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28 Nov 2008 @ 12:15, by niphtrique. Spirituality
Bart klein Ikink
Is God perfect?
Buddha once said: "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it
agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." In this way you should read the text below.
If we look around us, we clearly see that the world around us is not perfect and that humans are not perfect. Still many
people believe God is perfect. But reality compels us to say that God may not be perfect. In the story of the Creation
you already can read why. In the previous text
( Paradise Found )
it became clear that Eve was created in the image of God. Adam was created as her sidekick. Therefore, we may assume that
God is a woman.
The Fall
When we know this, it is immediately clear why Adam desired access to wisdom and knowledge of good and evil. He felt useless
and pointless. Was his life not more than being the company of a woman? Something was gnawing Adam. He only did not know
what.
Women often do not understand men and vice versa this is also true. If God is a woman, then what does She know of the man,
his desires and his needs? That may not be much, as we can experience every day. A woman might try but she may never
understand what it is to be a man.
Many people would like to blame someone, but that solves nothing. The tragedy of this story is that this probably could not
have been avoided. That is the way things go. If we hate ourselves or others, then we hate God. If we hate God, then we hate
ourselves. If God hates us, then She hates Herself. Nothing good can come from that. So it should not be this way.
The new Garden of Eden
The new Garden of Eden will not be completely the same as the old Garden of Eden. In any case, a man must have a meaningful
existence, and he can be no slave to his wife. Mankind will be one with nature. Woman and man will be equivalent. Then the
situation will become perfect and the love of God will overcome.
We humans cannot leave everything to God. We will have to do something ourselves. We therefore do not need churches,
mosques and synagogues, but we need faith. We therefore do not need Torahs, Bibles and Qurans, but we need the will. We must
therefore not pray and praise God, but we have to act.
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28 Nov 2008 @ 07:39, by vaxen. Violence, War
Native Blood: The Myth of Thanksgiving
Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists--and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.
* * * * *
In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast, delivering 102 Puritan exiles. The original Native people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of the coast, destroying most villages completely.
The Puritans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth Plantation" near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived--he had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists' language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.
These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. The first Virginia settlement had been wiped out before they could establish themselves. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the Puritans not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace.
John Winthrop, a founder of the Massahusetts Bay colony considered this wave of illness and death to be a divine miracle. He wrote to a friend in England, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."
The deadly impact of European diseases and the good will of the Wampanoag allowed the Puritans to survive their first year.
In celebration of their good fortune, the colony's governor, William Bradford, declared a three-day feast of thanksgiving after that first harvest of 1621. More >
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 24 Nov 2008 @ 10:57, by jazzolog. Legal, Justice
We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men...trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comings and goings are only little more than tree-wavings---many of them not so much.
---John Muir
Sit just to sit. And why not sit? You have to sit sometime, and so you may as well REALLY sit, and be altogether here. Otherwise the mind wanders away from the matter at hand, and away from the present. Even to think through the implications of the present is to avoid the present moment completely.
---Alan Watts
The universe came into being with us together; with us, all things are one.
---Chuang-Tzu
The illustration is a movie poster for a film that is making its impact felt increasingly through word-of-mouth. Since it may be a bit hard to find here's a synopsis: In a world of six billion people, it only takes one to change your life. Sixty-two-year-old Walter Vale is sleepwalking through his life. Having lost his passion for teaching and writing, he fills the void by unsuccessfully trying to learn to play classical piano. When his college sends him to Manhattan to attend a conference, Walter is surprised to find a young couple has taken up residence in his apartment. Victims of a real estate scam, Tarek, a Syrian man, and Zainab, his Senegalese girlfriend, have nowhere else to go. In the first of a series of tests of the heart, Walter reluctantly allows the couple to stay with him. Touched by his kindness, Tarek, a talented musician, insists on teaching the aging academic to play the African drum. The instrument’s exuberant rhythms revitalize Walter’s faltering spirit and open his eyes to a vibrant world of local jazz clubs and Central Park drum circles. As the friendship between the two men deepens, the differences in culture, age and temperament fall away. After being stopped by police in the subway, Tarek is arrested as an undocumented citizen and held for deportation. As his situation turns desperate, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friend with a passion he thought he had long ago lost. When Tarek’s beautiful mother Mouna arrives unexpectedly in search of her son, the professor’s personal commitment develops into an unlikely romance. And it’s through these new found connections with these virtual strangers that Walter is awakened to a new world and a new life.
[link]
As so often happens, particularly on Mondays when I review the weekend papers, most of the computer work I'd planned to do this morning got scrapped by a single item. Then one sidetrack led to another, and soon I was wandering in the woods again. The piece that did it was in The Times of London yesterday, and some editor there I guess had seen it in its complete version in the current edition of Spear’s Wealth Management Survey magazine. It was written by the former "proprietor" of the London Daily Telegraph, who currently resides in a federal prison here in the United States. He's been there for 8 months. I know nothing of the case nor how long his sentence is. Whatever it is, he's appealing it and apparently has had some success.
What he has to say that interests me is about the present legal system here. Of course laws can be changed. Even the Constitution can be changed. But through all that shines a spirit of America that all of us used to be raised to believe in. It has to do with equality before the law. If there are mistakes, OK, we understand that. But if there are injustices, Americans feel their freedom threatened. We respond. Or should. If we don't, or lose track of how we can respond, we begin to sink into the kind of daily despair that has plagued humanity around the world and through time, since our conception.
Let me not preach about the last 8 years---or 16, or 32. Let us simply look at where we are, and the work to do. I know attorneys, and my family boasted some prominent ones. I set about at university to become one---until Dylan Thomas crossed my path. My daughter has such plans in the environmental field. I'm supporting her in this---despite all indications of the futility of working for the EPA. Futility. Ah, there's the rub. When a people allow themselves to believe it is futile to go up against the system---either because that system is invariably right in what it pursues, or because it is hopelessly decadent, we surrender to a prison state. If I am barred from dissent by a privately contracted army, as I have been in an attempt merely to glimpse President Bush in person, I am in a prison state.
Ah, but now I'm preaching. [There are ministers on the other side of the family. :-)] Let me step aside for this gentleman in his jail cell. Then follows an editorial from yesterday's New York Times about Guantanamo. More >
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 23 Nov 2008 @ 22:54, by jhs2. Systems Thinking
Joachim's 13. Buch wird hier in Auszuegen vorgestellt, uneditiert, gekuerzt, und verhunzt, aber DA... !!!
(de Ortografie werde mer auch noch hinkrieche..!) More >
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 23 Nov 2008 @ 05:48, by koravya. Economics, Financing, Banking
Last day of the quarter, final class for Contemporary World Cultures, which is what is culture all about anyway, and how many cultures do you belong to? More >
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23 Nov 2008 @ 02:07, by deepwater. Spirituality
"The reason for our erroneously believing that we are a part of some thing from which we are separate arises from the development of an individual point of consciousness." More >
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 22 Nov 2008 @ 23:39, by Unknown. Education
Get rid of the Federal Department of Education!
Aren't your children and their future worth the effort?
The onion couldn’t make up stuff like this, if it tried to.
More >
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 22 Nov 2008 @ 15:58, by jhs. Knowledge Management
We found it feasible to teach anyone who is interested the recognition of human archetypes in less than two days using Skywork (morphogenetic access via a group of people).
For example, once able to recognize the principle which is called Ogum as an archetype of human personalities, one can typically recognize an 'Ogum Person' on a distance of a hundred meters just by its biotype and by the way the person walks. In this case a savy sales person already knows exactly what that person would like to buy and what to say and what NOT to say in order close the sale.
Once able to do that it becomes possible to learn also the recognition of an equal pattern in a different realm of manifestation without any indoctrination and even without Skywork. Unfortunately many of the few who are able to recognize human archetypes don't go the extra mile to learn it for themselves but rather listen to the few gurus in the field. In other words, they find it easier to adopt indoctrinated dogmas instead of looking for themselves. For example, in the animal realm, the Ogum principle is reflected amongst others in the phenomenon of a 'black dog'. But a dog is a living being with emotions and the capacity of learning to a certain degree. It therefore has an archetype in itself. The archetypes are further expressed in the variety of races of dogs. So, how would you recognize the specific, individual archetype of your dog by direct observation?
To approach this challenge, let us transfer the definition of 'Fractal' from mathematics & geometry to all living forms. The ability to perceive and recognize the same principles in all levels of manifestations we could call 'Fractal Intelligence'. Philosophical systems such as Ifá postulate a very limited number of base principles (16) and of base archetypes (6 archetype complexes). The ability to recognize one of those across different realms of manifestations we could call 'horizontal fractal intelligence'. The challenge of recognizing encapsulated self-repeating patterns, we could call 'vertical fractal intelligence'.
Overview:
Let's define:
Fractal Intelligence:
the ability to recognize self-repeating patterns as such.
and specifically:
Horizontal Fractal Intelligence:
the ability to recognize a self-repeating pattern across parallel realms of phenomena.
Vertical Fractal Intelligence:
the ability to recognize a self-repeating pattern encapsulated in a different self-repeating pattern.
Back to the challenge of 'improving' such forms of intelligence: More >
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19 Nov 2008 @ 03:06, by erlefrayne. Peace
In a previous article, this writer articulated the success of the Japanese Zaibatsu offensive. As one ought to realize, the success of the Zaibatsu offensive came at the expense of other markets, notably the North’s. Intellectually bankrupt as they are, the policy makers and technocrats of the North never foresaw the catastrophic consequences of predatory policies more so those concerning finance that came from their Japanese partners.
Today, Zaibatsus are well prepositioned across the globe, and it doesn’t matter anymore whether their headquarters will still be based in Japan. They have already fanned out beyond their boundaries, thanks to gullible states and market players in host countries that aren’t equipped to read the psyche of their Japanese partners. Japanese market presenters carry the mien of humble partners who bow in deep respect before you during business meetings, so who could ever suspect the rather cold-blooded nature of such gestures. More >
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 18 Nov 2008 @ 23:51, by jazzolog. Activism
Ever the same,
unchanged by hue,
cherry blossoms
of my native place.
Spring now has gone.
---Dogen
LIVE the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
---Rainer Maria Rilke
I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
---Simone De Beauvoir
The author and first wife, The Bronx, autumn 1963
In June of 1963, I was just out of university, didn't have any money left to speak of, hadn't ever held a "real" job in the world, had no set prospects for one, and was getting married. Five years later, that wife and her mother concluded I wasn't really ready to be a married person. A judge in Bridgeport agreed, so they took our 2 kids and went away. But that summer in '63, I felt ready and eager nevertheless. I remember red roses everywhere in full bloom and beautiful.
A job came through, in The Bronx. The principal of the school hired me to teach English to the upper grades at secondary level. In July he called to ask if I could teach some social studies. He knew I had taken courses in a number of fields in college. Frankly I had chosen English finally, because that thesis was the easiest to do. So I said OK. In August, a couple weeks before we were to have moved in our first apartment, the man called again and said the English teacher had decided to stay. Could I teach all social studies? Just married, my first job, I was nervous. I said I'd do it, but I needed the department chairman to get me materials immediately so I could prepare. He said, "You are the department chairman."
Thus did I stride into the wonderful world of love, marriage, and work---at least work in the weedy field of education. But there was much more to learn. In 1963, the New York World's Fair was getting started over at Flushing Meadows in The Queens. Elvis made a movie about it. Part of the place would end up the ball park for a new major league team in New York. Our school decided to take a field trip over to see it. We took the subway, a rather long ride. The principal had decided to come along. When we changed trains in Manhattan, he spotted a beggar at the stop and nonchalantly remarked, "There's one of my former students." I think I said something about government programs to enable the poor to enter the work force. The boss replied, "Oh, so you're a Kennedy pinko."
I remember just where we were when he said that to me, as one does when one's illusions are shattered. I had grown up during the McCarthy era and knew how serious a charge along those lines could be. This guy was kidding just a little bit, but I never had been called anything like that by someone in authority. I didn't tell him this, but the fact was I didn't even support John Kennedy particularly. I had seen him once, in 1960 during his campaign for the presidency, but the voting age wouldn't be lowered for another 10 years...so I couldn't vote and didn't feel particularly committed one way or the other. A professor drove me to wherever it was in Maine that he appeared, and I know we waited forever for him so show up. But there was no doubt about it: the man absolutely radiated charisma.
I had participated in picketing his White House in March of '62. We were protesting his policy of continuing above-ground nuclear bomb testing---or at least I think that's what it was. We were up to our ankles in slush in Washington, and most of us wore beatnik tennis shoes with holes in them back then. Pete Seeger led the march from the Washington Monument to the White House. There we walked up and down, back and forth, had to keep moving. We were freezing as the sleet continued to fall. My fiancee had come along, and this was her first real dip into the world of radical politics. We knew Kennedy was inside, and ultimately a van came down the driveway and a guy in a suit got out. He said the President sent his greetings and wished us well. And here were cups of hot chocolate for everyone. That's how JFK dealt with protest. More >
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