to realize as well the sense of Unity with Nature, or God.

"The way to this revitalizing of awareness was accomplished by myth and ritual. These myths from at least 5K years ago included virgin birth in a cave or manger, miracles, an ignominious death, and a Resurrection. All these were tied in as well with the cycles of Nature as a mnemonic system.

"Over the ages thousands of people who knew these stories went into the desert and came back with their particular revelations of the meanings for them, with or without the actual intended end of the reunification of the individual sense of Self.
"Three or four of these revelations came into popularity for one reason or another. As they became politicized and degraded for public consumption, the mystery was lost and the husk was systematized into dogma.

"In the case of the Roman Church, and thereafter other forms of christianism, the mystery of transformation became historicised by being attributed to an historic person. It was taught that Divinity in Man occured solely in this one individual, whereas in the mystery religions and Eastern philosophies it was known to be the reward of a particular kind of effort. This new teaching which coalesced about the third century, effectively acted as a prophylactic against the knowledge that the hypostatic union is the inheritance of every person who does the work of transformation. It is yet understood in many systems that in the three centuries after Jesus, the milieu of ideas surrounding the transformative act became lost in the dogmatic-ization and historicization of a remote and singular.god-man who symbolically did what is in fact our own life's work.

"This teaching also accounts for the attribution of personality to God, or Consciousness, or Principle, and duration to eternality, both of which concepts are semantic impossibilities. It also accounts for the "fides sola," etc. approaches all of which require a remote savior. It also militates against the working our of our own salvation in fear and trembling (and love and joy) as Paul recommended.

"So, the anointed (Christ, or 2nd person) aspect of Jesus is his awareness of the Unity of Conscious-ness which he expressed as "I and the Father are One." History give other examples of such realizations. Thus, he is 100% God as recognition of his [I]Essence[/I] stemming from and being equal to Divinity, and 100% man because he was and we are, "the son of man." As a human He was one who had the distinction of being one of the Accomplished ones.

"As for the trinity, the "I" or the Pure Consciousness factor of Being can be equated with the Father. (Masculine.) The "I [I]AM[/I]," the creative, (Feminine, 'Elohim' is plural feminine) can be equated with the Holy Spirit. Thus, Man, capable of both practical (subject-object) and "nirvanic" or contentless unitary awareness is created in the "image and likeness of God." The Son can be equated with the knowledge [I]by identity [/I]of the essential root and stemming of each of us from THAT Source. It may be stated as "I AM THAT I AM." "The I AM is the vine, the "you's" and "me's." the branches. The nervous system is the "bush." or the "tree with its root in heaven," or the human body that burns without being consumed upon the realization of this Fact. In some traditions, when this realization occurs, the exclamation sometimes is [I]"I have not been deceived![/I"' and can be accompanied by a great feeling of heat in the body as it readjusts itself to the new perspective.

"This new "born again" understanding is also the basis of a viable morality. If one, in his deepest feeling of being, understands the Unity of all life, he is incapable of doing harm to living things or their support system and can only do works which promote the over all Good, as whatever he does, he does to himself. This psychologically, spiritually, and practically fulfills both the positively and negatively stated Golden Rule. It also fulfills "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Much of this viewpoint is delineated very well in a book by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest and long time religion editor for the Toronto Star. It is called "[I]The Pagan Christ: Is Literalism Killing Christianity?"[/I] It is written from the standpoint of revitalizing the interpretations of the Bible and the Christian faith in general. I doubt it will have much popularity. I will be glad to furnish you with other titles if you are interested. What I personally like about this direction of understanding is that it comprehends the basics of many religions while de-fusing the encrustations of emotionally laden dogma that act to separate all those who purport to believe in one God.

Elections, "opposames," and helmet straps

Sorry, the original entry was deleted due to its rather negative perspective. This is a time where we really need to look to what is the very Best in ourselves and all around us. We can all find lots of information that leads us to an unsavory picture, but it is by looking at our highest possibilities that we have and are a Star to steer by. By that means, anything that is unlike an Ideal will be revealed as specious and unworthy of our attention.

Update: I was just sent this by a good friend. It is a quote from our Mentor, Dr. K.G. Mills, and it applies here.

"Why should we, in our thought - organized and manifested life stream, ever consider those moments when nothing seemsto be happening to be devoid of the incredible Spirit of Newness and Fecundity? Yet we feel the "depression" is something that has come upon us by means that are totally blamed upon a handful of people. Perhaps it has, but we don't have to believe that Power rests in such control." >>Kenneth G. Mills, The Key: Identity Green Stuff pg. 334
http://www.kgmfoundation.org/

Letter to the Venus Project

I recently encountered a wonderful site on line that advocates the idea of a resource based economy as distinct from a scarcity based economy. It is called The Venus Project. (http://www.thevenusproject.com/) I liked what they had to say, but was concerned about a procedural matter, so wrote them the following:

"Dear Friends,

"I call you 'Friends' because I feel a bond with anyone who is doing work toward the fulfillment of our potential as Conscious Awareness Beings on this Earth. I have some questions that I do not see addressed in your material, at least in any heading form. These questions have to do with the deconstruction of the present form of plutosocial systems that are in the hands of private individuals and which control governments. As we have seen, money obstructs change. We have also seen that possession of a human body only denotes potential, not fact or fulfillment. It does not even imply control of that body or its potential ability to precipitate experience, including technology, but especially change within or without the person. In apparent fact the vast mass of humans is unaware of other than their immediate circumstances and the needs engendered by such. This is true of persons living in hunter/gatherer societies even through the populations of great cities which use the inventions of others and therefore think themselves civilized.

"When Mahatma Gandhi toured London he was asked by a reporter "Mr. Gandhi, what is your opinion of Western civilization?" He replied "I think it would be a very good idea." This statement epitomizes the dilemma of the soul based Conscious awareness confronting the plutosocial momentum of those manipulating and those enslaved mentally to the systems currently holding sway over our ways and means. In other words, the general population is unaware of any other way, or even the possibility of any other way. Indeed, if such a way is suggested, as I am sure you know from experience, it is most likely met with the resistance of a cornered animal. A case in point might be the popular ignorance of the actual mechanics and consequences of the fractional reserve banking system.

"So, from the economic top one percent of the world population which owns about 40% of the world's defined material wealth, down to the economic bottom 50% which collectively owns about one percent, we are dealing with a mass of animal reactivity momentum interspersed by a fractionally very small number who are capable of conceiving original thoughts and directions. It is these few who can technologically change things whether by language or instrument. That change is mitigated, as stated, by the factor of those who are invested in the protection of paper and material wealth. The level of attachment indicated by that protection includes every kind and degree of inhumanity ever perpetrated. We have to conclude that there is an immense dysfunction for these people and their minions of whatever description in the quale of self identity. That self identity is attached to and greatly resists being dislodged from identification of self with material comfort and power.

"So, to my question: How do the proponents of the Venus Project, as vastly wonderful as their vision is, propose to confront the laws of inertia as manifested in the plutosocial realm? I greatly acknowledge in this regard the importance and basic rightness of your vision. Indeed, it says in one book that "a nation without vision shall perish." It means, I think, vision in accordance with Nature, and we are currently witnessing and experiencing the lack of vision on the part of the population that has allowed themselves willingly into slavery. I am asking, therefore, what steps you advocate, other than disseminating information encompassing the Project and agreement with it, to precipitate the changes you desire?

Best regards and Q'plah,

Anton Nemeth"

Antidote

I received a return e-mail from a dear friend who bemoaned the depressing nature of some forwarded information on food addatives. Here is my reply:

"Yes, there is a lot of depressing stuff going on, the worst of which "they" are not even telling us, if my alternate sources are correct. However, that is not the point, as I see it, anyways. We are here to grow in Conscious awareness, and promote that growth overall by our presence as the Light to the mundanities of life. Part of that, for me, is being aware of the exigencies of existence in an ego maniacal world. That means information, both about Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and their ilk, as well as MSG. It is why I am associated with the Consciousness Cinema here, and with other local groups working to reduce suffering through knowledge of whatever sort.

"Primarily, I feel we need to build the harmonious community of our friends. If anything, we can foster the feeling of being more than "this." You do that by just being who you are, _____. It is a great work in this day and age, just Being. There is no other antidote to ego. So, it isn't about saving the world, or fighting the corporations or the governments, or any such thing. It is about being Awake. The enemy is not an institution, it is sleep and ignorance of Self. When we are awake, good public results may follow. Or not. No one said that the human experiment had to work. We are a race that traditionally crucifies its saviors and in the name of a loving god commits wholesale slaughter. But we are also gifted with Giants, such as our dear Teacher, Guide, and Friend. We are privileged to stand on his shoulders and the shoulders of others like him and thus be granted a larger, more inclusive view. And don't discount that you chose to climb up to stand there, however much MSG of any psychic or other form you might have swallowed. That's what counts, my friend. That's why we feel the love that we do."

Quotes from Nisargadatta Maharaj

I was introduced to the words of Nisargadatta Maharaj by my Dear Mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, without whose instruction and example as Presence the following quotes would have no meaning for me. I offer them as an invitation in the consideration of what constitutes our right Identity, That, which we are before we think we are this, and without which there could not be the perception of thought.


"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live."

***

"I do not accept paths... All paths lead to unreality. Paths are creations within the scope of knowledge. Therefore, paths and movements cannot transport you into reality because their function is to enmesh you within the dimension of knowledge, while reality prevails prior to it."

***

"Realization is of the fact that you are not a person."

***

"Personal entity and enlightenment cannot go together."

***

"There can be no person that is Self-realized."

***

"Why does this conflict normally occur? Why this dispute between us? People come here with some profound concept of spirituality. They think they have spiritual knowledge and they want me to give them a clean certificate: "yes, you are knowledgeable". This I don't do. I blast their concepts, and hence the confrontation... All knowledge is ignorance."

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

Irony

Yes, irony is rampant in this world. I think that the greatest one is that a biological group that is emotionally and intellectually underdeveloped, due to misidentification of Self, is charged with its own survival in a very adverse and catastrophic situation of its own creation that can take not only other species but also global systems with it. We have the gift of foresight and insight, and as a group subvert those to fear and greed. Our public policies are all of the "last man standing" philosophy, exactly the opposit of what is desperately needed. The last lesson of all this in retrospect will be: "We should have dropped everything and cooperated for all our own best interest." But we seem to want to have that conclusion forced on us as a consequence as distinct from a free choice, a joy, and an adventure into newness. What will change this, our suicidal, fratricidal group tendency?

A city with a view

I maintain that cities ought to be designed around people. That means to me, that since the human brain is wired, they say, for about 500 close "people recognition" connections, cities ought use units of + or - 450 people as an organizational basis. This means that a city could be built of "blocks" that precisely house that number of diverse occupants, with perhaps "blocks" that house specialty cultural components, such as artisans or bachelors, or whatever. Each of these "blocks, would have upper and lower story buildings that house a family on one level and a business on the lower level. This eliminates needs for both community stretching and travel for basic goods.

Then we could add Paulo Solari's verticalization ides and have these units stacked in buildings that would have internal transportation built in, as well as an energy producing skin incorporating the energies of sun, wind, and falling water. Any idea how much energy a 50 story rain downspout can produce and cache as drinking, etc., water? This concept also frees up land for agriculture, perhaps recapturing some of the field and orchards acreage we have paved over to provide insularity for our overblown sense of consumerism and artificial false privacy. Our "current" society is geared to make money for everything that depends on oil, and we have forsaken the treasure of ourselves so that we can commute an hour or more to get a home with a view.

I'd personally be happy with a home having a large deck 25 stories up that overlooked farmland or ranches that provide my food, and from which I could commute to work by elevator and slidewalk. I could even have neighbors to talk with and go shopping on foot on the way home. Heck, Bucky Fuller even designed self sustaining cities for 10,000 that could float not only in water, but also in the air, freeing even more land. The problems really are in our greed and in commercial favoritism, and that means, again, that we do not think for ourselves and vote with our money and our voice at crucial times. Who said "It is great luck for leaders that men don't think?" It was Adolph Hitler. Anybody remember him?

Consciously or not, haven't we cooperated with corporations who, consciously or not, have cooperated with this observation by one of the most adept mobilizers of these last so many decades? How can we more quickly mobilize the same amount of energy and organizational ability to do good, even to the point of saving ourselves from an ignominious end? Was Walt Kelly right when one of his characters misquoted and said "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" Or was it a misquote? Either way, wouldn't our own defeat of our own squanderous ways be our most glorious victory?

About the possibility of a "Dark Age."

(This post is an excerpt from an ongoing discussion about such books as "The Long Emergency" and "The Comming Dark Age" as it appears in a forum called JUSTCOZ at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/justcoz. It is a site dedicated to the promotion of self sufficiency in local communities.)

Yes, Jacob's thesis (in "Dark Age Comming") appears pessimistic, but she states clearly that it is the description of a tendency, not a fate. She has great faith in our ability to change our course and the book is meant as a lens to focus our energies on specific leverage points.

In this regard I certainly agree with the simile of wealth as energy. Money is a symbol of work done, therefore can represent energy and its governance. Faith based and politically based systems are inadequate to deal with money as they are, to various degrees, adversarial systems, and though possibly valid within themselves,
ultimatley not accurate as models distributed wholley over the Universe. Being that they are localized, they are parochial attempts to get by in and explain "Life," and are, as we know them, at the root of the failure of Western society to cope with the world as it actually IS in an epistemological or ontological sense. That is why
societies that percieve Mankind as a function of Nature as distinct from a controler of Nature have a more one-to-one accuracy in their experience of existence, and a more accurate psychological map of our relationship with the World. Anyone as a physcist might appreciate the importance of this perspective as it is outlined in
Bohm's "Wholenesss and the Implicate Order" or Talbot's "The Holographic Universe."

Herein lies the link between personal maturity and responsibility. I am personally convinced that the founders of the great religions had the insight that we (I) and the Universe IS One in Essence, and based their ethic on that premise. This was dogmatized into faith systems, corrupted, naturally, into that by lesser souls who sold it to well meaning folk of lesser insight who were ready to recieve whatever
leadership would help their emotional nature cope. This is the human way. The "highest" path described in religious literature that I am aware of is known by its practitioners, among other names, as "The Path of Ultimate Responsibility."

That Path is at the root of the desired success of the bumper sticker that says "Do No Harm." Why would one harm what or who is Essentialy themselves, or their Self? The vastly immature understanding and practice of the concept of "Self" contributes to the afformentioned adversarial relationships in the most destructive ways. It is why the "Golden Rule" in either form lacks practice. I suspect that if translators had a more accurate grasp of the implications and referents of the the word idea translated as "I" from Aramaic and other languages, we might have a far different face on our dogmatized faiths, whether religious, political, or scientific. The idea of discreet individuals in competition with Nature and each other is an egoic invention punctured by the demonstrations of cooperation based on Love. That sees only Itself growing in maturity and wisdom, incapable of not bringing all its manifestations as people and their world with it. Such a standpoint also enables the perception of dissolution to be experienced as a function of creativity, where the
falling apart of a system is only the necessary step required for the enabling of a more encompassing functional understanding. But again, that requires the impersonal maturity and responsibility of the participents, eh?

"My" world

Lately I have been playing a game that defeats blame and makes me take responsibility for the things I like to complain about and forces a different perspective. When I see something in the news or wherever that I don't like, I say to myself "That's me; I am doing that." That one statement dumps responsibility for my life squarely where it belongs: with me. It is not the other guy's responsibility to change my life and make me live a default. I make my life as it is by creating a harmonic way or by accepting someone else's plan for me as their cow. My Mentor, Dr. KG Mills, said "'You' are the world you wander through. What will it be like?"

Had Enough?

From:Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney


Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?
Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff,we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the
damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and
maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two
years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to-as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.

Who Are These Guys, Anyway?

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them-or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or
liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make
us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of
Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?


The Test of a Leader

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points-not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my C list:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of
the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer thelatter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different
ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was
calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President-the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well.'Mr President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.

Leadership is all about managing change-whether you're leading a
company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the
mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it'sdenial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the
difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths-for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his
daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are
questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man
of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes
for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage.
George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you
know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.


To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION-a fire in your belly.
You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President-four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.


It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only
ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy.
Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where thefuture of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela erkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've
got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to
surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just forstarters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.


You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this
Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know-Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.
Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic
home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world-and I like it here."

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a
while.

The Biggest C is Crisis

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis.
It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other
time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day-and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we weregoing to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what
did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to
Iraq-a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

A Hell of a Mess

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan
for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the
leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than
making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.
Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the
hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can
restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed
that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen-and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down
the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care
problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on
your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying
to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in
America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises-the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.

Advaita, "in" vs. "as"

Yes, I understand that there is much good in many religions. I certainly affirm that my Catholic school education was in many regards superior. I am very grateful for that. I'm only commenting on aspects of the whole religious phenomenon that might keep those pious folks ignorant who have the capacity and will to discover something more foundational for themselves.

I'm not sure that "Advaitist" is even a word, but I have used it as a tag to loosely point in the direction of what I understand to Be. "Advaita" is an Indian philosophical system based on non-dualism. It might, I have recently found out, be called "Non-Dualism" in English. Very simplistically, it is predicated on the premise that God and Creation are One and inseparable. Or one might say "There are not two, there is only one." So the statement attributed to Jesus that "I and my Father are One" is a statement of the necessity of being, not of a special kind of person-ness or miraculous manifestation.

It has much to do with your question about "in" and "as." As far as I can tell, most "Christian" religions are dualistic in nature. By this I mean the idea found in many religions that there is a God and an objective world created as something apart, or objective to, God and vice-versa. To me, this is a misinterpretation of existence now being addressed by quantum physics as it has been addressed for thousands of years by the Great Teachers. In fact, a reading of some of the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible lead me to this conclusion as well. That is based on the observation that a very important sense of the word "I" does not translate into English in other than an egoic way.

"Christian" is in quotes because of the simple fact that if there was one Jesus called The Christ, then the several main Christian denominations, not to mention its unnumbered subdivisions, cannot all be practicing what must have at one time been an original teaching. They are all, in a word, beliefs. That is a fancy word acceptable to adults for "let's pretend." That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, except that if you take it for Reality, you lose. What do you lose? Any chance of perhaps perceiving what that original Teaching might have been. You also lose a lot of playmates because you insisted that it is your game and they have to play by your rules and die or suffer if they don't. This is true of many non-Christian faiths as well, and many "-isms" and "-ologys."

The crux (lol) of the matter is perhaps the difference in knowledge by information and knowledge by identity.

Information is always by its own nature partial. It is always a best guess, an ad hoc, or a pro tem. Due to the human need to be right, to be validated, which is an emotional, not scientific, issue; partial understandings masquerading emotionally as reality get adhered to and practiced unflinchingly by many who wish the security of a closed system. Information is not a closed system, and beyond that, it is a speculative endeavor largely because of the narrow band perceptive ability of our senses, which are further restricted by operating in local time and space, as far as I can tell. This is the realm of operation of most, if not, all religions.

Knowledge by identity works Now, outside of time and space. It works outside of time and space in that it is "bigger" than that continuum and the only substance to it. If you put a pencil dot on a very large piece of paper and called it "all of time and space," the paper would represent Eternity, but wouldn't be nearly large enough or even begin to have enough dimensions. Moreover, that Eternity has no component of duration. It IS. Advaita is the descriptions offered by those who know this of what IS as distinct from what seems to be. Those descriptions are offered as a way to alter thinking in order to bring about a thought pattern congruent with Reality in order that an individual might SEE, and thereby exponentially know At-Onement with Reality, or God. In other words, there cannot, as is purported in Christian and other religions, be a Creation apart from God. Creation is a manifestation of God Himself. The human mind, being limited in scope, is the seeming barrier through which God, Reality, can experience Self from a localized perspective and thus enjoy the infinitude of Creation. But the sense of Self is unlimited and genuine and Whole. It is why many who become enlightened exclaim, "I have not been deceived!" It is the aspect of Divinity called Soul, which Dr. Mills referred to as "The feeling of Being I AM."

This is why to me to say that God is "in" something smacks of pantheism. Yet to say that God is manifesting "as" this or that allows at least the possibility of acknowledgment of the inseparability of, what to our senses, only seems to be a discreet object. The idea of "objects" having no independent existence is as well in accordance with quantum physics.

You might, in addition to F. Merrell-Wolff's books, enjoy David Baum's Wholeness and the Implicate Order.

A "Take" on Good and Evil

Someone asked me about good and evil and this is what came to me:

As for the problem of good and evil, it has according to my best lights, nothing to do with God, as the God I know is not a personal God. I find the idea of a personal God an impossibility and too small to fit the facts as I see them. The sort of personal God I percieve as being commonly worshiped by most religionists can at best be a well developed entity far enough beyond ordinary men as to appear to be God like, in the way a competent technician might be to someone of a mentality that could belong to a so called "cargo cult." God, in my estimation, is so far beyond any anthropomorphization that our ideas offered about a diety by religions is insulting to and demeaning of Diety, and astonishingly misleading as to what might be called "salvation."

Good vs. evil, as I see that dynamic, is the evaluation of events natural or artificial by standards pertinent to personal wishes of happiness or well being. Ignorance, particularly ignorance of the laws and forces of Nature, or Self, have not yet been recognized publicly as similar in nature to such things as hurricans, tsunamis, and avalanches. These things are not "evil," they are conditions of of our nature. As I see it the vast majority of humans are uncivilized, ignorant, and immature, despite good intentions and aberrant ideas of self esteem. I agree with Mahatma Gandhi's reply when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization. He said "I think it would be a very good idea." This applies equally to the ones who have the toys which control the ways of the world, namely banks, corporations, governments, and religions, likely in that order. These are for the most part found to be sociopathic institutions if they are subjected to ordianry personality tests. These institutions, and people who do harm, do it because they are looking out for their best perceived self interest. This is normal and everyone does it. The difference might be in what those percieved best self interests are. Being on the whole a phenomenally uncivilized and experi-mental race, few of us are on the same page, even nearly, with those who have an inclusive overview of what our potential as interactive beings might be. In other words, "evil" is Nature's way of saying "Hey! You (plural) are not congruent with your own best self interest! Wake up!"

Of course, one of the most impossible things to do is to tell someone who is asleep to wake up. It takes forcefull action. Imediate action, in fact, if the house is on fire, for instance, such as our planet is at this moment. Thing is, too many are too involved with what's in front of their own nose to notice, i.e. physically feel, that things are horribly awry. "Evil" is a teleological component of life and seems to result from the ignorance and immaturity of individuals who have not percieved their own right identity as co-creators with a rather astonishingly beyond-our-intellectual-understanding WONDER of a Universe. Conscious and aware of our underlying unity we can build a paradise. Ignorant of it, we will continue to blunder against each other's ignorance and create the result of that. Primarily, ignorance is not necessarily of facts and knowledge, it is of the nature of Self. One who knows experientially what they are before they the sense of being a person cannot harm others without knowing that they harm themselves. In either case, experience of good and evil is for the benefit of our education. But no one said we had to survive it as person.

The power that is Love is like electricity. Directed, it can do immense good. Undisciplined, uneducated and undirected it wreaks havoc. In any case it is the same force. And regarding the idea that "good" and "evil are a matter of vibrations high or low, vibrations of every kind and degree always already exist. The point is: am I aware of them and what they mean at various levels of consequence. (the consequences reveal the rules.) If I'm not, I am certain to step on toes, and that will be called evil. If I learn and change, that might be called good. The labels of good and evil belong to a limited two valued logic system which is incapable of including the actuality of the infinite value system of Universe. Good and evil judgements are blinding us from perceiving and acting on dynamics that would free us of the need to make such poor and inadequate evaluations.

Where is Music and Art in Schools??

This is one of my favorite rants, so I will refrain from anything of book length here, since it is a response to another's journal posting.

All subjects are important as facets of a diamond are to the proper reflection of its light. Music is the Queen of all of these because its practice can form neural pathways that correspond to actual relationships in the universe of experience. Art is the way of practicing connectivity with the palpability of the invisible, which is the very source of ideation. Both of these disciplines act to form an individual of perceptive and expressive facility, as does a firm foundation in grammar, which is the rules of expression of words as music. This means that if there is the right grounding in language, the speaker/writer can use the instrument of language to convey nuances of exquisit finess and practicality, and even of poetry. The understanding of patterns and the ability to detect semantic error are enhanced as well. But most of all, a competent teacher or Mentor in any discipline can guide the pupil in the ways of maturity. This maturity would be the "table" of the diamond, that part that gathers and reflects the light of experience. Enough for now, and thanks for asking a very important question. (You might find it interesting to look at my journal entry about the nature of the artist.)

Oh, as for technology, I agree with Mahatma Gandhi's answer to the question he was asked in London after visiting the spectacles of the city. He was asked "What do you think of Western civilization?" He answered "I think it would be a good idea." We seem not even to have the tools to percieve our monumental lack of development of our own remarkable abilities. We have, as a culture, dismissed maps of experiential and physical reality that were at one time easily navigable and were richly rewarding. We have given them up, perhaps, to be willing wage slaves of a few astonishingly wealthy individuals. Do the math on who earns what for doing what. Are you happy with it? As Adolph Hitler said "It is great luck for leaders that the people don't think." In part we don't think because our schools don't teach us to. In part it is because we have broken the links of social interactions that brought us the subtlties of percieving our own worth and abilities, both of which are, it seems, "old fashioned." We also do not police ourselves and thus invite tyranny. The soul of you, before it is stiffled by a religious definition, is an astounding treasure of incalculable wealth, and most do not know they wear its key to the grave.

Bell--A Ringing Revelation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?hpid=topnews

This might have to do with the post below titled "Where is Music and Art in schools?" Thanks to Hugh Comerford of NLP Canada ( www.nlpworks.com )

Crow's feet and Fire

I like to see the lines on the face of someone mature and experienced, perhaps more than the unlined porcelaine face of youth. Those lines are the marks of having been somewhere, of gathering the material of personal transformation, the riches without which we have no fuel for the fire of change, the refiner's fire of our own realization.

This is silly, but someone asked....

One of the favorite sports at a particular dating site is sniping at the "Improve Matches" questions, whether it's their logic, lack of appropriate choices, grammar, or what ever. This one I responded to was about spelling: "What are 'mosqutoes?'" from the question "If you could kill all the mosqutoes in the..."

Well, there are churchtoes, templetoes, synagogtoes, and mosqutoes. They all look pretty much the same and have to wear different things so they can tell themselves apart because if they were naked they couldn't. They fight each other because despite being exactly the same they think their special "clothes" make them the best and only, despite each acting exactly the same. People come from other planets trying to figure this out. "Why do all these 'toes that are exactly the same destroy each other so no one has anything when they could all have everything, because they are all the same and want the same things, except they make themselves think thay are different. Why, why, why?" No one has figured it out yet, and then they all leave because they are civilized and don't wish to be in such rude company.