Jane Goodall Recycle E Devices | Kate Raworth Economy Design – Thrive not Grow

Jane Goodall presently has a campaign:

The Forest is Calling. Answering the Call is Our Only Hope

Jane Goodall Everything is Connected Everyone Can Make a Difference

It was estimated that up to 50 million tons of electronic waste—mainly computers and smartphones—was dumped in 2017 alone (UNEP).

Jane Goodall The Forest is Calling Answering it is our only Hope

Jane Goodall Recycle unwanted Mobile Devices

Jane Goodall Terribly Important Recycle Old Cell Phones

Kate Raworth has an essential concept to consider in her TEDtalk regarding redesigning our economic strategies, away from the dependency on continued growth, in a world with finite resources and space, to one which nourishes the natural world and recognizes the worth of allowing all life to thrive. – an Economy Designed to Thrive not Grow

Kate Raworth Economy Distributed vs. Centralized

Kate Raworth TED talk
Economy Designed to Thrive not Grow

Kate Raworth Economy Ecological Ceiling Social Foundation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Carol sitting under the trees

A letter to my sister | preciousness of life | Carl Sagan: freedom through scientific skepticism | Le Petit Prince

I was looking over my blog stats and saw someone read this, posted several years ago. I decided to post it again, since it’s relevant, from a moral and political standpoint – uh, yes, at one time I believe, the two were part of the same fabric. uh, now wait a minute, maybe morality and political leadership have rarely been paired, and that it is an exception! I mean, as long as royal leaders, and tyrants, and corporations have the reins, morality has little to do with the people who wish to maintain their power, control and profits.

Here’s the letter:
I am certainly happy to hear from you. Naturally I think about you every time that I enter the room to look at the lovely paper lanterns you hung for Mother’s birthday party and the teepee you constructed in the yard – which I‘m still raking! Memories of things people share and artifacts that they leave behind imbue all of these things with the spirit of the person. I am sorry that we had difficulties communicating at times. I have not been ‘above’ reacting emotionally to someone’s emotional reactions towards me. However, that doesn’t mean that I can not attempt to move beyond my reactions to reach out with more compassion and understanding.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of Le Petit Prince
The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a pilot, and author of the remarkable children’s book, for adults, Le Petit Prince/ The Little Prince. There appear to be exceptions to this formidable quote, if the person happens to be morally repugnant and arrogant!

Le Petit Prince, written by Antoine Saint-Exupery
the Phenomenon

I went out with a family friend last night and afterwards, realized that he knows even more profoundly how precious life is, as he has lost both of his parents. Certainly, if we all had an acute awareness of death (sitting on our shoulders) – Carlos Castaneda style i.e. “the Teachings of Don Juan” – in each response to every moment, we would never be anything but kind to all people and creatures, at all times.

That sounds like a pretty heavy way to live. The context is not, to be continually fearful, but rather, continually present with the fact that every moment of life is precious. People need to accept the rights of others to be and perceive as they will. It is a rather large task, to put differences and competitiveness, jealousy, envy and judgments … aside. Yet it’s the only way for everyone to get along. (I just read in Salon dot com a rather scathing article about the writer Carlos Castaneda, saying that Don Juan was not only an astounding hoax, but that Castaneda went on to form a bizarre cult.) He nevertheless had strong poetic and spiritual points to emphasize in his writings.

It’s pretty much a life-long task, given the fact that all humans have a tendency to subjectively interpret and judge other peoples’ actions. I do it, we all do it, from personal complaints, grievances, expectations, disappointments on up to community and cultural, political and religious differences of interpretation, that result in the worst cases to prolonged wars and strife between ethnic groups and neighboring countries.

This appears to be one of the biggest challenges and aspirations for humankind; to look beyond differences and strive for understanding, compassion and kindness. The ‘tree-hugger/environmental activist side of me’ is kicking out judgements every time I see people’s actions or material opulence (not to mention hearing about plans for more gas drilling in the arctic etc.) which I perceive as offensive. I put them into a box I label offender/perpetrator; a personal judgement which is my own way of playing in the ‘us against them’ scenario. So, I’m as guilty as anyone. The obvious extreme is the fact that people are blowing each other up in the Middle East …. and that wars and conflicts and ominous actions of manipulation continue to proliferate worldwide, despite the fact that most humans have access to rather extraordinary tools.

We are technologically light years ahead of where we are emotionally!

As Carl Sagan mentions in this interview “A Way of Thinking” in which he delivers insights into the dangers in our present culture; based on the fact that we’re a science and technology-based culture, the inner workings of which few comprehend. That puts us in a position in which we are in danger of being more easily manipulated.

Sagan points out that science is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe. And that it’s dramatically important for each of us to ask skeptical questions about everything, particularly to those in authority; otherwise we are up for grabs by the next charlatan, political or religious, that comes along. He mentions that Thomas Jefferson said that people need to be educated in order to practice their skepticism, otherwise ‘we don’t run the government, the government runs us’.

Carol Keiter the blogger

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

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Caught my Eye…One Year Later | While Looking over Blogs

It wasn’t till a year later, glancing over what blogs were viewed, from what countries, making corrections, just looking….that I noticed this image.

I hadn’t noticed my shadow as I took the picture.

Title, because of the love portrayed between myself, the photographer and the tree I stopped to admire.

and really hadn’t noticed till i looked more closely how the bark’s texture and shadows and form of the tree creates quite a real, perfectly angled and proportioned body melding with the tree.

 

Here, I’ll accentuate it a bit.  Kind of magical no?

outlined shadow of blogger, photographer carol Keiter gold

and again

 

 

photoshop outline of shadow merging with contours of tree green

I changed it from this version with the pointier chin.

Outlining using photoshop the image I see through the shadow and tree bark and lines.

 

Kind of ironic, no, that the blog was about Being Intensely Present, and I missed seeing this!

Be Intensely Present

Donations for Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition and art, gratefully accepted!

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Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter contact

blogger, portrait drawer, painter, photographer, musician, composer

All Life Has Consciousness | Carl Safina | Are Humans Capable of Letting Other Life Continue?

There is Love on Earth Besides Humans

Carl Safina, PhD in ecology, conservationist and writer

I am very grateful to have discovered Carl Safina’s work and this TED talk just a day previous to posting this. Tears ran down my cheeks as I watched and listened to this scientist’s portrayal of animals, and of humans. Tears continued to stream from my eyes after I listened to his last words. I am so disappointed and basically frustrated with what humans deem as important.

I was about to write a blog about Borders? Why are Human Beings ‘Not Allowed’ to Walk Around on the Earth? However, to me, putting this concept out there of recognizing the importance of all other life forms besides humans, is far more important than the absurd political scenarios that humans impose on one another. What we are doing to the natural world and to other life forms, with our over-population, degradation of the environment, human-induced global warming and inciting a mass extinction, to me, far outweighs any of the absurd things that humans are doing to each other. Carl Safina does not by any means bypass this subject in his talk. He says, what humans do to other empathetic creatures is also what they do to one another.

Animals Carl Safina Empathy Sympathy Compassion

I felt an urgent need to immediately post this to both blogs. I feel very sorry for those humans who do not feel compassion and awe with nature and all of life. I thank my parents that nature and an appreciation for all life forms was revered. I grew up with National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines in the home, and was curated to think way beyond my immediate vicinity.

I recently lauded friends who regularly inform and urge people to think about the protection of animals and wilderness. I mention this in association with a concept that is part of a new mode of thinking, systems thinking, seeing all life forms as interrelated. Human beings should prioritize protecting all other life forms, rather than destroying them and wiping out their habitats without any consideration whatsoever. The various bloody traditions of various cultures that consider it ‘sport’ to kill wolves, whales, bulls is disgraceful. The massive consumption of cows, pigs, chickens and use of land to feed these animals needs to be stopped. Wiping out wild horses and donkeys and other creatures because some believe that by eating particular speciality foods that they somehow will maintain their health or erections, also are dramatically mis-informed. Creatures penned in horrible conditions, blood baths and slaughters because of tradition, must all be reconsidered. People need to be educated. It begins with all of us communicating to one another.

The concept of actually recognizing that we share the same genetics and similar brains and spinal cords with other creatures perhaps will bring about a different sense of empathy.

It is the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh who introduces the concept of inter-being; all life is intricately related.

With a PhD in ecology, conservationist and writer Carl Safina has written several books and papers and has studied various species in their habitat. He was invited by Greenpeace to witness the changing climate in the Arctic and the impacts of industrial fishing on the marine environment.

Human brain exact replica of Chimpanzee brain, merely larger

Dolphin brain larger than human brain, with more convolutions

In his TED talk Safina asks:

“What’s going on inside the brains of animals? Can we know what, or if, they’re thinking and feeling? Carl Safina thinks we can. Using discoveries and anecdotes that span ecology, biology and behavioral science, he weaves together stories of whales, wolves, elephants and albatrosses to argue that just as we think, feel, use tools and express emotions, so too do the other creatures – and minds – that share the Earth with us.”

Animals Carl Safina Albatross nest on most remote islands Full of Plastic

6 month fledgling Albatross Death packed with cigarette lighters

Of the 22 species of albatross recognized by the IUCN, all are listed as at some level of concern; 3 species are Critically Endangered, 5 species are Endangered, 7 species are Near Threatened, and 7 species are Vulnerable.

Welcome Human Life with pics of Animals – Shared Lifes in the World

Since humans tend to adorn the rooms of their new born babies with images of the other creatures with which we share our planet, in which every animal of Noah’s Ark is now in mortal danger, instead of asking the question Do animals love us?, We need to ask, Are human beings capable of letting other life continue?

Carl Safina states, “From all I’ve seen, my main conclusion is that at this point in history, nature and human dignity require each other. Where wild places are destroyed, wild animals lost, and the world degraded and polluted, not only is that itself a great loss for the world, but for people in degraded places it becomes almost impossible to maintain a dignified existence.”

This article in the USA Today describes that global warming continues, with each year breaking record temperatures of the previous.”NOAA’s analysis does not include data from the Arctic, while NASA’s does, NOAA climate scientist Deke Arndt said. The Arctic has been warming faster than any part of the world.”

“This announcement should shock no one,” said Lou Leonard of the World Wildlife Fund. “The key question is what we do about it. With the costs of inaction piling up, Washington, D.C., is largely looking the other way. So it is up to a new class of leaders from American businesses, universities, cities and states to pick up the slack.”

Elephants as in every other species, become who they are

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Sovereignty of Consciousness | Psychoactive Plants as Guides | Graham Hancock TED talk | Rupert Sheldrake TED talk

Graham Hancock’s banned TED Talk on The War on Consciousness deserved all of the applause that it received. He talks of human consciousness as emerging through ancient and sacred visionary psychoactive plants, as teachers in themselves. Yes, the plants as the guides, that have been used throughout history, including among indigenous populations around the world today, as sacred vehicles to discovering our own human dimension of consciousness.

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness Message of Mother Ayahuasca plant

“By demonizing whole areas of consciousness, we deny ourselves the possibility of our own human evolution. We can’t claim to be free, until along with the right to freedom of speech, we demand the right of adult sovereignty over consciousness. We have the right to make sovereign decisions with respect to our own consciousness, including the responsible use of ancient and sacred visionary (psychoactive ) plants.”

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness various ancient traditions use of psychoactives Soma of the Vedas

I see that Graham Hancock has written numerous books, which is revealed in his website. He declares that
ayahuasca is not alone, but part of an ancient worldwide system of targeted, careful, deliberate, responsible alteration of consciousness. Kykeon used in the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece, Soma was a beverage used in the Vedas of India, perhaps a psychoactive fungus, the Amanita muscaria, DMT, the Lotus used by ancient Egyptians in their “Tree of Life” belief system and shamans of indigenous peoples presently use various mind altering substances such as ayahuasca and peyote or psilocybin mushrooms…to create a relationship of what the ancient Egyptians called ‘Ma’at‘, balanced harmony with the universe.

Maat ancient Egyptian goddess of truth, Maat or Ma’at was the ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice

 

I participated in a peyote ceremony while residing in Taos, New Mexico. The sacred ritual took place in a tee pee from dusk to dawn on the reservation of the Taos Pueblo.

the peyote ceremony took place in a Teepee – Tipis are typical of the Plains Indians

I was invited by a young Native American girl whom I had gotten to know. I knew of these ceremonies years earlier, and perhaps was motivated to attend one more for recreational reasons. The opportunity didn’t arrive until after a I experienced being in an automobile accident which dramatically caused me to reassess my life. It was only then that the possibility arose. It is said, you don’t choose the peyote, the peyote chooses you.

When I arrived at the designated time and place, she was not to be found. I was nevertheless accepted. I accompanied a woman to her kitchen while she prepared for the ceremony cutting corn husks which had been blessed. These rectangles were then rolled with tobacco, which were each smoked at the onset of the ceremony, as our individual and collective prayers were carried by the rising curls of smoke. The ceremony was conducted by the Elders, to heal someone in the tribe who had asked for this to take place. We each directed our thoughts – prayers – towards this person’s healing as well as our own.

I talk about this in my blog Burning The Man: A Utopian Requiem describing that the ceremony was steeped in ritual movements. I had been assigned to an individual next to whom I sat in the circle, to ensure that my movements would not alter the Feng Shui deliberacy. Instructed to simply bow forward if I needed to regurgitate, that the fire-keeper would take care of this, as he methodically fed the fire in the center of the human circle for the duration; raking the coals and shaping the burning embers from a thin crescent moon in the beginning, to a full circle by its’ end 12 hours later.

Graham Hancock implores offers that “We have no right to go around the world imposing our version of democracy, while we nourish this rot within the heart of our own society. It may even be that we are denying ourselves in the most vital step in our own consciousness.”

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness Tree of Life of Ancient Eqyptians and use of DMT

Hancock mentions that the Amazon is a horrific example of neglect; where the lungs of the planet are being dismantled; clearing the forest to grow soybean to feed cattle, so that we can eat hamburgers. “It’s an insane global state of consciousness, an abomination.”

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness Amazon rainforest – the lungs of the earth – cleared to plant industrial soybean to feed cattle to make hamburgers.

The rot he’s speaking of is witnessed through alienation, separation, a disconnect to nature and other life forms in addition to other humans. As witnessed by gun violence, wars, in a culture in which there are more lawyers, psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies prescribing drugs to tame a whole host of modern so-called psychiatric dis orders, which themselves are as much attributed to the alienation that our society, consumed with material acquisition, competition through material appendages and the material interpretation through the sciences of the world around us. The need for weapons, protection, which the pharmaceutical military industrial complex insights, and the disintegration of relationships and recognition of the interrelatedness of all species and awe and respect of all life, is feeding the ego and enforcing competition rather than cooperation.

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness by demonizing areas of consciousness we deny our own evolution

He mentions the slew of drugs that are accepted in this culture, stimulants like teas, coffee and the sloppiness of alcohol, yet visionary plants that have been used in religious ritual for eons and which are part of the emergence of human consciousness, are suspect and illegal.

 

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author. He proposes that “everything depends on evolving habits, not on fixed laws. His hypothesis of ‘Morphic Resonance’, is that everything in nature has a collective memory; resonances are based on similarity – even crystals have a collective memory.”

Rupert Sheldrake on Morphic Resonance – Self-organizing systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems

He elaborates on the reasoning behind this lack of comprehension, talking about the The Science Delusion. Sheldrake approaches the subject by questioning the authority of the tenets of science, turning the basic scientific materialism-based dogmas into questions.

He proposes that this is the default worldview worldwide, of educated people….and proceeds to demonstrate how utterly non-factual these rules are.

…revealing in his TED talk that in fact the opposite is true, to what is proposed, that:

1. nature is mechanical and machine like – nature, animals & plants are like machines, brains are genetically programmed computers

2. matter is unconscious- no consciousness in stars, galaxies, animals and plants

3. the laws of nature and constants of nature are fixed; they will be the same forever

4. the total amount of matter and energy is always the same – it never changes in quantity – the big bang, everything sprang up out of nothing

5. nature is purposeless; there are no purposes in nature and the evolutionary process is completely purposeless

6. biological heredity is material; everything is inherited form the genes

7. memories are stored in side your brain as material traces; everything you remember is in your brain, modified proteins

8. your mind is inside your head; all consciousness is the activity of your brain and nothing more

9. psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible; your thoughts and intentions can not have any effect at a distance because everything is inside your head. therefore, all psychic phenomena is illusory; people are deceived by coincidences or wishful thinking

10.mechanistic medicine is the only kind that works; complimentary and alternative therapies can’t possibly work (due to the placebo effect)

In my digesthis blog, presently I write about food sovereignty.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz ~ As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook to complete it and and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously and unabashedly to please donate, if you are able. !-))

What Humans Currently Do | Excerpt from “The Universe Story”

Our Solar System arose 4.5 Billion years ago. The Earth has evolved – through a series of transformations – to even enable life to form.

From the beginning, as our universe continues to evolve in its cosmogenesis, intelligent intent is present – at all levels > towards differentiation, autopoiesis and communion.

NASA image Cygnus Loop Supernova Stellar Explosion 15,000 years ago

 

Excerpts from the authors

Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry of “The Universe Story”

Ecological Buddhism – A Buddhist Response to Global Warming

Presently, the human race enters the The Ecozoic Era.

Brian Swimme is one of the main people with whom to study, to understand the cosmological shift necessary to a new cosmology.

 

 

“As the natural world recedes in its diversity and abundance, so the human finds itself impoverished in its economic resources, its imaginative powers, its human sensitivities and in significant aspects of its intellectual intuitions.”

Davastation of a Rainforest

 

Here’s a link to the footage of Forest Heroes from a drone of the devastation of a rainforest: Astra’s forest destruction in Indonesia.

 

“The pathos is that we are presently deliberately terminating the most awesome splendor that the planet has yet attained. We are extinguishing the rainforests, the most luxuriant life system of the entire planet, at the rate of an acre each second of each day. Each year we are destroying a rainforest area the size of Oklahoma.

Throughout the planet we are not only extinguishing present forms of life, yet also eliminating the very conditions for the renewal of life in some of its more elaborate forms.

We have moved from such evils as suicide, homicide, and genocide, to biocide and geocide, the killing of the life systems of the planet and the severe degradation if not the killing of the planet itself. We have moved from simple physical assault on the planet, to disturbance of the chemical balance of the planet through our petrochemical industries, to questionable manipulation of the genetic constitution of the living being of the planet by our genetic engineering, to the radioactive wasting of the planet through our nuclear industries.”

Bird sanctuary at Gulf Petrochemicals Industries Co.

 

Ironically, this image of a bird sanctuary at Gulf Petrochemicals Industries Co., is courtesy of the president of the Petro company. A public relations blog on how hunky dory everything is, with the company sitting on top of a fragile ecosystem.

 

 

“That human well-being could be achieved by diminishing the well being of the Earth, that a rising Gross Domestic Product could ignore the declining Gross Earth Product, is the basic flaw in the Wonderland Myth.”

momgoesgreen.com:my-thoughts-on-the-gulf-oil-spill

 

 

“These centuries of “progress” are now ending with increasing stress for the human is final evidence that;

what humans do to the outer world they do to their own interior world.

 

! Next Blog ¡ What we humans need to do in our emerging Echoic Era, to allow the paradigm shift in our conscious awareness to emerge.

We are Earth> Occupy the Planet!

My Body is Contained Within the Limitlessness of My Soul | Jim Carrey Commencement Address

Every once in a while I post the exact same blog simultaneously on each of my sites. This is one of those times. It occurs when I come across something that I feel is so profound and important, that it must be shared.

It is this! Jim Carrey’s Commencement Address to the 2014 graduating class of Maharishi University (MUM).

Jim Carey’s Secret of Life The Journey of Purpose

I’m obviously big on the subject matter of Jim Carrey’s speeches, as I’d posted a blog referencing one this past summer. https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/love-over-fear-jim-carrey-supermoon-hitchabout-lakota-sioux-secret-within/ Same-same, but different. I also recently wrote about a similar subject; matters of heart and choosing love over fear. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/addendum-to-journey-in-space-time-ignited-by-matters-of-heart-epigenetics-heartmath/

Jim Carrey announces that he’s found his ministry in the Church of Freedom from Concern (FFC)

You can spend your whole life worrying about ghosts and about the path to the future.

So many of us choose our path out of fear, disguised as practicality. He mentions that his father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that it was possible for him. Instead, he took the conservative path and chose a safe job as an accountant. And ironically was sooner than later ‘let go’ by the firm. Point of the story:

You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance in doing what you love.

Carrey says I’m here to plant a seed, to help you move forward in life.

Will that seed be allowed to take root? Or will you be forced by Monsanto to use their seed? which causes knowing laughter to ripple through the audience.

Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. Ask the universe for it!

sunset

He goes on to say, I used to believe that who I was, ended at the edge of my skin. Then I learned that everything outside the vehicle is part of me too! We have no limits…you can’t contain the container.

How can you serve the world?

Look at what the world needs, that your talent can provide.

The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is.

Finding true peace lies beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, invention and disguise, beyond effort itself.

• To find real peace, you have to let the armor go.

• Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world.

• Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form!

• Risk being seen in all of your glory.

• The imagination is always manufacturing scenarios, both good and bad. The ego tries to keep you trapped in the multiplex of the mind.

• Our eyes are not merely viewers, they are also projectors, running a second story over the picture.

• Fear is writing the script; the working title “I’ll never be enough.”

• How tricky this ego is, with the promise of something, that we already possess!

• Let the universe know what you want, and work toward it, while letting go of how it comes about.

• Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen, but to open the door in your head. Then when the door appears in your life, just walk through it.

• Don’t worry if you miss your cue, there are always doors opening.

Take a chance on faith. Not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith.
He says I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar.

Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.

Carol among crowd in New York city attending a Make Music New York event at Times Square presented by Yoko Ono

Carol Keiter the blogger in New York city attending a Make Music New York event at Times Square presented by Yoko Ono

A letter to my sister | preciousness of life | Carl Sagan: freedom through scientific skepticism

I was looking over my blog stats and saw someone read this, a very early blog. I decided to post it, since it’s relevant, from a moral and political standpoint – uh, yes, at one time I believe, the two were part of the same fabric. uh, now wait a minute, maybe morality and political leadership, have rarely been paired, and that it is an exception! I mean, as long as royal leaders, and tyrants, and corporations have the reins, morality has not a fucking thing to do with the people who wish to maintain their power, control and profits.

I am certainly happy to hear from you. Naturally I think about you every time that I enter the room to look at the lovely paper lanterns you hung for Mother’s birthday party and the teepee you constructed in the yard – which I‘m still raking! Memories of things people share and artifacts that they leave behind imbue all of these things with the spirit of the person. I am sorry that we had difficulties communicating at times. I have not been ‘above’ reacting emotionally to someone’s emotional reactions towards me. However, that doesn’t mean that I can not attempt to move beyond my reactions to reach out with more compassion and understanding.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery author Le Petit Prince
The Little Prince

I went out with a family friend last night and afterwards, realized that he knows even more profoundly how precious life is, as he has lost both of his parents. Certainly, if we all had an acute awareness of death (sitting on our shoulders) – Carlos Castaneda style i.e. “the Teachings of Don Juan” – in each response to every moment, we would never be anything but kind to all people and creatures, at all times.

That sounds like a pretty heavy way to live. The context is not, to be continually fearful, but rather, continually present with the fact that every moment of life is precious. People need to accept the rights of others to be and perceive as they will. It is a rather large task, to put differences and competitiveness, jealousy, envy and judgments … aside. Yet it’s the only way for everyone to get along. (I just read in Salon dot com a rather scathing article about the writer Carlos Castaneda, saying that Don Juan was not only an astounding hoax, but that Castaneda went on to form a bizarre cult.) He nevertheless had strong poetic and spiritual points to emphasize in his writings.

It’s pretty much a life-long task, given the fact that all humans have a tendency to subjectively interpret and judge other peoples’ actions. I do it, we all do it, from personal complaints, grievances, expectations, disappointments on up to community and cultural, political and religious differences of interpretation, that result in the worst cases to prolonged wars and strife between ethnic groups and neighboring countries.

This appears to be one of the biggest challenges and aspirations for humankind; to look beyond differences and strive for understanding, compassion and kindness. The ‘tree-hugger/environmental activist side of me’ is kicking out judgements every time I see people’s actions or material opulence (not to mention hearing about plans for more gas drilling in the arctic etc.) which I perceive as offensive. I put them into a box I label offender/perpetrator; a personal judgement which is my own way of playing in the ‘us against them’ scenario. So, I’m as guilty as anyone. The obvious extreme is the fact that people are blowing each other up in the Middle East …. and that wars and conflicts and ominous actions of manipulation continue to proliferate worldwide, despite the fact that most humans have access to rather extraordinary tools.

We are technologically light years ahead of where we are emotionally!

As Carl Sagan mentions in this interview “A Way of Thinking” in which he delivers insights into the dangers in our present culture; based on the fact that we’re a science and technology-based culture, the inner workings of which few comprehend. That puts us in a position in which we are in danger of being more easily manipulated.

Sagan points out that science is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe. And that it’s dramatically important for each of us to ask skeptical questions about everything, particularly to those in authority; otherwise we are up for grabs by the next charlatan, political or religious, that comes along. He mentions that Thomas Jefferson said that people need to be educated in order to practice their skepticism, otherwise ‘we don’t run the government, the government runs us’.

Spiritual Revolution | Mind Shift | Change the Collective Cultural Operating System

I dramatically recommend taking a few moments to watch this interview and discussion between a few brilliant minds with good intentions – with active, undivided attention. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PYpHFwcITI

Full Length – Mind Shift: Enlightening Our Global Culture. And interview by Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and creator of the online newsletter http://realitysandwich.com/
with the actor & comedian Russell Brand, currently doing a world tour called “the Messiah Complex” and Eve Ensler who created V-Day through her play “the Vagina Monologues“. As stated in wikipedia, “Ensler is a prominent activist addressing issues of violence against women and girls. In 1998, her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls.”

Eve states that “the only salvation is kindness”. Russell agrees, a spiritual revolution can be achieved simply with kindness.

I have a very small ecological ‘footprint’. I mostly ride bicycle. I’m not under ANY umbrella, corporate or otherwise, nor have funding or grants. I’m asking that if you read this far, either to make a donation yourself, or ask a friend with more capital (more disposable income) to make one on your behalf! I’ll take .001% of any billionaires that might happen to be reading this. ‘-)) I’m campaigning for myself and asking you to contribute, if you can. The donation button below leads to my German PayPal. The info to fill out is pretty self-explanatory. I need to purchase a new Mac 2nd hand computer, and start all over to acquire software towards writing, design and music composition. The credit card or direct deposit transactions are completely secure! Thank you very much. Feedback is always welcome as well. With love!

mind closed
eyes wide open

mind open
eyes wide shut

Eureka ! P i e r r e T e i l h a r d de C h a r d i n | Spiritual Beings Having a Human Experience |

Having spoken to an acquaintance about the direction of my eBook, I was just re-acquainted with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man and Piltdown Man. His primary book, “The Phenomenon of Man” is a sweeping account of the unfolding of the cosmos. The book displeased Church superiors and some of his work was denied publication during his lifetime.

Here are some of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s quotes, which I find remarkable:

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.

Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world…Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin