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 23 Feb 2005 @ 16:44, by sprtskr. Shared Purpose
What happens to you when you take life too seriously or not serious enough? You become ill,physically,mentally,
emotionally and spiritually.So how do we get our lives on the right medium path? Below are some ideas I found on the internet, but some I came up with.
Take time out every day,a few minutes is all you need if thats all you have. Let yourself and others have some quality time together. Shut off the tv,sit comfortably,keep distractions out and really communicate. Ask questions to each other,ask them to elaborate on their answers. Feelings of each one is important,find out how their feeling about school,work,their projects, friends and family situations, etc.If you can take the whole family out to dinner,movie or just a drive once a week or a month depending on when you can get away. One hour a week isn't so much when you think about the importance of healing someone you love. Remember to tell them you love them,by talking,hugging and doing things together. For those who you can't see in person,send email or a real letter of love,encouragement and friendship. You just might get some of that right back!
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Internet list:
Set goals and keep them but don’t be rigid. If you make a list of ten things to do in a day, be happy if you got the first three done.
Stand up for yourself when you know you are right. You never lose respect when you are willing to stand up for what you feel is right.
Never speak harsh words to those you love.
Volunteer your time to something you love or a cause you believe in.
Work at making and keeping your friends. Your work will be there waiting when you’re done playing.
You feel what you feel- happiness, sadness, anger. Don’t suppress them. Instead find a suitable outlet and vent them.
Never go to sleep angry.
Never eat when you are angry or upset.
Wear only comfortable clothes that you feel and look good in.
Be kind to animals and children.
Be sure to say I love you to all those you really do love.
Strive to be happy. More >
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 22 Feb 2005 @ 16:09, by jmarc. Investigation, Intelligence
An innocent woman in Florida is about to be put to death. More >
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 22 Feb 2005 @ 05:18, by ming. Science
Article in NY Times: Unintelligent Design, trying to debunk the idea of intelligent design.
Now, I've seen a lot of people complain about "Intelligent Design" being a term invented by Creationists, to covertly push the idea of Creationism, but I hadn't seen any of the materials. OK, I just searched around and found a few sites: Intelligent Design Network, Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center, Origins.
Hm, seems to be about right. Those are sites that seem to try to shoot down evolution, by positioning themselves as being very objective, and pointing out the lack of evidence for evolution.
That's a shame. Oh, there isn't really much evidence for evolution. Plenty of evidence that life is evolving, and for natural selection. But very little evidence for evolution being caused by the random bumbling about that is the core of Darwinism. Nobody has found any lifeform that drew any advantage from being a half-flying bird or having half an eye or anything like that. For that matter, last I looked nobody had really found any missing links between much of anything. Oh, there are many easy ones. If it is gradually getting colder, each generation would give an advantage to the more hairy members of the species and that kind of thing, so they would be more likely to carry on the race, to become more hairy. A whole lot harder to make the case for why a wolf would jump into the ocean and develop a blow hole on its head, you know sort of randomly, a little at a time. Or how lizards who jumped out of trees got an advantage, while randomly developing flappy arms, until a few hundred thousand years later they can fly. And then there's the eye, of course.
Creationists would like to have us believe that a guy named God created it all out of thin air, fully formed, ready to go, in an enjoyable variety. And somehow they hate the idea that all of this life evolves on its own. Not for any terribly good reason other than that the Bible says God did it in seven days, and it somehow fits their belief best if it is all utterly incomprehensible and beyond humans to understand, other than in the form of knowing who to credit.
Intelligent Design is such a good term, so, yeah, it is a bit of a waste if it is just highjacked to mean anti-evolutionary creationism.
I think it is a pretty damn intelligent design. A universe with billions of galaxies with billions of stars, lasting for billions of years, with planets circling nicely around stars that provide light and heat, with elements and conditions that combine gradually into life forms. Life forms that do the most amazing things in an amazing variety. And that evolve, over millions of years, to more and more intelligent creatures, more and more adapted to their environments. In an unbroken chain over several billions of years. Until it somewhere along the line leads to US. We're pretty intelligent, although we're also pretty dumb, and is not clear yet which aspect will win. But you can't say we don't have intelligence. And we're hard at work at evolving into something better, and we probably will. Because you and I each have that several billion year unbroken success record behind us.
If all of that isn't the most intelligent design you've ever heard of, I don't know what is.
Are you going to tell me that all that could happen without it being inherent in the design of the universe that it could happen? Where on earth does intelligence suddenly come from if it isn't what naturally emerges from the layout of the universe. Just like gravity doesn't suddenly appear out of the blue for no good reason, neither does intelligence. Unless you claim to come from somewhere else, which is perfectly alright with me, your intelligence is simply a property of the universe, or the omniverse, or however big you want to look. The design is intelligent, obviously, because YOU are.
And hopefully it is a lot more intelligent than you or me individually, because humans at this point have a bit of an overblown idea of how special they are, and how much smarter they are than the universe.
That article there is a good example of that. Its argument against creationism is how badly designed everything is. You know, species die out left right and center. Life forms have loads of useless features, like the peacock's feathers, or the nipples of male humans. And that the laryngeal nerve in mammals is just too damn long. So if there were a designer, he must have been some kind of idiot. Oh, and the "moral" failures. Humans and animals are continually tortured by disease and pain and mutual cruelty. How can the designer be so mean?
See, it is all really religious arguments, for or against. It is the same kind of stuff that doubting believers in dogmatic religions go through. If God is all powerful and just, why do people starve, and why did my Uncle Harry die in a car accident, way before his time, even though he was such a good man?
Because most of the materialist evolutionist anti-creationist guys agree perfectly well with the religious creationists that the only possible God and Designer of the Universe is this archetypical greybearded fellow who just made everything up out of his little toe. And both agree that it is either that or chaos. The Creationists decide that it is most comforting if that guy did it, and that's the end of the discussion. The Evolutionists decide that no way are they going to be subjugated to that, so they choose what they think is the only alternative - the opposite. That it all happened, completely randomly, as a series of lucky accidents, out of chaos, without any kind of purpose or meaning or system. Well, actually they do a little sleight of hand trick at the same time, and imply that there's a marvelously consistent set of laws and mechanisms at work, which have worked unfailingly since the beginning of the universe. Except for that it is all just supposed to be meaningless chaos, so we go quickly past the self-contradiction in that.
Now, I'm not religious, so I don't believe in either set of dogma. They're a bit cartoonish, and neither of them is consistent with itself.
That the Design is Intelligent - that I believe in. Or, rather, there's no need to believe in it, because it is readily observable. It is the stuff you don't see that requires convoluted explanations. Just like like the fundamentalist religious person tends to get lost in circular explanations when asked to explain why an all powerful god allows pain and suffering, the fundamentalist materialist gets lost in circular complexity when asked to explain where the natural laws came from, or how human eyes assembled by accident. And mostly it adds up to: just because! You just have to believe it.
It is a shame, because it could really be so simple. If the universe itself is intelligent and alive, you don't really need to invent wild stories about how things come about. You only need those when you think you somehow are separate from the rest of the universe. What arrogance. You aren't. You're a part of a bigger system. If you're intelligent and alive, and you're a product of a bigger system, as well as an integral part of it, then of course that system is intelligent and alive. That's simple math, unless you come up with the X factor that was added to the soup to create you. And if you rather lean towards having been created by God, then how can you think you're somehow suddenly something separate from it? That's a bit of an insult to what created you. The only separation that is there is what you might create in your mind.
As to the cartoonish God-in-the-picture-of-Man who created everything, yeah, that's not a very good foundation for reality. It is an easy target. Quite easy to answer any mention of Universal Intelligence by pretending that that's what people of course are talking about. Easy to avoid the real issues, because that one discussion quickly becomes heated. And both sides are wrong.
I'm an evolving intelligent universe. I'm a design in motion, designing itself, discovering the ramifications of the design as I go along. I don't know who you are. Well, I do, actually. More >
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 19 Feb 2005 @ 06:23, by koravya. Communication
February eighteenth into the nineteenth, friday into saturday. Just bouncing around the web, looking for things to read that grab my attention long enough for me to want to pursue the sense of it. Also like to look for new and novel kinds of pictures, and particularly like the pre-industrial age painting tradition of Europe. Can be rather fun to find a wonderful very old painting never seen before, for the first time, and feel it sear into your heart. More >
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 18 Feb 2005 @ 15:54, by ming. Personal Development
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done -- that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual. --Buckminster Fuller
I gotta quote that once in a while, as it is one of my favorites. The things to do are the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.
To me it implies that there's meaning in life. That we're here for something. That there's something unique and useful for us to do. It doesn't have to be taken that way. You can simply use it as a method for grabbing the opportunities with the most potential. The most satisfying kind of success is found in doing something needed, at the right time, which nobody else noticed was needed. There's not so much potential in just doing what everybody else is doing. No, see something different, and do something different. But do something that is needed.
We all seem to be different. From nature's hand we all have a little bit different DNA, different fingerprints. And then different experiences that have influenced us, different information we have absorbed. And including all that, and beyond all that, we each have a different consciousness, a different way of seeing things, a different perspective. It is only natural that we will see something nobody else is seeing, and we'll see things a different way than others. We're perceiving the world from a different point, using different filters than anybody else. And that is probably not just an accident, an error in the production machinery of nature. No, I don't think it is. It is a feature. It is by design. I'm inherently made up to see things differently and to do things differently than anybody else.
It is a bit of a waste if one just tries to do what everybody else is doing. A waste if one only learns to see things like one is "supposed" to. A waste of life. You're boring God, if you want to put it that way. There isn't a lot of use for billions of people who try to do the same thing the same way. It is counter-evolutionary. Short-circuiting the creative process of evolution. We've somehow accidentally created a society that tries to make us all do the same thing. It was a dumb idea. And it isn't going to work, because you just can't stop everybody from having a different perspective. There will always be somebody who sees something different and who acts on it.
There are lots of things that don't need doing, because they don't really add value. It is just like Information Theory. There isn't much information in "0000000000000001000000". There's just that one "1", and its position. Predictable information can be left out when data is transmitted, because it doesn't add meaning, it doesn't add value, it isn't information. Likewise, if you're just doing something that has already been done, in roughly the same way, you aren't adding value. You're wasting our time and yours. The net result is: not very much.
Imagine this reframe of the Information Society: the things that are valuable are those that add information.
A million copies of the same thing is adding no information, no value. It is valuable for somebody to record a new song, which others might find refreshing and enjoyable. A million copies of it add no value in itself. What the listeners might do with them might add value. Compare that with the music industry and arguments for or against file sharing. A new system of sharing adds value. The creative uses of information one has access to adds value. A carbon copy of any of it does not in itself add value. No information, no value.
So, imagine a society that really gets that. Where the value is in adding value. Duh. Economically speaking, I mean. Where the rewarding thing to do is the thing that adds information and value. I.e. you see something new, and you do something about it, and you share it.
We're headed there, I think. And there are well known fields that work pretty much like that. Open source, obviously. There's no point at all in making another piece of software that does exactly the same as another one, if the first one is freely available and modifiable. Might be smarter to look at how one can add value to what is already there, by adding something new, something different.
Lots of people doing what they see needs doing, is probably a very threatening prospect for certain groups, certain people in power positions. So many old structures are based on quite the opposite. I.e. persuading large groups of people to accept the perspective and the needed tasks of a very small group at the top. Here is the perspective you're supposed to have, here are the morals you need to adhere to, and here's your job. Which creates big machines that work, but only inefficiently. So everybody's running around and struggling to do what they're supposed to do. Where the system really could be so much more efficient and fun if we all could be active components, rather than passive. Most of us running on most of our cylinders most of the time. Because our inherent ability and tendency to see things differently and to add value is one of our key qualities. We're conscious players, who have the ability to create information and add value, indefinitely. We just have some unlearning to do, to get back to that.
So, what do you see that needs doing? More >
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 18 Feb 2005 @ 08:16, by skookum. Recreation, Fun
A Gift for Rascal
Or The Catlactic Empire Wants YOU!
“Sir, Sir!” A seemingly disembodied voice called to him from his dreams.
Rascal opened his yellow eyes one at a time, hoping it was not a real voice. Unfortunately, it was a real voice attached to a pair of large golden gimlet eyes. More >
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 18 Feb 2005 @ 03:36, by vibrani. Natural Health & Healing
I used to fluctuate on what I felt about energetic, artistic, hands-on, or channeled healing - who does it, how it happens, and so on. I also used to feel unsure if I could call myself a healer, or energy worker, or facilitator. One of my teachers (who specialized in energetic healing and channeling) said that we can't legally call ourselves healers, so not to use that term. It could be misleading. What about denying who we are and what we do? Well, after a lot of consideration, I have come to accept myself as being all these things, and by discussing what healing is, I will show you how I can honestly call myself a healer and don't think I have to hide that or fear it.
My healing background:
Although I know that I was born with the ability to send energy I felt that wasn't enough. I needed to know what I was doing, and why. I have taken many courses on healing, lasting many years, and was an apprentice and finally a full-on public healer. I have several certifications in different areas of energy work, including Ch'i Gong, and transpersonal hypnotherapy. My energy work courses included anatomy, physiology, psychology, all areas of psychic/intuitive work, channeling, and specifically channeling spirit doctors. I learned about the mental, physical, spiritual and emotional causes and remedies for all sorts of conditions, diseases, and injuries. I also learned how to heal spirits. The goal was to be a holistic healer - treating the whole person. There were years of required courses and exams, actual practical work, and then a final exam to pass the certification. In my case, my ability to heal water is one of my specialties. As a healer, my intention is to respect free will, and to be in my integrity, to create a safe environment, balance the person, and to do whatever needs to be done for the highest good for all concerned.
Healing:
Let's examine some definitions of the word 'healing': 1. Restoring to health; promoting the closure of wounds and ulcers. 2. The process of a return to health. 3. Closing of a wound. See: union. [DictionaryBarn]
I am thrilled that someone included the reference to 'union'.
Noun - healing - the natural process by which the body repairs itself, an organic Process that takes place in the body; gradual healing after sickness or injury; healing process involving the growing together of the edges of a wound or the growing together of broken bones.
Adjective - healing - tending to cure or restore to health; "curative powers of herbal remedies"' "her gentle healing hand"; "remedial surgery", "a sanative environment of mountains and fresh air"; "a therapeutic agent"; "therapeutic diets". [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/healing] So we already have a wide spectrum of definitions, and all indicate that there is a healing that takes place from any number of causes. What creates a healing from an energy worker or healer? I think it depends on several factors that involve more than one person:
1. Who is facilitating the healing. Is the person a professional, trained healer? Is it someone with a loving touch? In actuality, it can be any of these that can create a positive healing effect. However, I feel that when someone is actively pursuing a healing it is preferable to be worked on by a person who was trained in anatomy, physiology, the whole body and it's systems (what a healthy organ looks like and how it functions, for instance), and who understands the interactions between the body, mind and spirit.
2. How much the person wanting healing is in tune with their own body, and how willing they are to receive.
Healing can occur even without a person being conscious of it, such as in long-distance healing; healing that is done while they're asleep; healing done by a simple touch from a healer (such as in a hug or handshake). When a person is open to receiving healing, allows the healing, the healing energy has more of an open path and often can have more of an impact.
When I first began taking classes in healing I had to be worked on, and often, by my teacher, other classmates, and the spiritual doctors we work with (they are from the Temple of Healing in another dimension and they are channeled through us). At first, I was very reluctant and skeptical about receiving their healing. I blocked it and it was tough. It just wasn't happening as well as it should have. The minute I relinquished my fear and allowed it, the change was instantaneous. I was healed from an injury I received in a car crash - an injury none of my doctors could heal. The spirit doctors were successful in one night, and the problem has never returned. Since then I have been worked on numerous times, even having interdimensional long needles inserted into my body (couldn't see them, but sure as hell felt them) to open blocked areas. I know that for me receiving healing has been phenomenal.
When I worked on people who were unsure of what was going on and didn't feel so open to it, I could feel or see the blocks and knew that the energy being sent to them wasn't getting through. It was like sending a river through a clogged drainpipe, trickling in but having little effect.
One of my first successful healings was to my Sparklett's delivery man. He had an injury to his elbow and arm. His doctors had done therapy on it but it wasn't helping and they were talking about surgery. I offered to see if I could help and he was open to it. I did my energy work around the area and through his entire body. Within several minutes the pain in his arm went away and he felt better. The injury and pain never returned again. He was thrilled and became a firm believer in alternative healing. Was that healing a fluke? Does it matter? It worked.
3. If the person having the healing done on them actively and consciously continues their own healing.
Healing doesn't always last forever. Sometimes it lasts only a couple of days and then the old patterns return. It depends on the person and the extent of their condition/disease. There are times when a person has an injury or disease that needs repeated healing sessions, and sometimes that means they may need to change a belief they hold about themselves and their condition. An example of this might be a person suffering from constant back pain. I would tell them that the area they are holding energy in their back refers to their beliefs and emotions about financial support, and usually the lack of it. So we can talk about ways to change that. Sometimes just knowing the cause of the back pain is enough to get rid of it.
So a holistic healer works on the entire person as well as the specified area. A healer can help the person understand the spiritual meaning of their condition, sometimes when and how the condition began, and can change their thoughts and energy about themselves that will assist in their own healing. The healer can also suggest other things that could be helpful; nutrition, exercise, and meditation exercises or other therapies or medical assistance. There has been success with some people who have learned to meditate and do energetic work regularly on themselves after receiving a healing so that their healing will be continuous until no longer desired or required.
4. If the subject is not human:
Animals can be healers and be healed just as people can. For those who can telepathically communicate with animals the job might be easier, but not a requirement. I used to hold public channelings at my home. As we would get ready for the channel to go into trance, the people sitting around the room would be greeted by my dog, Grace (who has since passed over). She would go to each person and each person would pet her and smile. As the channeling got underway and the entity was coming through the channel, Grace would spin around three times, then sit down right in front of the channel, and place one paw up on the channel's lap to meet the entity. After the entity was fully present, Grace would lay down in the center of us all. During the session, Grace would sense who needed healing and she'd get up and go to that person. Each person would comment about Grace and her love for them and how they felt better from her being there.
About fifteen years ago I received a puppy as a gift. The dog was so fragile and small and he was in my car and jumped from the passenger seat to the carpeted floor and broke his leg! That's how fragile he was. I took him to the vet and his leg was x-rayed.
We discovered he had been malnourished and his bones were weak. The vet was sure his leg was so badly broken that it might have to be amputated. He put a cast on it at my insistence and said he'd see if it would heal. He gave it a month's time. I told him that I would heal the leg and he would not have to have it cut off. The vet sent the x-rays to a vet specialist in another city for a second opinion. Both felt the dog's leg couldn't be saved because there was no blood flow in the bone, to the bone, and so on.
I worked on my dog every day for a few weeks, using my hands and sending certain energies to his leg and surrounding areas, and I used one of my most powerful crystals on his leg. One day I felt the energy had changed and his leg was healed. I took the dog back to the vet and told him the leg was healed. He didn't believe it. I dared him to x-ray it. He did and his jaw dropped. The leg had healed perfectly. He couldn't explain it and asked me what I had done. I told him the basics and he was still hesitant but figured what the heck, it worked. He couldn't make scientific sense of it at all. I laughed and walked out.
5. The healing itself - what is used in the healing and the method (is it channeled, are there implements, hands-on, energy, etc.)
There are so many forms of healing techniques and a healer can intuit what might be the best avenue for sending energy and discuss with the patient what will take place and have their permission to move forward with it. Belief often plays a crucial role in healing. For example: If a person is religious they may need a religious affiliation with the healing. They may need to hear it in terms familiar to them, something that is acceptable in their religion. There are some religions that don't allow people to receive healing from anyone else - that can cause a conflict for the person if they have come to a healer on their own. Some methods may not be comfortable for all people, so all these things must be discussed.
I utilize whatever I know with whatever the person feels comfortable with. I use my hands, crystals, water, cotton balls, music, sometimes I channel doctors and their instruments, sometimes I also channel art for healing. I use smudging, transpersonal hypnotherapy, past life regression, helping a person connect with their higher self or spirit guides. My spiritual art has had a wonderful healing effect upon people as in the portraits they get messages from loved ones, their guides, from their own spirit.
One very interesting thing occurs during a healing session - the energy is shared, healing works both ways. The healer and the healed are treated.
6. The ability of the body to respond to the healing work so that it accepts the energy and restores itself to its optimum condition.
Healing means the body (and hopefully the whole person) has been restored to its best place for it take care of itself. That needs to be maintained for the best health. Healing can never be guaranteed. Sometimes it just doesn't work. (Just like in conventional medicine.) If a person has a serious disease they may need more work and more frequent sessions for it to take hold. Sometimes the body is too far gone and that requires the recognition of that fact, and acceptance on the part of the healer and the patient. Then the work might take a new route to prepare for what is coming next. Then, there are people who just don't want to be healed (even if they tell you otherwise). A healer does not judge a person for any choice they make for their own lives. We know that the higher self of all people know what they're doing.
There is a lot of talk about what heals - does a person heal themselves or does a healer do it for them. I think it's usually both; not only that a person heals themselves, but sometimes it takes outside help, sometimes a catalyst for healing. I've been on all sides of this and I have experienced it myself. I know that I have actually healed people on my own and at other times with the help of the doctors, and again at other times as a co-creative project with the person wanting healing. The results speak for themselves. The definitions of healing apply to what I do. So, in all honesty, I can (and do now) call myself a healer without apologies, or arrogance, or fear. Why not say it like it is?
© 2005, Estelle Nora Harwit Amrani. All rights reserved.
(Image was from a free graphics site.)
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 17 Feb 2005 @ 15:28, by ming. Systems Thinking
Article in Wired, Revenge of the Right Brain, by Daniel H. Pink, talks about how Right Brain qualities seem to be more and more what we need.Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.
Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.
To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.
OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect.
The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance.
And he goes on to explain that. I don't know if he makes a great case for it, or if The Conceptual Age is the best term. But, I agree, a different age is emerging, where it doesn't do it just to be rational and to have the right information. More dimensions are needed. And there's too much information, and not time enough to analyze it all rationally. So we have to resort to more effective methods of dealing with complexity. Which, interestingly, to a large degree is intuition, feelings, exploring patterns in artistic or playful ways, rather than just logically.
The plus side could be that we'll tend to deal with the whole thing, rather than fragmented pieces of information. The minus side could be that we're more easily fooled, because we act on appearances and emotions, and don't get around to analyzing the facts at hand.
So, different qualities than before become critical. Being able to know right from wrong, without analyzing the data. I.e. being in touch with your own intuition, your inherent abilities to know things, even in the absence of facts. Sometimes you can make better decisions if you don't let yourself be distracted by facts. But lots of people are very bad at it, and get distracted by superficial signs, to make decisions they wouldn't have if either they knew the facts or they were in sync with their own senses.
And the Information Age isn't exactly going away, but rather transforming into something else. It won't be so much about having an edge by having access to better information than your competitors, as most information will be generally available. It will be more about what you do with masses of information than what you do with little chunks of it. More about the forest than the trees, more about the landscape of information than about the facts.
Anyway, back to the guy's article, which ends like this: Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.
Cool. So, we could say it is a change of focus. What before was to look outside for work and jobs and positions, maybe becomes to go inside and be inspired to do what you're here to do. Which becomes successful if one at the same time connects up with the heartbeat of the bigger, complex society. Plugging into the zeitgeist, the desires, the ebbs and flows of human attention. Where before, what you did had rather little to do with neither YOU nor with what the world needed - that now becomes all important. That *I* am in it, and that it rides on some kind of wave within the state of the world. Don't know if I can come up with a better word for it. Integral Age. Complex Age. Or Virtual Age, but that gets into another angle. Or maybe Conceptual Age is actually pretty good, as it encompasses several of those aspects. What a concept. More >
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16 Feb 2005 @ 23:19, by swanny. Social System Design
RETHINKING CITIES
Well all hail the Kyoto Protocol, on this its day of birth.
It'd be your February 16, 2005 and with much foot dragging it seems
the Protocol is now Law and in effect.
It is interesting that its basis is on a somewhat economic model, which is understandable in a capitalistic society and world. Credits to pollute are the order of the day and bought and sold as simply another commodity on the global markets perhaps.
Al-righty then but wait.... We have missed the boat somehow I think.
I think Global warming and CO2 emissions are not the problem but a symptom.
The real problem would seem to stem from the urban jungles and cities.
Cities which by design are unsustainable and serve not people but .... whatever.
Hmmmm really??? What is a city then??? Who does it serve and how many?
Can a city be to big? Can a city be self sufficient? Can a city please all of the people all of the time? Is the city a natural or organic entity or is it a machine or
processor of some sort? What do we really know about cities anyway?
They don't seem to have been around all that terribly long and is there perhaps need to investigate what makes a good and sustainable urban area and what do we base this judgment or reasoning on? Is city designing and building a science or an art? What is the history of the city? What makes a good, sustainable healthy and green city?
A lot of questions true but the questions have to be asked I suppose if we are to do more than just treat the symptom rather than address the real problem. More >
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 16 Feb 2005 @ 14:23, by jerryvest. Spirituality
During a recent visit with my grandkids, I introduced them to the Tarot. Beau (5) and Ariana (7) were fascinated with the colors, symbols and images that these cards(Waite version)represent.
During my early studies and search for meaning of the Tarot, I learned that the Minor Arcanas represented our ego's process or personality development, while the Major Arcanas show us the parallel journey of our spirit or essence. We begin and continue our journey as the Fool. We can see how we, as humans, evolve and mature and hopefully, at the conclusion of our trip, we have knowledge, wisdom, love and truth integrated into our lives and relationships.
I initially introduced this game as representing our life experience as it unfolds in the 4 suits--Wands(learning), Pentacles(wisdom), Cups(love), and Swords(truth). The kids took the lead by drawing a card from the deck and describing the meaning it had for them. I fully accepted whatever their perception allowed so that they freely expressed their point of view.
It was particularly interesting to me that they could identify experiences with their cards and also report some of their beliefs stimulated by them. For example, I drew both the Death and Devil cards early on and both Ari and Beau indicated that they did not like them and asked me to pull them from the deck so that we could deal with them later. In fact, Beau bent the corners on them so that he wouldn't draw them ever. We laughed about these fears as the game progressed over the week.
I was able to let them know that I am still processing some of my experiences represented by the cards so they are free to openly share what comes to their minds. We held four sessions which lasted about two hours each. It was also amazing to me that they could sustain such an interest in the cards. Daeja(3)was not interested at all in what we were doing and her brother and sister seemed to understand that she was too young to understand or appreciate this game.
During our final session, we lay the Minor Arcanas out on the floor by each suit, starting with the King, Queen, Knight and Page followed by the X, IX, VIII, VII, VI, V, IV, III, II and Ace. I invited them to select the cards that they most identified with. Ari chose all of the A's and decribed what she experienced with each. Beau had a mixed selection of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles.
I recognize that there are many and varied interpretations and use of the Tarot. I believe that this is a good tool that can be used in learning and in understanding how we evolve as human beings. Also, the kids seemed to appreciate that we also learn from the problems we face and beliefs that we have while growing and maturing.
Tarthang Tulku, author, Knowledge of Freedom - Time to Change, describes healthy changes for our being:
To rid ourselves of pretense, we would need to integrate the face we present to the world with our real feelings; we would need to learn how to resolve inner conflicts between what we are and what we feel we should be. We would also need to understand how the ego manifests, the origin and nature of desires and emotions, and how all of these factors influence our judgment. We would need to understand the nature of relaxation and concentration and learn to protect ourselves from negativity. Ideally, we would gain a sound foundation for self-understanding as part of our early education, before negative patterns were deeply entrenched. (p. 165)
As we discuss consciousness, I often observe how I touch others throughout the day. I listen to my voice, inside and out, so that I can see where my tensions are located. I frequently remind myself to observe my breathing and notice its fullness or lack there of. When I experience a pain in various parts of my body, I invision a color representing the system and breathe deeply into 'it'. Then I invite my massage partner to spend some extra time massaging this area. I would like to hear from others who 'awaken divine consciousness.' Integrative Health Forum
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