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3 Feb 2003 @ 18:44, by sharie. Philosophy
What's human nature? To be greedy? Selfish? Homicidal?
What if none of this is human nature at all?
What if it's not human nature to be insane?
What if their sickness is a symptom of the sick culture, the sick values, the sick beliefs, the sick prejudices, and the sick goals which were created out of the sickness that came before it?
What if this sickness has been growing year after year, decade after decade?
What if we stopped feeding the sickness by withholding our life energy from the sick culture?
What if we stopped buying that processed, manufactured, factory-produced garbage they call *food*?
What if we stopped eating dead cows and dead pigs?
What if we stopped relying on deadheads to heal us?
What if we stopped depending on the insane to save us?
Stop buying their gas and oil. Stop buying their chemicals. Stop buying their pharmaceuticals. Stop buying dead cows and dead pigs. Stop buying poisoned tobacco. Stop buying processed *foods* (it's body pollution). Stop buying their *stuff*. Stop feeding the self-destructing culture. Stop paying for the slaughter of babies and children. Stop it now.
Change your life. Be smart. Choose Life.
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 2 Feb 2003 @ 15:32, by craiglang. Space Exploration
An earlier newslog article makes the claim that the Columbia disaster might be the end of the US Space Program. But somehow I doubt it. I believe that space is our destiny. And I also believe that the USA will remain a part of that destiny. Whether it is alone or in partnership, we WILL continue. We will bear the risks, and we will learn the lessons of being on the leading edge of exploration. More >
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 2 Feb 2003 @ 14:41, by ming. Natural Health & Healing
A number of years ago, after being annoyed about having to wear thick glasses all day since my late teens, I sought out natural methods for improving my eyesight. In particular, I found a vision consultant who taught me principles, methods and exercises, loosely based on the Bates Method. It started working right away, and after a couple of months I could take off my glasses. For years I would only need glasses for driving at night. And I would faithfully do my exercises every day. But at some point I got lazy about it, and didn't keep up the exercises, and my sight has worsened. Not as bad as it was before, but I have to wear glasses if I drive of I'm out shopping.
Now, looking around on the net, I found it depressing that the first thing I ran into was a lot of sites where eye doctors were claiming that this kind stuff is complete quackery, that myopia is genetic, and the only answer is glasses or surgery. Hm, I think I have a different opinion about who are the quacks.
What I found most profound about the principles of regaining natural sight is that they apply to many things in life. Here are some of them.
- Sight is primarily mental. If you can imagine something clearly focused, you can usually also see it like that with your eyes. If your mental picture is fuzzy, so is your eyesight.
- Everything in the world is always moving. Natural sight sees that continously, and natural eyes will glide gradually over the scene, rather than jumping around between fixed points. Bad eyesight starts when one begins to see things just as fixed items at fixed distances.
- Instead of letting yourself be thrown around by an apparently solid and immobile world, try turning your perspective around, and assume that you're still, and the whole world is constantly moving around you.
- The periphery is important. Natural sight sees the periphery, the context, all the time, although not as clearly as the portion being focused on. Bad eyesight starts when we focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, and when we insist that everything has to be clearly in focus. The periphery is never in focus - duh - but it is nevertheless very important.
- Natural sight is relaxed. You see better by relaxing, not by straining.
Just going for glasses or surgery, without changing one's habits, is almost as silly as taking a pain killer because somebody's standing on your foot. I feel bad that I've allowed myself to be so busy and stressed that I've forgotten about some of the fine ways I have of being relaxed and seeing better.
Here are some more sites: brief overview, method in a nutshell More >
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1 Feb 2003 @ 11:32, by sharie. Communities
The insights I have into what the quality of life was like 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago or 1000 years ago is from literature written at the time, or from movies created from the literature of the time. From all accounts, life for the poor was horrid (except perhaps in cultures of the Indians, polynesians, hawaiians and so on). We have more middle class now, but also more poor (as population growths have expanded both groups). More people means fewer natural resources and ultimately this will cause a breakdown in the consumer culture, and require the creation of a new culture for those who would wish to survive. Disease, starvation, war... this will eliminate the population. Those with foresight can see the need for the creation of a new civilization, new social values, new beliefs, new social goals... if we are to survive.
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 31 Jan 2003 @ 15:23, by ming. Legal, Justice
Most of our societies are based on the "rule of law". Which works out to be about the opposite of how I think things should be. The rule of law is essentially that some rules are written down and agreed upon, and everybody will be equally forced to follow the rules. That is usually presented as a reasonable alternative to everybody just doing whatever they feel like, which would be perceived as a chaotic anarchy.
The problem is that lawmakers don't know how to write down principles of social behavior, or they're really just trying to enforce their own moral biases on everybody, so they end up writing huge volumes of detailed rules about how people are supposed to behave or not behave. And invariably they leave a lot open to interpretation, and they forget to think about many contexts where those behaviors aren't necessarily what works, and they end up with a self-contradictory mess. Which makes it a good business to be a lawyer, and those people who can afford more lawyers than others would tend to be more able to get what they want.
Now, the people who actually enforce laws will tend to hide behind the word of the law, and will tend to have the attitude that they're just carrying out the law, or they're just following orders. In other words, they're not responsible. That is by design, by the division of the powers of government. But it is also what usually turns governments into such unfeeling monsters. Lawmakers can sit in confortable chairs and make rules, without having to soil their hands with involvement in the actual circumstances where those laws might or might not work. Police forces will carry out the laws, using force, potentially lethal force. Nobody's really responsible. Different people make the laws than who interpret them than who carry them out.
There's a lot to say about all of this. My first point, however, is that personal responsibility would be a better fundamental principle than would institutionalized irresponsibility. In other words, if the police officer stops you for speeding, or for taking too long zipping up your pants in the public bathroom, he'd better be able to defend why that was the right thing to do right then. Not whether the law told him so or not, but why it served a useful purpose right then and there. Judges who condemn people need to be thoroughly exposed to that which they condemn them to. I.e. attend their executions, or visit them in prison. And politicians should have to face all of that, to experience on their own skin the consequences of their laws. That would be a good first step.
What really ought to change is the inherent insanity in making volumes of laws that are just 'good ideas' but that really don't work in all circumstances in real life. A law says that certain things ALWAYS must be a certain way, and that this will be enforced. Somebody makes a law that says 'nobody's allowed to drive faster than 55mph'. Might sound like a good idea, as it sounds more safe, and it would save gasoline. But then later on somebody thinks 'what about the police or firetrucks?' and maybe they change the law to have an exception for police or firetrucks, or maybe everybody implicitly agrees that it of course wouldn't apply to them. Why not? Any law that has any kind of exceptions is a bad law. What about if I have a medical emergency and need to get to the hospital? What if I drive 75mph and nobody else is around for miles? What if there is some urgent need that you didn't think of spelling out in the law? Its the law that is bad. What it is really trying to accomplish is that people are safe while driving, but it tries to do it by applying the same numbers to everybody. What would rather be needed would be a guideline, a general principle, and some people to carry it out who actually would be responsible for their own choices. There should be nothing to hide behind. More >
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29 Jan 2003 @ 17:19, by sharie. Peace
I grew up playing chess. I was a Chess Champion when I was just eleven years old. Recently, I've begun teaching the game to my six-year old twin daughters. There is a strategic move in the game of Chess known as the "fork". In this strategy, I position one of my men to simultaneously jeopardize two of my opponent's pieces. In this way, no matter what my opponent does, I will capture at least one of his powerful men with little or no loss to myself.
This is relevant in the war strategies which no doubt military leaders are well-trained in.
Today, while reading through more of the war positioning against Iraq, it struck me that there has been a "fork" created. No matter what Iraq does now, their opposition (GW & associates) will bag billions of dollars.
GW and his highly-experienced father, along with their co-conspirators Dick, Donald, Henry and the others own stock in the weapons companies. They profit from the wars they wage. The weapons are paid for by american tax dollars, but these men have created a way to profit for the nearly $500 billion dollars of tax dollars allocated each year which ultimately goes to themselves.
They also provide "Foreign Aid Packages" which include weapons paid for by American taxpayers, with the *retail value* listed at 100 times it's cost, so that the Associates' investments will have a high return.
A $40 billion dollar Foreign Aid Package, for example, may be weapons which cost just $1 Million, with the difference between the actual cost and the sale price going to the weapons company stockholders (guess who).
These men have also been creating a long series of Committees and Programs with funding in the billions and billions of dollars. Henry's 9/11 Investigation Committee, for example, had a price tag estimated at $35 billion. Of course this money labored for by Americans and taken from their paychecks is going into the private pockets of GW & his associates.
So all the war expenditures, no matter who wins or who backs down, results in personal profits for the men in charge. Even if they don't get Iraq's oil, they profit from all the weapons sales in order to prepare for the war against Iraq, including the sale of oil to the military for the ships, planes, trucks and so on.
Strategically, this is a "fork" which they have created. They win - they pocket billions of dollars - no matter what happens.
Dick Cheney personally pocketed over $30 Million off the Gulf War - and that's just the known profits.
Oh what a web they weave.
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 29 Jan 2003 @ 13:05, by unity1. Peace
Dear Mr President
STOP USING GODS NAME IN VAIN
You are using gods name to justify a sensless war for your own profit and agenda.
over half the world knows it and sees you for what you are .. a puppet to a corporate agenda whose faces and names will be known in due course
George did you not know that war is easy any fool can make war. The challenge is peaceful negotion. anger and hate are easy....tolarance and compassion are your challenge.
However I have to say that I honour you for the way you have galvinised over half the world to recognise that peace is the way of our future. You have, unbeknown to you and your cronies, instigated the begining of the end and out of the rubble that you will most assurdedly create around us, another way will arise, and like the phonix we the people everywhere, will arise ever changing and ever free. You will stand in history as the new example of how not to be in our world.
We see you and your true motovies mr pesident just stop using gods name to advance support for your selfish foolish agenda More >
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 28 Jan 2003 @ 22:26, by koravya. Visual Arts, Graphics
What we know as the American continents
are known as the twin turtles to the Native culture.
Globalizing the concept into the four turtles
of Eurasia including the Australian extension,
Africa, North Ollin and South Ollin,
the four quadrants of the Aztec calendar
each contain four circles.
In three of the quadrants, the arrangement is symmetrical,
while in the fourth, that of South Ollin,
the arrangement is asymmetrical.
All of this is just a meditation on
the nature of developing a consciousness
of the essential characteristics of the
design of the Aztec calendar stone. More >
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28 Jan 2003 @ 07:46, by tdeane. Children, Parenting
How many of us wouldn't love to journey back in time to the days when our dreams had no limits, that time before our minds became "discriminating," filled with prejudices, stereotypes? Remember the days of balloons, kites, and rainbows? Ah...weren't they beautiful, those days of believing in a future?
In researching on the internet, I wasn't able to find too much information on population statistics of the world for children until I ran across www.prb.org, which is the website for the Population Research Bureau. Some rather profound statistics there:
30% OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION CONSISTS OF CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 15!
Think of it! What happens to that percentage if we add in the 15 to 21 year olds. I couldn't find those figures, so what would we guess 40%, possibly 50%? Just the notion that so few statistics on children are available in a world of statistics should tell us something.
Those whose lives are just getting started, who should ALL have a voice in their world, represent almost half the population of our world.
In part of a study by UNICEF, The State of the World's Children, in which they assembled 400 young representative voices from around the world, the children agreed that they want an end to all war in the world. They have a lot of other good ideas, those beautiful little unencumbered minds! The study can be found at
www.unicef.org/sowc03/specialtopics/index.html
Can we not open our hearts to them? To the gentlest, least responsible voices who have more to lose than any of us? Can we not hurt for the children of all of the nations of the world, and be united in that WITHOUT diversity? Can we not feel the fear that they must feel, particularly in the Middle East? Can we not feel outrage that some of them are being trained for war, never knowing childhood, possibly never knowing life beyond childhood?
How many of them would stand up with lighted candles to save the world? My bet is just about all of them, at least those who can still dream.
Now let's ask ourselves how many of us would stand up with lighted candles to save them?
If children want a world free of war, what would the role-models' behavior look like? Bursts of energy in the form of demonstrations, scheduled at different times in different places? Wonderful effort, but it has never worked before. Or is what we need most to LIGHT the world, with the full participation of almost 1/2 of its population, the voice yet to be heard?
Think of it!
Envision each time zone of the Earth lighting a candle at dusk, and the beautiful wave of LIGHT that would spread around the globe. Can we not envision the beautiful energies that would summon? Can we not consider the possibility that the greatest mistake we have ever made is forgetting our children, and making a commitment to them, as well as the child in each of us, is what we need to take that GIANT LEAP?
We have no guns, we have no voice, but we have each other! We have the internet, and we have the time, otherwise we wouldn't be able to write these logs. How much time would it take us to bombard the internet and the news media with a date and a message FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN WE WILL RAISE OUR CANDLES HIGH? How many people do you really think would refuse?
All we keep doing is arguing about what to do, when we have the simplest, most peaceful means of all right under our noses? This idea came from US; it was not in my mind prior to joining NCN. It is all of our energies combined. Can't we now combine our energies and just say, "LET'S DO IT?"
I don't want war. I don't want anyone to die. I don't want all that you have worked so hard for all of your lives to suddenly go up in smoke. I don't want our relationships to end. I want us all to live to see the dream. I love you, because I love the Universe and the Universe had a special purpose in creating each and every one of us. Can't we just pretend this one simple action in a unified effort might just be part of why we are here? FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN?
How can we say it won't work, if we have never tried it? Does that not constitute ignorance? We're simply running out of time...
As always, I surround us with spiritual hugs and much love ~ Tricia
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27 Jan 2003 @ 04:17, by tdeane. Ideas, Creativity
I share with you here a true story of connection, interconnection, and Oneness with ALL that is.
THE CHRISTMAS CACTUS
When Simpleman and I moved from Rochester to Binghamton and moved in above his mom, she gave us a cutting of a Christmas Cactus that had been in the family for a few generations.
We had a wonderful enclosed porch that functioned as a greenhouse for us, and our plants really thrived. So much so, that by the end of each season, we usually ended up with ten plants from the one, they grew so abundantly. So, we used to give the plants to other plant-lovers, family included. Gregg's sister and brother had particularly great success with the Christmas Cacti, abundantly growing, profusely flowering every year.
For fifteen years, no matter what I tried I couldn't get the cactus to bloom for me. I followed all of the directions, I tried to observe the dim-light, no water recommended care as best I could, but nary ever even the hint of a blossom. It grew larger, but it never flowered!
Over the years, I kind of gave up hope with the plant, and in truth didn't give it the same amount of love I gave the other plants. I would put it in a less obvious place than those that were vibrant and healthy. I forgot to water it sometimes. I planted it in one of my less desirable planters. All in all, I just kind of turned into a shithead in the plant kingdom, and gave those who responded the way I wanted them to a lot of care, and those that did not the least care.
This year I started feeling kind of bad for the plant. It was inside, subjected to the air conditioning, little sunshine, and just generally out of view and forgotten. So I put it on the balcony so it could at least enjoy the sun, and be out among the other plants, even if it was at the time of the year that was against the rules of good plant parenting.
As Simpleman pointed out in his log, this past year has been a year of necessary experiences which feel very difficult and totally stressful when living through them. The very worst part seemed to come as it neared the holidays, with numerous computer problems and total breakdown, the car broke down, and we received news that the anticipated unemployment through mid-February was ending in December instead. For a brief period of time, we were somewhat panic stricken, myself more than cool-headed Gregg, although even he was being taxed to the limit.
In the midst of all of this, I went out on the balcony one day and noticed that the Christmas Cactus had turned a strange color, at least strange for it in all of the years I have known it. The leaves, which appear to grow out of each other, had a dark red vein running from the base to the tip of each section of leaves, almost as though blood was running through its veins. Then I noticed at the tip of each of leaf, or whatever cacti thingies are called, was a perfectly formed BUD, some smaller, some bigger, but almost every one bearing that which I had waited for 15 years to see!
Somehow, seeing those blooms, we knew we were proceeding in all our affairs in the right direction, and that we would make it through the darkest of the dark time last year. This happens to us alot, messages from Nature, not just in placing a stamp of approval on how we are doing by sending them to us through this unusual means, but in teaching us how to live.
For years I thought I was connecting with the plant, taking into consideration its perceived needs. It never occurred to me that perhaps the plant had accommodated itself to our energies, our lifestyle, as member of our family of children in different forms. We knew the connection with our kitty cats, especially because one is just like Gregg and one is just like me, but the sensitivity of our plants, our interconnectedness to this extent, was a possibility we had never considered. Neither Gregg nor I are personally geared toward routine of any kind. Putting our plant in the dark and at the right time each year was something we really didn't do well at all. Can I say for sure our plant adjusted itself to our family and our peculiarities? In my life I can.
After writing the log For Andy, For All, a plant which we had given up for dead on our balcony after six months of trying to bring it back to life to no avail, suddenly came to life and it has been loving life ever since! Nature told me that my definition of who we are and why we are here is the right definition for my purpose, and I know this to be true in my life and my purpose.
Several days ago, after revealing some of my own sensitivities to a very dear friend, I became more attuned to the sensitivities around me, Gregg, my cats, my friends, my plants, and while I was standing fondling our beautiful Christmas Cactus, these simple words of Truth appeared from out of nowhere in my mind, the cactus telling me: "You are my child, whose child I am. This is what we REALLY need to know of each other to love and to listen and to learn."
The interconnection with ALL...
As always, I surround us all with spiritual hugs and much love ~ Tricia
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