be not angry..

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be,
since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

Thomas à Kempis (thank you Global Disaster Watch)

cosmic immortals

Life seems to be aiming at nothing less than the attainment of divinity. We are part of the process of evolution from amoebas to Cosmic Immortals. What are Cosmic Immortals? Cosmic Immortals are creatures who live anywhere in the universe they damn well please, travel as fast as they want to and never die. And that’s the idea of a god. A god goes anywhere, never dies and moves as fast as a god wants to move. That is what we are evolving towards gradually.

Robert Anton Wilson (thank you Reality Sandwich)

beyond anger and frustration

As I read my usual sources of economic and political news and comment (see my "recommended" links to the right of this blog), it strikes me that the tone of most of them is getting increasingly angry and frustrated. I have already dropped my subscriptions to other writers for this very reason, and the way things are going I will soon be left with no source of economic and political news and comment which I am prepared to read. This may not be a bad thing at all, of course! When all mainstream news is mindless propaganda, and all the better informed sources in the blogosphere are doomy and gloomy when not rabidly raging, then the bliss of ignorance holds great appeal. I do like a bit of bliss. But anger and frustration are vibes I prefer to sidestep... I can generate enough of these myself without needing to import anyone else's...

It is of course, very difficult to look at our current plight and retain equanimity. It does appear that the human race, and Planet Earth along with it, has been sold down the river by a fearful cartel of grasping bankers, and their political puppets. And all for an elephantine pile of loot, none of which they can take with them from the early graves they are frantically digging for all of us. The futility and stupidity and callous greed now on display is mind-boggling. I doubt if any one of us ever imagined that the "powers that be" could become so titanically corrupt and self serving, while dumbing down "the people" into placid zombie "sheeple". Those few of us who are still awake gasp in awe as each new policy horror is unveiled. It turns out that George Orwell's bleak vision of 1984 was rather understated, and chillingly accurate, if a trifle premature. Truth is stranger than fiction, and much more scary.

Anyone who is trying to come up to fixes for this mess is wasting their time. Politics won't save us. Technology won't save us. Free Markets won't save us. Economics? That took us right here, directly! They are all part of the problem, or more accurately they are symptoms of the problem. All of our traditional systems are now hugely complex and bloated, and becoming increasingly dysfunctional. This is the Law of Entropy in action, as order descends inevitably into chaos. Our "civilisation" is now approaching total chaos. Our "leaders" only appear to be in charge. They have their clammy fingers on the "controls", but their manipulations no longer do what they expect. Those who grease the palms of our "leaders" are not in charge either, as they desperately up the stakes for one last round of "beggar thy neighbour". Meanwhile, the rest of us lose our wits to our technological toys, numb ourselves with alcohol and prescription drugs, and rigidly deny that there are fundamental and catastrophic problems with our whole way of life. It is too late to change direction now. We are going over the cliff edge at full throttle....

Every civilisation comes to an end. Ours is no different. But from the ashes of the old emerge green shoots of new life. These are not the mythical "green shoots of recovery" promoted by our media. There will be no recovery. There will be no economy. There will be no politics. There will be no commerce. Not in the forms we currently recognise. Anyone who clings to the vestiges of the old paradigm will very soon be swept away with it. Their lies death and despair, a black pit of unknowing emptiness. Base your life around old paradigm values, and your life will not be worth living. We have little time left to prepare ourselves for our new beginnings. We have to start by freeing ourselves from the old mindsets.

The old paradigm is violent. The old paradigm enslaves us. The old paradigm keeps us in darkness. Luckily for us, the old paradigm is now dying.

The new paradigm is heart centred. The new paradigm is loving. The new paradigm is compassionate. The new paradigm means sharing freely. The new paradigm is a return to nature, and a return to being childlike. We are going back to the garden. The new paradigm comes from the soul, not the ego. The new paradigm is a lotus blossoming in the stinking mud of the old paradigm. We can stick in the mud, in forlorn struggle, or we can waken up and smell the heady scent of the lotus flowers. The choice is ours.

harmony is peace
freedom is natural
wisdom is strength

joy

I was surprised, when I started meditating, that so much pleasure would result. Of course, people who meditate often talk about rapturous union with Being, or dissolution in the Divine, and these do sound very pleasant indeed. But I still didn't expect it, as if anything "spiritual" had to be austere, or subtle, or boring. Was I wrong! Apart from all the deeper benefits of meditation, the sheer volume of joy is astonishing. In my experience, it beats any other high.

from Meditation and "Drugs" by Jay Michaelson

God said

it's not me that you see, you're looking at yourself;
you're not praying to me, you're praying to yourself;
and you're not worshipping me, you're worshipping yourself;
and you will kill in my name and heaven knows what else,
when you can't prove I exist, so get over yourself;
just get over yourself...

extracted from the lyrics of "God Said" by Todd Rundgren

heads in the sand

Dr. Karl claims that the ostrich does many things, but hiding its head in the sand is not one of them. Awww, come on Dr Karl.... it is never a good feeling to have a belief, fondly cherished since childhood, brusquely debunked.

Wikipedia notes that Pliny the Elder wrote, 2000 years ago, that Ostriches "imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed."

So maybe the Ostrich has evolved in these 2000 years and has found a more effective strategy? Or maybe Dr. Karl is simply not looking hard enough....

Either way, it does seem that the great majority of the human race are now following the legendary example of our long-necked feathered friends. The problem that this causes - for those few of us who keep our heads above ground, and our eyes open - is that all we see around us is a bunch of arses...... not a pretty sight.

Should we simply kick these tempting targets? Or should we stamp on the ground in hope of startling them out of at least some of their denial? Or... my newly favoured approach is to raise my eyes upwards so that I don't notice them any more.... They are, in the words of Dr Karl: "foolishly ignoring their problem, while hoping it will magically vanish". And so I, similarly, ignore their posture and attitude, by pretending that their bodies have followed the example of their heads and magically vanished... It does feel a bit defeatist, but how can we help those who will not help themselves?