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 10 Nov 2004 @ 03:22, by i2i. Spirituality
Photo: Laura Bush (Republican Convention, 2004). "Even as her husband courted social conservatives, Laura Bush lulled moderate voters into believing that the White House is not really in the clutches of the extreme right. The First Lady, as well as the women appointed to the inner circle of the President's Cabinet and sub-Cabinet, provide an alternative facade. They are cast as harmless, moderate, irrelevant or benign, and their well-spun image taps into familiar stereotypes."
Right wing political ideologies, including some of the most extreme or unfamous ones, like Mussolini's Italy or Franco’s Spain, have all always been keen on including "family values," (the gentle face of fascism) in their political programs. More >
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 7 Nov 2004 @ 11:45, by jazzolog. Spirituality
The painting by Andrea Del Sarto is of Christ realizing He is Risen.
I heard the unblown flute
In the deep autumn shadows
Of the Temple of Suma.
---Basho
Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore,
ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but,
more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
---John Keats
W.'s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We're entering another dark age, more creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid, regressive reality. Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches.
---Maureen Dowd, November 7, 2004
Garrison Keillor went even further on his Prairie Home Companion show last night. He proposes, of course in irony, a Constitutional amendment that bans born-again Christians from voting. He bases his proposal on the fact Evangelicals obviously are not citizens of the United States, but rather of Heaven. They no longer believe in our basic American values. Their health care plan is an opportunity for a closer walk with God. More >
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4 Nov 2004 @ 20:54, by craiglang. Spirituality
"It has begun..."
-Ambasador Kosh
(On witnessing the destruction of the ship carrying President Luis Santiago - in the Babylon 5 season 1 conclusion: "Chrysalis")
The day after election day was one of what I call the "cellar" days, in which you feel that you are at the bottom of the canyon. I found that on several occasions during that day, I had to fight back tears. A deep blanket of sadness seemed to smother my heart.
I wondered at the road that we have collectively chosen. How could we get it so wrong, yet so many people come to that conclusion at once? And I wondered even more, where will this road take us? And the only answer I could provide was "Into the abyss", Or, to quote the title of Greg Bear's novel of apocalypse, "The Forge of God." More >
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 28 Oct 2004 @ 14:03, by scotty. Spirituality
"Compassion is where peace and justice kiss," says the psalmist...We're divine, start acting divine--that means start acting compassionately. It's not very complicated.
"Please Call Me By My True Names" by Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a catepillar in the heart of flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the
surface of the river,
and I am the bird, which, when spring comes,
arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the
clear water of a pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly
weapons to Uganda.
I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee
on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after
being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with
plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his
"debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes
flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it
fills up the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs
at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion. More >
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26 Oct 2004 @ 21:57, by swanny. Spirituality
The Now Vision
I have just had a vision of sorts as to the direction
for the planet.
I was sitting here thinking that the way we are
treating ourselves and the planet seems somewhat
criminal and vainglorious. We are a species
obsessed and preoccupied with ourselves and
our own cleverness yet we are not clever at all
but petty and cruel. We do not live in harmony and
quality with one and other but make it an occupation
to cheat and outdo one and other. We are vain, petty, obsessed,
excessive, one big new Roman orgy it seems.
So in this vision I was casting out for the purpose
and point of life. It occurred to me that we have got
it all wrong. Nature is not base and simple, Nature
is complex.and diverse... We are the simple and mechanical
ones because we call the kettle gray and do not
see our own blackness and speed is not better
speed is speed. We say nature is ignorant
and useless yet it seems the truth is that whatever
nature is we are part of it and we in my estimation
are a lesser part because we do not understand
nature in its complexity and therefore pooh pah it.
Yet I suspect we would gain a greater insight into
our true potential if we were to understand and follow
the ways of nature for we are nature in many ways.
We are the simpletons. All our cleverness is no
match for nature and our obsessions with ourselves
is proof of that. Nature gives us the Grand Canyon
and we give us..... the daytime soap operas.
There is something very wrong with that picture
because one is real and the other a clever deversion
and illusion that we eagerly and carelessly
buy into hook line and sinker. Yes we have made some progress
and yes we are certainly somewhat clever yet
it occurred to me that for all our savy ..... the truly superior
humans we have had a tendancy to wipe off the face
of the planet..... the Gandis, the Lincolns, the Jesus's
the Native populations, the indegionous people, yet to
me they are the superior races and humans, I know it may be difficult
to understand how a race or person we have vanquished
can be superior but it is somewhat egnigmatic in its understanding
There lack of resistance of evil and acceptance of the process of death is
what essentially makes them superior not because they have
died but they have lived and continue to live somehow
true to their nature and nature
herself.... We may defeat them.... natures peoples but
we will never defeat nature...... for we would have
killed ourselves off long before that could occur such
is our baseness, vexation and abomination.
So the vision I had is the merger of the societies of today
and those of the old native traditions . If we wish to live properly and humanely we
must adopt the methods of the old native ways. I'm thinkin
most specifically of the West Coast tribes in British Columbia.
If we could somehow mimic and merge are methodogies
with some of their ways of old and create a kind of
synthesis or sycretis of civilization then perhaps there is hope
and promise for the future. If we were to learn of the
effective medicinal herbal remedies and if we were to embrace
the concepts like the just society, the humane market place,
the sustainable environment and the organic agrarianism
then maybe? But why should I care?
I suppose because I care enough about me to care about you.
Alfred More >
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 23 Oct 2004 @ 12:49, by jhs. Spirituality
It is a strange irony of life, perhaps the biggest of its kind, that the people who think they make free choices are the ones that have the least freedom in doing so.
Bound in clusters of confused, entangled abstractions, formed by words that have lost all contact to what they were created for, they live in clouds of thought, their actions are determined by forces that they never heard or thought of.
Since time immemorial, they act out the very same scripts that they and others have played out in countless replays, yet it doesn't ever occur to them. Being convinced that what they do is their own free choice, their actions are yet predictable like the tides of the sea.
At the same time, there are those who think that they would NOT have a choice in their lives, that they MUST do what they HAVE to do because of OTHER people and the world as such.
A few say "Sure, the world is a give and take, a combination of cause and effect, but when I want to, I have a free choice, sure, no doubt about it!"
Then, about all of them, when put on the stand, they justify their 'choices' in life like a person on the stage, hypnotized to touch their tie whenever someone says a certain word.
Is it possible to reach the doorstep to 'free choice' without first realizing the scripts one is playing along with the role one assumes within those scripts?
More often than I like I hear the same question, over and over: can you please explain to me my own scripts and the role I am playing within them? And I typically respond: dear friend, this is a futile, if not impossible, task, a ridicilous attempt, a vain effort, wasted time, an insult to the senses, a blasphemy of the mind, a violation of the rules of this Universe, a wrong choice, a paradox, and the very cancellation of individual liberty, to describe the play to an actor after the curtain has been raised. If the actor does not remember by himself what the show is all about once it's on the air, he must fail utterly. Sure, a hint or two will help him to remember, but the fact remains that he must remember what it is all about by himself in order to have just a tiny chance for success.
The average man boldly assumes to be standing at the top of the spectrum of life, yet, within the core of their own major religions, they are at the very center of this spectrum, yielding the maximum amount of freedom to choose which way to go, a freedom that they then promptly forfeit.
What is said here may sound cynical. But the lies, the tragic irony of mankind, its betrayal of its very own destiny, the sabotage of its own struggle, is reaching far deeper than words could ever express.
At first glance, it may thus appear that the experiment 'mankind' failed utterly. Upon a closer inspection, it shows, as it always does, that one extreme creates its very opposite: the blatant ignorance of the masses is balanced with the insight of a very few, most of which will then phantasize that they would be better than the rest of us. Future alone will demonstrate the final result of this experiment.
There is no one to blame. It's a choice. It always has been so. More >
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22 Oct 2004 @ 12:33, by redstar. Spirituality
Recently, I have been becoming very aware of changes in the energy fields at large and the impressions from this, I feel to be some kind of warning.
I am posting the following article that contains some information from the Mayan Elders and what they are trying to tell us!!
Think Plan B More >
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 20 Oct 2004 @ 12:57, by jobrown. Spirituality
Life's challenges come in many forms, but I remain convinced of this: that anyone, regardless of social, economic, or educational background, can come to the same discovery that I did. All it takes is a deep longing to find the truth, to find the inner freedom that does not depend on words, beliefs, experiences, or circumstances. It takes a burning desire to not settle for anything less. If, so far in the course of humanity's evolution, only a relatively few people in any given era have awakened fully, it is because the journey demands a total commitment. Nothing less will satisfy.
I invite you to the challenge. More >
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19 Oct 2004 @ 18:16, by zutano. Spirituality
I am a new member, and I hope that I can find a few, free thinking and optimistic people who can have a discussion, leaving all of their pre-conceived ideas of what is right or wrong in the shower, to explore new ideas of how to make this world a better place.
We live in exciting times and I am optimistic about the future. I believe that if we look at all of the worlds problems, we see a mountain that appears almost too big to move. But when you break this behemoth down to its smallest parts, all you find is a lot of small rocks. These rocks are easy to move. We can start by solving the problems that we can solve. Today, because of the Internet we have all been empowered with the opportunity and the ability to make change if we work together on specific projects. The list could be endless.
For instance... One of the things that bothers me about this election, and too many others in the recent past, is that no mater who wins, about 50% of the population will be unhappy. Why do we always have to vote for the lesser of two evils. Why can it not be, in each persons opinion....the best of the best.
When a president takes office he must submit his selection of cabinet members to the Senate to be confirmed. And when he submits names for federal judges he must also submit his choices to the same body to be confirmed. This process can take weeks, months or even years in the cases of some judges. These appointees are being judged by men and women who themselves have never had to go through this process. And, I am sure, that some of these men or women who are doing the judging would not be where they are today if they did.
I propose a new system, where we would set up a non-partisan body, perhaps retired judges, that would confirm that each candidate for public office was sound of mind and body, and that there were no flaws in the man or woman's character that would prevent them doing a honorable job, and that all of their skeletons, hidden so well in the closet, were out for the world to see. Can you imagine what a pleasure it would be to be able to listen to both sides of their arguments as to who was best qualified to do the job without having to watch them drag each other through the mud and worse. All, we as voters would have to do was to determine, in our own hearts who we believed was the best of the two good men.
Today, in the age of technology we can search millions of archives and find out almost everything about a man in a few hours. There is no good reason why the voters are fed bits and pieces of a mans past, some important and most not, just weeks or months before an election. I say let it all hang out in the beginning...if a candidate has transcended his past and can live with it...just maybe the voters could live with it too. If they only knew the truth.
This is just an idea...if it has merit let us discuss it. If not let’s pick another. If we can pass a joke around the world in a matter of minutes, we could certainly make the world aware of a better way in the matter of days. You could even have a vote on the idea if it was presented in a way with all of the pros and cons discussed rationally in forums.
The idea of getting feed-back from the masses is now possible. Why don’t we try to take advantage of the technologies.
I would appreciate all of your thoughts.
Roberto More >
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18 Oct 2004 @ 11:45, by swanny. Spirituality
"9/11 as metaphor"
10-18-04, 04:41 am (PDT)
There is a term in film making which I can't seem to recall
which in effect means that a film takes on an "unintentional"
effect on the audience and world at large.
I was wondering about this in regards to 9/11.
The "unintended" aspect that seems to have emerged
despite the "intentional" ones.
It becomes kind of a metaphor of sorts describing a
quintessential "shared" moment in time. It is one thing
for 9/11 to have happened and it is tragic true but in the
bigger unintentional picture perhaps it is a "witness to history"
effect occuring or to "horror" or perhaps simply to "reality".
Never have so many perhaps witnessed via a medium an
act of such a nature.
Now was that intentional.... it is hard to say.... Could the
results be predicted..... not quite exactly..... What in effect then
happened?.... What did we witness?.... The brutality of humanity
or wait..... is there something more here..... we witness sort of the
power of intent and yet the power of unintent perhaps as well.
Certainly it had the effect the perpetrators "intended" yet metaphorically something else is happening almost on a
spiritual level..... we are caught in the dilemna of "existence"
why are we here ...??? to witness ourselves and our self-destructive tendancies and brutalities....
We capture as it were or are caught in kind of a philosphical
or quintessential struggle of humanity. I don't know if that was
an intended effect though. We witness a tradgey but we witness
it together enmasse and it poses a question to our very souls.
?Why are we here? What are we doing? Who are we? Who are
they?
This kind of shared question is almost like a group meditation
a group query.
We are all gathered at one shared moment asking the same
"deep" and unanswerable questions and they resonate in us and out to the Universe. It is well for each of us to ask these question
but in masse there is like a shared prayer or intent or solicitation
effect to the Creator or Great Spirit.
We are caught in a Celestial group hug or concern as were....
and take solace in the shared echoe as it resonates in atmosphere and ? possiblity in our sharing and togetherness the Universe
responds??????? More >
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