|
|
 16 Apr 2007 @ 23:51, by hgoodgame. Spirituality
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served Tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
“It is not the spoon that bends; it is the mind.” – The Matrix More >
|
|
|
|
16 Apr 2007 @ 21:39, by vaxen. Recreation, Fun
Yeah... out in the woods, today, sitting on a big rock out in the middle of the fast flowing stream. Snowpaw was running around in the forest chasing things that only he could see...
In the depths of the pool at the edge of the rock, deep... cold, bubbles kept rising. Big ones, little ones, rising... rising... pop!
Rather like the 'Evolution of Planets... '
A clean break with the time track and the whole track warrants you... bliss! So Hung, Hung So.
Sahasrara Mandale, Sarvati, Parvati, Jaya, Jaya, Maha Devi. More >
|
|
|
|
 16 Apr 2007 @ 15:58, by jhs. Medicine, Healthcare
Life presented me with an interesting Meme, a Meme which I never questioned myself until now; the cutting of the umbilical cord.
We, Heloisa Helena and I, have been discussing this Meme for many hours now and I will summarize some of her revolutionary ideas on this topic soon in a separate posting.
Much to our surprise we found NOT ONE SINGLE reason to do this violent interference with the newborn.
The recent counter-meme is called Lotus Birth, a fancy name for a non-action. After all, the cord disconnects by itself after a few days after all nutriments rich in staminal cells passed from the placenta to the newborn. In short, it is LESS work, with LESS risks involved, even members of the medical profession say this now, and they gain substantially from childbirth, as are the hospitals which are selling placenta and cords to the pharmaceutical industry, which in turn, oh well...
A meme, or an image, which we personally held, was that it was necessary to cut the cord in order to disconnect the mother from the child. This image is false. Placenta and newborn disconnect during birth from the mother, the newborn is only connected to the placenta and there is no reason in the world why it should be cut off from this supply with a knife.
Some photos that may change your perspective:
A Lotus Birth Picture Gallery
So we were asking us the following questions:
From where in Heavens and Earth is this insane Meme of cutting the umbilical cord coming from?
Is it the non-confront of the male of the placenta and blood of mother and child during birth?
Is it a religious-based superstition?
Is there a connection to the agressivity of the Western civilization in comparison to indigenous cultures who are practicing "Lotus Birth" (not cutting the cord)?
How could this Meme be reprogrammed to restore the right of the newborn to a non-violent birth?
To whom does the placenta belong if not to the new human being?
How does the Patriarchy of our times fits in with this insane script?
Is there a link to the archetypical script of Sophia, the birth of the Universe, according to early Gnostics?
The picture in the sidebar is chosen from Wikipedia. It is not as aesthetical as most other pictures here on this site but I chose it to illustrate the brutality of the cutting of the cord and the indignity of everyone involved. More >
|
|
|
|
 16 Apr 2007 @ 14:18, by jazzolog. Communities
Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
---Claude Bernard
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
---Henry Miller
I have been reading all day, confined to my room, and feel tired. I raise the screen and face the broad daylight. I move the chair on the veranda and look at the blue mountains. I draw a long breath, fill my lungs with fresh air and feel entirely refreshed. I make tea and drink a cup or two of it. Who would say that I am not living in the light of eternity?
---D.T. Suzuki
The drawing illustrates an article in the current issue of In Character, for which Joannah Ralston is credited with design.
When I set about to look for an image to illustrate this entry, I typed the word "solitude" into the search engine. A number of paintings showed up, but surprisingly not many that were created before the Twentieth Century. A few landscapes from the late 1800's seemed to celebrate Wordsworthian romance, but in his poems too we witness the beginnings of modern isolation.
For some time I've been concerned about a gradual loss of community and neighborhood connection that has occured in my lifetime. This may not be the case everywhere or among people who have not lived the kind of life that I have. I've moved around a good deal---especially in the 1960s and 70s---and am not living in the town where I was born. I tend toward liberal ideals and am not a member of a "mega-church." More conservative folks, who can trace lineage in the same geography back several generations, may enjoy a different experience. But how many of those are there, and is their number dwindling? And what good is neighborhood anyway, if you don't want people meddling in your privacy?
Bill McKibben's article in the current issue of the journal referenced above got me wondering whether a reinvigoration of community may be a major ingredient in solving huge problems that face us planetary inhabitants today. Bill McKibben is teaching at Middlebury College currently I guess, but has lived in the Adirondack Mountain region of New York for some time. You may have read his essays in The New Yorker and other publications, usually devoted to spiritual aspects of environmental concern. He's also written a few books.
This article doesn't talk about TV, industrialization, and overpopulation, which are topics that fly to my mind immediately when I think of wanting to get away from it all and just live in the woods with a computer. Here he suggests the very goal of getting off the grid and living the life of the self-sufficient survivalist ultimately may lead nowhere. More >
|
|
|
|
16 Apr 2007 @ 06:20, by vaxen. Spirituality
Kriya=movement
Kriyation (Creation=same word)= Movement...
The Green Run
Soon after the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear bomb in August of 1949, the United States decided it needed to learn more about the types of weapons its enemy was building. To find out, the Air Force conducted the Green Run experiment at the Hanford nuclear production plant.
On the night of Dec. 2, 1949, the plant "released three tons of irradiated uranium fuel that had been allowed to cool only 16 days," reports a declassified Department of Energy document. The release-aimed at duplicating pollution from a Soviet reactor-placed more than 7800 curies of radioactive iodine, well-known to concentrate in human thyroids, into the air of the Pacific Northwest. By comparison, the accident at Three Mile Island released only 15 curies of radioactive iodine.
- F. Holmes “Skip” Atwater, [link]
===
DEPLOYMENT SCENARIOS
Could an intelligence or security expert involved in U.S. homeland security remote view to perceive and understand a terrorist threat? Could a platoon leader remote view over the next hill to see an ambush? Could a U.S. interrogator “know” that the person in his custody has terrorist connections, or that he is innocent, or that he knows more?
Or, could those in the field use remote viewing operators sitting somewhere else? Could a convoy route map be sent to the remote viewer for a check for IEDs or ambushes? Could a map of a target area be examined by a remote viewer to locate an enemy base camp? There are unlimited potential applications that can save lives and help accomplish missions now, and the missions to come.
Maybe personnel with remote viewing training should be assigned organizationally in the way medics, communications specialists, intelligence specialists, supply officers or others are assigned.
Remote viewing training could be made available to a wide range of personnel and the skill could be spread as widely as there were open minds. More >
|
|
|
|
15 Apr 2007 @ 21:46, by a-d. Spirituality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno More >
|
|
|
|
 15 Apr 2007 @ 06:54, by skookum. Ideas, Creativity
betwixt and between?
we are not alone .. perhaps? More >
|
|
|
|
 14 Apr 2007 @ 13:01, by jhs. Philosophy
The recent BLOG entry of Ming (and likewise the comments written in response to it), made me think, rethink, mentally regurgitate how we, as a species and as individuals, are cementing our own insanity, freezing it in time, defending ferociously any attack, reasonable or not, maintaining an artificial Ego without tangible core, insisting that our own dreams are reality and any others being mere hallucinations.
Perhaps, so I was dreaming, this urge to "be consistent" is even more at the root of the human condition than Gotamo Siddharto's (the "Buddha's") postulate that it might be the tendency in assuming a "single cause for a given effect". (See an entire series on articles about this here on this BLOG.)
Perhaps Gotamo's (very correct) observations depend on this very urge to "be consistent": the "cause/effect" determination serving merely as a justification of a deeper seated insanity of assuming a "stable datum" at the expense of excluding all other truth(s)?
How the Being, the presumed master of it all, manages the fusion of an arbitrary idea into the mind&body-sphere in order to create a fixed idea, is a very interesting observation, seemingly impossible to communicate, an intimate process everyone needs to detect, analyze, and duplicate for him-/herself.
A very basic process of Ego-creation of modern man is looking in the mirror. Ironically, what wo/man sees in the mirror is NOT its exact picture: left and right are swapped.
More recently even, for the tiny minority of hi-tech-endowed people on Earth, that's us, bros, the mirror is replaced by TV monitors. The theoretical blessing of the electronic monitor is that it doesn't have the above-mentioned shortcoming of the classical optical mirror. PLUS, it can show the past and is not limited to the closed-loop "resonance/feedback" effect of the always-live mirror.
Therefore, interestingly, seeing oneself on (past) videos is breaking part of the identification with one's own mirror picture. The effect is sobering the first time(s), but then a new sort of identification sets in. This latter effect can be observed only with the tiny fraction of the tiny fraction of hi-tech people known as "TV-celebs".
The other day, in Santos, Brazil, I was watching a super-interesting approach of painting: "quasi-realism" (not the official name I think): Deladier Almeida, an artist living since many years in Sacramento, California, painter to the superstars, whether politics, arts, or sports arena.
Modern surrealism produces an abstract notion of energies inherent in the model being depicted. This provides new, extra viewpoints, OK, but it generally doesn't invite a self-reflection about the identification of the person with the image of his body.
Likewise, the artform of "cartoons" which is overemphasizing defects of the model, doesn't generally invite self-reflection either. The truth in it is just too grossly exaggerated.
On the other hand, Deladier's artworks are QUASI photos, but just QUASI, inviting a reflection about WHO is really behind the mask of those facial muscles in front of us.
The superposition of two vibrations with frequencies sufficiently close to each other, but not identical, are producing the phenomenon of a new sound with a sweeping amplitude. (witness an audio demo here)
The fascination of this new vibration for me is part of Deladier's work, and, perhaps, revealing more about the "real" person that one would suspect at first.
In terms of a process: viewing a quasi-duplicate at the same time with the original "pseudo"-reality and witness the "sweeping" effect until the presumed reality breaks into pieces.
OK, OK, Before breaking up here, let me vanish.... More >
|
|
|
|
13 Apr 2007 @ 07:14, by vaxen. Economics, Financing, Banking
THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIANCE
If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law: Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849
The stage is set. Cheney and Bush still see themselves as the deciders and their preemptive agenda is still in play. The timid Democrats are about to be sucked into funding the Iraq fiasco and thus setting the stage for being responsible for its consequences when Bush leaves office in 2009.
Even today we see that that the insurgency ( freedom Fighters ) have penetrated the Iraq Green Zone with a suicide bomber and that's not counting the 15 to 20 daily rocket attacks.The time for wishful thinking is over ~ we lost and we deserve to lose and be humiliated in the process of Bush & Cheney's illegal occupation and travesty of justice .
Since we lack a national leader who will speak for the people's agenda ~ I call on Britain's George Galloway who proclaims to the British people " If George Bush bombs Iran, we should bring this country to a standstill. "
Even Lee Iococca, at 82 years old, is fed up with this Administration ~ [link]
" Had Enough? 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 ! "
Yes, it's almost time for civil disobediance ~ for we are, indeed, the agents of injustice in Iraq and perhaps in short time Iran and if Congress won't act by cutting off funding or even impeachment hearings ~ we must act even if it means breaking the law . It is our duty ! More >
|
|
|
|
12 Apr 2007 @ 18:41, by swanny. Environment, Ecology
Discussion
A proposal has been made for a "DECLARATION OF WAR" against greenhouse gases with troops being diverted to use in the enforcement of a manditory global moratorium and freeze on greenhouse gas emissions. This may even constitute a "Just War" as it seeks to address climate change as a crime not only against humanity but against the whole planet as we know it. More >
|
|
<< Newer entries Page: 1 ... 65 66 67 68 69 ... 279 Older entries >> |
|
These are news items gathered or contributed by NCN members
|
Categories
Activism (97)
Altered States (32)
Alternative Money Systems (17)
Broadcasting, Media (20)
Business (19)
Children, Parenting (28)
Communication (63)
Communities (71)
Conspiracy (34)
Counseling, Psychology (23)
Crime, Policing (7)
Death & Dying (14)
Developing World (19)
Economics, Financing, Banking (51)
Education (34)
Energy Sources (19)
Engineering (1)
Entrepreneurs, Money Making (19)
Environment, Ecology (123)
Exercise, Fitness (1)
Extraterrestrials (27)
Farming (14)
Futurism (13)
Globalization (29)
Government, Public Sector (46)
History, Ancient World (38)
Housing, Building, Architecture (10)
Ideas, Creativity (318)
Internet (49)
Inventions (6)
Investigation, Intelligence (23)
Knowledge Management (21)
Legal, Justice (24)
Liberty, Sovereignty (14)
Medicine, Healthcare (46)
Music (30)
Natural Health & Healing (27)
Neighborhood (12)
Networking (19)
Nutrition, Cooking (7)
Old Age, Retirement (4)
Organizational Development (12)
Paranormal (12)
Peace (35)
Performing Arts (9)
Personal Development (80)
Philosophy (94)
Politics (120)
Poverty (4)
Preparedness, Self-Reliance (12)
Privacy, Security (1)
Publishing (3)
Recreation, Fun (59)
Relationships (19)
Religion (40)
Science (48)
Sexuality (16)
Shared Purpose (30)
Social System Design (47)
Space Exploration (23)
Spirituality (391)
Systems Thinking (31)
Technology (37)
Transportation (9)
Travel (22)
Violence, War (103)
Visual Arts, Graphics (63)
|
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|
|
|
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
| 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
| 11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
| 18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
| 25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
|
Members can post news items and comments in the member area.
Information and opinions are the responsibility of the posters and do not represent any official position of NCN. Please do your own verification and make up your own mind.
Syndication
|
|
