Bush brings socialism to citadel of capitalism

BY MARTIN SCHRAM

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/380223_schramonline24.html

It was a true September Surprise. A calamitous financial crisis that not only toppled Wall Street's corporate icons and sent global markets plummeting but may have given Barack Obama's seemingly mired campaign the one thing he may never have secured on his own: victory.
Among Obama's most effective helpers was John McCain. The Republican presidential candidate responded to the crisis' first burst of pressure with tough-talk -- a calculated but wrong-headedly furious call for the firing of little-known Chris Cox as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, charging he had betrayed the public trust. McCain's response was so lacking in judgment that he was pilloried by his natural party pillars.
The Wall Street Journal editorialized that McCain's call was "false and deeply unfair" and "unpresidential." Conservative columnist George Will questioned whether McCain's "boiling moralism and boundless reservoir of certitudes" meant he was "not suited to the presidency."
But before we get to the presidential politics of it all -- and opine on outcomes we won't know until America votes -- we need to take note of a mind-boggling truth that has become self-evident only in the past few days. A new chapter of the presidential legacy of George W. Bush has now become clear: He, of all people, will inevitably go down as the president who brought socialism to the citadel of capitalism -- Wall Street.
The now necessary federal bailout of the banks and investment entities is the sort of big government effort that often has been labeled by the political right as socialism -- also, welfare -- when it has been proposed for the have-nots. Now that it is being proposed for the have-lots, it must be called the same -- and indeed, that too has come to pass.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., called the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout plan "economic socialism ... it's un-American!" (I think I hear your mind boggling even as we speak. But hold on, for it gets curiouser and curiouser.) The case can be made that this is more rare than anything envisioned by Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas, back when they ran for the presidency as Socialist Party candidates in America's past.
For the case can be made that this bailout of the bankers will be seen as the Czar's own Socialist Revolution. After all, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's original three-page remedy gave him unfettered powers to bail out the banks and investment entities holding shaky mortgages -- without review by Congress, the courts or regulators. Legislators from both parties warned that he would be acting as "a czar."
This has been a rare burst of bipartisanship -- it has been hard to separate the far left from the far right. Try it yourself:
One senator said: "If the government is going to get into the bailout business, shouldn't we also be focusing our resources on average Americans, rather than sophisticated and well-compensated bankers? The Treasury's plan has little for those outside of the financial industry. It is aimed at rescuing the same financial institutions that created this crisis with their sloppy underwriting and reckless disregard for the risks they were creating, taking, or passing on to others. Wall Street bet that the government would rescue them if they got into trouble. It appears that bet may be the one that pays off."
Another senator said: "Whatever we do, we have to insist that those who created the scandal do not benefit from the bailout. No golden parachutes. Let them feel the hard landing that my constituents faced when they were laid off from Bethlehem Steel. Let them feel the hard landing of knowing what it's like to have your home foreclosed upon. ... We do not need to subsidize bad behavior."
The first quote was Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., a leading conservative. The second was Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., a prominent liberal.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Hero of the 63rd UN General Assembly

"Let us rebuild together a regulated capitalism in which whole swathes of financial activity are not left to the sole judgment of market operators, in which banks do their job, which is to finance economic development rather than engage in speculation"

- French President Nicolas Sarkozy

Kings of Leon

The wait is over. The Kings have (on my b'day) released the not-so-long awaited Only By The Night. There's five stars spinning around two thumbs up on my side of the bed… Sass ain't as convinced. It's a huge follow up to last year's magnum opus, Because Of The Times, and they've largely followed, if not evolved, the spacious turn they took from their two earlier rock revival records, and which, for mine, started with Milk on Aha Shakebreak.

she saw my comb over, her hourglass body
she had problems with drinking milk
and being school tardy
she'll loan you her toothbrush
she'll bartend you party

"Happy Birthday to Me..." (Repeat 31 times).

Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain

(from The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/evolutionists_flock_to_darwin)

DAYTON, TN—A steady stream of devoted evolutionists continued to gather in this small Tennessee town today to witness what many believe is an image of Charles Darwin—author of The Origin Of Species and founder of the modern evolutionary movement—made manifest on a concrete wall in downtown Dayton.

"I brought my baby to touch the wall, so that the power of Darwin can purify her genetic makeup of undesirable inherited traits," said Darlene Freiberg, one among a growing crowd assembled here to see the mysterious stain, which appeared last Monday on one side of the Rhea County Courthouse. The building was also the location of the famed "Scopes Monkey Trial" and is widely considered one of Darwinism's holiest sites. "Forgive me, O Charles, for ever doubting your Divine Evolution. After seeing this miracle of limestone pigmentation with my own eyes, my faith in empirical reasoning will never again be tested."

Added Freiberg, "Behold the power and glory of the scientific method!"

Since witnesses first reported the unexplained marking—which appears to resemble a 19th-century male figure with a high forehead and large beard—this normally quiet town has become a hotbed of biological zealotry. Thousands of pilgrims from as far away as Berkeley's paleoanthropology department have flocked to the site to lay wreaths of flowers, light devotional candles, read aloud from Darwin's works, and otherwise pay homage to the mysterious blue-green stain.

Capitalizing on the influx of empirical believers, street vendors have sprung up across Dayton, selling evolutionary relics and artwork to the thousands of pilgrims waiting to catch a glimpse of the image. Available for sale are everything from small wooden shards alleged to be fragments of the "One True Beagle"—the research vessel on which Darwin made his legendary voyage to the Galapagos Islands—to lecture notes purportedly touched by English evolutionist Alfred Russel Wallace.

"I have never felt closer to Darwin's ideas," said zoologist Fred Granger, who waited in line for 16 hours to view the stain. "May his name be praised and his theories on natural selection echo in all the halls of naturalistic observation forever."

Despite the enthusiasm the so-called "Darwin Smudge" has generated among the evolutionary faithful, disagreement remains as to its origin. Some believe the image is actually closer to the visage of Stephen Jay Gould, longtime columnist for Natural History magazine and originator of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, and is therefore proof of rapid cladogenesis. A smaller minority contend it is the face of Carl Sagan, and should be viewed as a warning to those nonbelievers who have not yet seen his hit PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

Still others have attempted to discredit the miracle entirely, claiming that there are several alternate explanations for the appearance of the unexplained discoloration.

"It's a stain on a wall, and nothing more," said the Rev. Clement McCoy, a professor at Oral Roberts University and prominent opponent of evolutionary theory. "Anything else is the delusional fantasy of a fanatical evolutionist mindset that sees only what it wishes to see in the hopes of validating a baseless, illogical belief system. I only hope these heretics see the error of their ways before our Most Powerful God smites them all in His vengeance."

But those who have made the long journey to Dayton remain steadfast in their belief that natural selection—a process by which certain genes are favored over others less conducive to survival—is the one and only creator of life as we know it. This stain, they claim, is the proof they have been waiting for.

"To those who would deny that genetic drift is responsible for a branching evolutionary tree of increasing biodiversity amid changing ecosystems, we say, 'Look upon the face of Darwin!'" said Jeanette Cosgrove, who, along with members of her microbiology class, has maintained a candlelight vigil at the site for the past 72 hours.

"Over millions of successive generations, a specific subvariant of one species of slime mold adapted to this particular concrete wall, in order to one day form this stain, and thus make manifest this vision of Darwin's glorious countenance," Cosgrove said, overcome with emotion.

"It's a miracle," she added.

Cognitive Affective Connections in Teaching and Learning

I read an intriguing article by Arthur Zajonc today entitled 'Cognitive-Affective Connections in Teaching and Learning: The Relationship Between Love and Knowledge' (Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning, 3(1) (Fall 2006), 1-9.). Arthur's a professor of physics at Amherst College and Academic Program Director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

His argument is that the cultivation of love is not only an essential human practice, but that even the mere pursuit of knowledge relies on the affective relations one has with the information in ways we rarely pay attention to. I responded especially well to his discursive style of writing, which was an interesting point for me given his thesis isn't hot off the press for me. I read mountains of these kinds of arguments when I was studying organisational communication at uni and also when I was reading NLP sourcebooks a few years ago. Both times prior, I had no real love for the information I was consuming, and so (at least arguably) that lack affected the willingness of my mind to recall it. This time around, the relationship I garnered with Arthur's words moved me to digest the article and post this. His style spoke to me in ways the others hadn't, and by the sheer passage of time, I'm in a more privileged intellectual and emotional position nowadays to appreciate Arthur's words.

"When the German poet Goethe declared, "In all things we learn only from those we love," he was speaking directly to the profound connection between cognition and affection. We are especially open to and receptive towards one we love. We are more likely to remember the words of a beloved mentor and to ruminate on them long after they were spoken. Teachings go deep when carried into the human being by deep affection; they can change us, teach us even to see the world differently. I have grown increasingly convinced of the importance of the connection between cognition and affection, or to state it more clearly, the crucial relationship between love and knowledge.

First, a personal remark: as a scientist, any attempt to relate knowledge to love feels like an enormous breach of etiquette; it is very bad form, especially so in a public setting such as this. But I have come to conclude that the fear I have felt when broaching this topic was based on particular institutional forms and forces that have ultimately worked against our fundamental human interests. So please join me in setting aside your suspicions and hesitancies and explore with me the possible relationship between knowledge and love especially as they meet in contemplative inquiry.

If I were to ask: What should be at the center of our teaching and our students' learning, how would you respond? Of the many tasks that we as educators take up, what, in your view, is the most important task of all? What is our greatest hope for the young people we teach? In his letters to the young poet Franz Kappus, Rainer Maria Rilke (1954) answered unequivocally:

To take love seriously and to bear and to learn it like a task, this is what [young] people need….For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but a preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love, they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. (p. 41)

Need I say it? The curricula offered by our institutions of higher education have largely neglected this central, if profoundly difficult task of learning to love, which is also the task of learning to live in true peace and harmony with others and with nature.

We are well-practiced at educating the mind for critical reasoning, critical writing, and critical speaking, as well as for scientific and quantitative analysis. But is this sufficient? In a world beset with conflicts, internal as well as external, isn't it of equal if not greater importance to balance the sharpening of our intellects with the systematic cultivation of our hearts? Do not the issues of social justice, the environment, and peace education all demand greater attention and a more central place in our universities and colleges?"

Play as an Integral Life Practice

I really enjoyed reading the recent article by Gwen Gordon and Sean Esbjorn-Hargens called Integral Play: An exploration of the playground and the evolution of the player.

Their developmental hypothesis on the evolution of the player rings in loud resonance with my experience of growing through play-forms. I feel it quite accurately accounts/describes notions of play that I have discarded and longed for at different points on my road.

The hypothesis also made me ponder how my relationship to experiences at my edge of development completely transform when framed as play. In particular, I can take spiritual practice so seriously at times that it becomes a form of burden and toil. Seeing Gwen and Sean frame the exploratory nature of practice as a form of play brings a bright new constellation to my relationship with it.

Here's a wonderful excerpt from the paper:

"The Eight Play Selves are based on Susanne Cook-Greuter's and William Torbert's full spectrum Action-Inquiry research on postautonomous ego development. Their research represents the most sophisticated and extensive full-spectrum (prepersonal, personal, postpersonal, and post- postpersonal) research available… Each play self has a unique way of relating to itself, other playmates, and the playground. In brief:

1. The impulsive self is a Magical Player who connects with the cosmos by balancing dichotomous forces such as good and evil. They have a strong concern for creating safety and satisfying basic needs. The Magical Player has a sense of unlimited power combined with superstitious and magical notions. Their play is often highly repetitive. They view other people primarily as a source of self-gratification and feel confused and anxious by the complexity of the world.
   
2. The self-protective self is an Aggressive Player who is self-serving. Their play often takes the form of heroic acts. They identify the self in terms of its will, ideas, and wishes. Self- preservation is central. They project all their feelings and rarely self-reflect. They think globally with many judgments and simple ideas. They see other people as competitors for space, goods, and dominance and have little capacity for insight into self and others. They often cross other's boundaries in a crusade of low trust and hyper-vigilance. They experience the world as a dangerous place filled with perilous risk.
   
3. The conformist self is an Ordered Player who is rule-oriented and concerned with group membership. They define themselves through others. They have no stable and clear boundaries between the self and the group. Projection and introjection are their common defenses. They suppress negative feelings and overemphasize positive ones. They have a strong need to be accepted and to reject those who do not conform to the group. They view their world through a concrete-literal lens.
   
4. The conscientious self is a Status Player who is defined by their orientation toward linear causality, objective (third-person) thinking, and a newly emerging separate self-identity, which lends itself to competition for status. The self has greater independence and confidence. They have an interest in their emotional life, though rationality is emphasized. They associate with others with similar goals and desires in life. They are drawn to achievement and accomplishing goals by being concise, efficient, and effective. They have a genuine interest in others, independent of their own needs and values. The world is experienced as predictable and measurable.
   
5. The individualistic self is a Sensitive Player who emphasizes connectivity between people, especially by sharing experiences, acknowledging contextual aspects of play (e.g., gender, class, race), and systemic dynamics of reality. They are aware of the observer and multiple viewpoints. They abandon objectivity and logic in favor of more holistic and organismic approaches. They value feelings and express them. They are aware of the conditioning dynamics of culture and context. They have the capacity to empathize with others and take their perspective. They understand their world is filled with diverse perspectives and competing truth claims.
   
6. The autonomous self is a Complex Player who welcomes chaos and multiple variables in service of self-development. The Complex Player understands the self as embedded in many contexts and dimensions. They accept many aspects of self through a complex psychology that integrates shadow material. They tolerate others in spite of their negative traits and differences of opinions or values. They experience their world as multidimensional with overlapping contexts and systems.
   
7. The construct-aware self is a Dynamic Player who integrates multimodal and multidimensional elements across contexts in service of humanity. They are aware of the subtle ways the ego filters experience. The Dynamic Player recognizes paradox and the limits of "mapping." They desire to work through their own limits and blind spots and increase their capacity to witness themselves in the moment. They understand others in developmental terms and encounter them without judgment. They have a profound understanding of other's complex and dynamic personalities. They experience the world as a place full of potential and paradox.
8. The ego-aware self is a Unitive Player who is a transparent manifestation of Being, completely spontaneous and open. They have stable access to transpersonal realities such as the capacity to witness all experience and keep their boundaries open. They view others as manifestations of Being. They experience the world as an immanent expression of timeless Spirit (see figure 6 below)".
   

Fig 6

Ctr. Of Identity	Play Selves	Style of Play	Examples
Pneumacentric	Unitive Player Play as Lila	Spontaneous, Witnessing, highly creative, Original, and open	Identification with the play of the world. Improv. at psychospiritual levels, Crazy wisdom, Tantra, and playing with luminosity. Unites determinisitic and free, structured and open chaos and order
Kosmocenttric	Dynamic Player Play as transformative	Multimodal and multidimensional	Improvisation with transformation, Meditation, holotropic breathwork, inquiry
Worldcentric	Complex Player Play as chaos	Fast and unpredictable	Improvisation with the world, improv. Movement and theater, multidimensional simulations, virtual reality
Worldcentric	Sensitive Player Play as cooperation	Connecting and sharing	Name games, ropes courses, New Games, team building exercises
Sociocentric	Status Player Play as competitions	Winning and Losing	Video games, gambling, poker, competitive sports, games at fairs and carnivals, ropes courses (trans.)
Ethnocentric	Ordered Player Play as structure	Following the rules	Board games, collections, hobbies, card games, intellectual games
Egocentric	Aggressive Player Play as conquest	Acts of heroism	Survivor, war games, chicken, drinking games, boxing/fights
Egocentric	Magical Player Play as connection to cosmos	Balancing good and evil	Dungeons and Dragons, fantasy games, divination: Runes, Tarot, magic tricks, charms, rituals

US Bailouts

.

In God We Trust

I trusted you. I didn’t know we’d been embedded - so unwittingly enmeshed. Deposited here, within another myth of moving beyond. Inside the network, no one has created, but we all enact. You’ve been thrust here too, but by now, you should have known better. On the sheer balance of time, you should have known. I trusted you. I was a good boy. There were supposed to be spoils. Just do good. We don’t need that God. Gawd, no. We’ve gone beyond, left that behind. I trusted you. Kneeling to their sermon of images and sound. You should have protected our domain. I trusted you. Entrusted to you. We were supposed to have gone beyond. Gone, gone beyond. There were supposed to be spoils. I’m silently passed below the industrial snarl. I trusted you. Unwittingly, sub manu. I trusted you. We’re so shackled and forced, you and I. I want us both to leave. There were supposed to be spoils. Worshiping their divine logics. Fed the post-holy cause to all of its effect. Work will set me free. When all is fear, where do the brave tread? You weren’t to know. You poor soul, strung across the subterranean familial snarl. You trusted them. But on the sheer passage of years, you should have known. By now, you should have known. I trusted you. You should have protected our domain. There were supposed to be spoils. Be a good boy, and work will set you free. What is my work? To kneel before this God? I’m waiting for you to save me. Jesus Christ, will you hear me?! The Gods of this realm will never come! Work will set me free. Here, kneeling, my true work will never come. Cause and effect is clear, like this we’ll never be free. Why won’t you come with me? You should have known. How could you sell me to this Pater? How couldn’t you have known? We were supposed to have gone beyond. The tyrannical Gods of old were beneficent nonetheless. There were supposed to be benefits. God Is Not The Man. Be a good boy. Kneel. We were supposed to have gone beyond. A dollar for a pound. They own our fat and our land. They own us from within, and yet we are them. Kneeling here, I defile my own flesh. I feel nothing. Only work will set me free. There were supposed to be benefits. Your Man is blind. I was a good boy. You should have protected our domain from this entanglement. Private isn’t public. Inside and outside become one only above the violent snarl. Above this terrible, invincible God. The God I trusted too. I trusted you.

Including the Self Beyond Self Through Me.... or Remember Meditation

Watering the Tree of Life

"When generativity, creativity, generosity, and the capacity to embrace life dry up, the Water of Life has gone underground. At such times, the earth becomes arid, life becomes devoid of meaning, the ground of culture cracks and splits, and gaps develop among peoples and between people and nature. Only water can bring the pieces back together, awaken seeds hidden in the ground, and enliven the parched Tree of Life. - -from Men and the Water of Life"

Michael J Meade, Men and the Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of Men
http://www.mosaicvoices.org/

Battle Weary

"My war—and I have yet to win a decisive battle—is with the modes of thought and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism)".

- James Hillman

A Monkey With A Drum

I've got some money put away for a great escape
And I could run for a girl like you.

- Josh Pyke

Shhh! Listen... they're talking.

Free In His Heart Is All He Could Be

Straighten Yourself

The Shoulder Joint

Ram Dass

"What one person has to offer another,
is their own being, nothing more, nothing less".

Forever Young – Bob Dylan

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

GTD Altitudes

Going through old files earlier today, I dug out this Getting Things Done altitude statement which I put together in early 2007. I've found ruminating on this list exceedingly helpful when I've been stuck, and so felt moved to share it.

Runway:

Current Actions

This is the accumulated list of all the actions you need to take—all the phone calls you have to make, the e-mails you have to respond to, the errands you've got to run, and the agendas you want to communicate to your boss and your spouse. You'd probably have three hundred to five hundred hours' worth of these things to do if you stopped the world right now and got no more input from yourself or anyone else.

 

10,000 Feet:

Current Projects

Creating many of the actions that you currently have in front of you are the thirty to one hundred projects on your plate. These are the relatively short-term outcomes you want to achieve, such as setting up a home computer, organizing a sales conference, moving to a new headquarters, and getting a dentist.

 

20,000 Feet:

Areas of Responsibility

You create or accept most of your projects because of your responsibilities, which for most people can be defined in ten to fifteen categories. These are the key areas within which you want to achieve results and maintain standards. Your job may entail at least implicit commitments for things like strategic planning, administrative support, staff development, market research, customer service, or asset management. And your personal life has an equal number of such focus arenas: health, family, finances, home environment, spirituality, recreation, etc. Listing and reviewing these responsibilities gives a more comprehensive framework for evaluating your inventory of projects.

 

30,000 Feet:

One- to Two-Year Goals

What you want to be experiencing in the various areas of your life and work one to two years from now will add another dimension to defining your work. Often meeting the goals and objectives of your job will require a shift in emphasis of your job focus, with new areas of responsibility emerging. At this horizon personally, too, there probably are things you'd like to accomplish or have in place, which could add importance to certain aspects of your life and diminish others.

 

40,000 Feet View

Three- to Five-Year Vision

Projecting three to five years into the future generates thinking about bigger categories: organisation strategies, environmental trends, career and life transition circumstances. Internal factors include longer-term career, family, and financial goals and considerations. Outer world issues could involve changes affecting your job and organization, such as technology, globalization, market trends, and competition. Decisions at this altitude could easily change what your work might look like on many levels.

 

50,000+ Feet View

Life

This is the "big picture" view. Why does your company exist? Why do you exist? The primary purpose for anything provides the core definition of what its "work" really is. It is the ultimate job description. All the goals, visions, objectives, projects, and actions derive from this, and lead toward it.

Integral Life and God in Second Person

There's an interesting conversation brewing on Integral Life at the moment regarding the G-word and the face of spirit in second person. Check it out here.

I'll leave you to read it for yourself, but I couldn't avoid posting this excellent blurb from a member of the Sydney Integral list in relation to a post by Joseph Dillard.

"Later in the piece Joseph refers to the expansion of "I" which results, paradoxically and in my language, from the surrender of the illusion of control over these phenomena (or of the illusion that they don't occur) and the inclusion of "my" intentional parts in the constellation of internal autonomy of which I am neither only witness nor only participant".

HEY! California Waiting…

Seem too close to be losin' touch
By givin' in, what am I givin' up
Am I losin' way too much

Hey,
California waiting.
Every little thing's gotta be just right.
Say,
While you're tryin' to save me,
Can't I get back my lonely life

California Waiting
Youth and Young Manhood
Kings of Leon

Internal Family Systems

The Laurel and Hardy Theory of Consciousness - Colin Wilson

The Need for Community

There's a great interview with progressive Christian minister Erwin McManus and WIE editor Carter Phipps in the recent Men's edition of What Is Enlightenment magazine, which I found laden with pearls. This is one the bits I resonated with (in answer to a question of the benefits and shortcomings of the two major men's movements in the last twenty years: the Promise Keepers, and the Iron John movement):

"There's an interesting proverb that says hope deferred makes the heart sick. If you elevate this hope – this sense of belief that something beautiful and true and good can happen from your life, that you can live a life of real integrity and be a good person of character and wisdom – but then you don't provide a process to help them succeed, they're going to stop believing in the vision.
It's important to get in touch with the primal masculinity, which I think both of those groups did. It's important to get in touch with tour sense of manhood, to dig deep, ands to find the courage, resolve and resilience to live a life of honour and nobility. At the same time – and I know this just from being in L.A. for the last sixteen years – the most well-intended person, if not given a process to move towards success, will stumble and fall and then come to the conclusion that while someone else can succeed, he just can't pull it off, can't live that life. So I think it's also important to say: "Here's a process. Here are steps you can take". In the best case scenario, you need to find people who will journey with you, people who will mentor you and help you along the way.
What's why community is so critical. We don't' need someone with us all the time, but we d need community some of the time. There are critical transition moments where it's really essential".

A Heart of Stone

"True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible and the heart has turned to stone."

- Thomas Merton

Solar Adoration

Extend thy light that I may see,
but dim thy glory that I be not blinded.

- Solar Adoration Practice: Aurum Solis Order

The Weakness of God

"... the weakness of God is not the last word but the first, coming as a call or provocation that solicits our response, our witness to the call, which is what comes next, like an “amen” or a second yes. For it is we who have mountains to move by our faith and we who have enemies to move by our love. It is we who have to make the weakness of God stronger than the power of the world".

- John D. Caputo

Too Young

They're not mindbending lyrics, but this song has been coming and going like an old friend for many years now. It came back again tonight, and as always, it ignites youth in me. I needed that.

Can't you hear it calling
Everybody's shakin'
Tonight everything is over
I feel too young
Oh rainfalls and hard times coming
they won't leave me tonight
I wish I knew what I was doing
Just do let this spirit survive

Robert Masters on Deepening Trust

I don't think I've read a thing Robert Masters has written that I don't resonate with. This is him at his best.

 

Deepening Trust

 

For me to trust you means that I, having consistently witnessed your integrity and reliability, have an abiding confidence that you will continue to manifest such qualities. Trust as such is not an a priori stance, but a result.

 

The deeper our mutual trust, the deeper our relationship can go, so long as that trust is rooted not in naiveté — naive or blind trust is not really trust, but just a cocktail of foolhardiness and hope — but in a mutuality which is anchored in transparency, integrity, and love. Trust should not be automatically given; it must be earned.

 

In the beginning, we may be enamored by another's better qualities, and want to give that one our trust — especially if there's an intoxicatingly romantic infusion of hope and lust — but we'd do best to withhold giving our full trust until enough time has passed to see the other in action in a variety of circumstances.

 

If our bullshit detector is turned down to too low a volume — perhaps because we don't want our romantic trance to be interrupted — we will probably get sloppy in giving our trust, selling it for a few baubles of feel-good attention.

 

Seeing how our partner operates when things get rough provides a clear indicator of their trustworthiness. Are they worthy of our trust? We need to find this out, rather than just believing it from the start, out of some naive or romantic notion that we should thus believe. Without strongly anchored mutual trust, intimate relationship remains stranded in the shallows, regardless of its excursions to deeper territory.

 

When I ask most couples if they trust each other, there is usually some hesitation before they say yes — that is, if they even say yes. A hesitant yes is not a full yes; we may be saying yes because we want to trust our partner, or think that we should. But a yes that is animated by any form of "should" is not a full yes.

 

Part of building trust is an honest, in-depth sharing of how we have been less than trustworthy in our past. This is not about re-shaming ourselves for old transgressions and stupidities, but rather about sharing what's happened openly, vulnerably, and in the spirit of establishing a healthy foundation with our partner. No secrets.

 

This can be a painful process, but it is necessary. Not every detail is needed, but enough need to be provided so as to provide a sufficiently clear picture and sense of what happened.

As we do this, it is crucial that we uncover — perhaps with our partner's assistance — the prevailing patterns underlying our past behavior. Some of these patterns may truly be things of the past, but others may still be very much present, however much they may be under wraps. These must be revealed so that they can be worked with; this is not about shaming each other, but rather is about not keeping anything from each other. Doing so is an act of deep trust.

 

Another part of building trust is to openly share our mistrust. We might be tempted to act as if we trust our partner with something or someone, but if we don't, to whatever degree, we need to share that. To thus share our mistrust is actually an act of trust. If we are on the receiving end of this, we need to remain as open as possible; if we shame our partner for daring to mistrust us, they will be less likely to want to share their mistrust with us in the future.

 

Without mutual trust, there will not be enough safety in the relationship to go truly deep. For example, a couple may, regardless of their love for each other, get sloppy when anger arises — becoming hostile, sarcastic, passive aggressive, blaming, and so on — thereby becoming less than a safe space for each other; they may still open to each other, but it will only go so far, simply because there's not enough safety, or well-rooted trust, to go further.

 

We don't want to be at a relational edge, and not know if our partner can be trusted to hold the line secure. This is why it is so crucial to identify any cracks in the container of the relationship. Even occasional sarcasm can generate such cracks, however thin or slight they may be. Aggression

cracks the container, as does contempt and a lack of integrity. Infidelity all but destroys the container, as does violence.

 

Mature couples are deeply and consistently committed to keeping their relational container free from cracks. The container can be transparent, permeable, infinitely expansive, but it is nonetheless still a container, a protected space wherein freedom is found not through escaping the container, but rather through viewing and treating it as a sanctuary of love, awakening, and transformation.

 

If I am untrustworthy in certain areas, do not override your concerns just because I am so wonderful in other ways; that is, do not let my good points obscure or marginalize my not-so-good points. Relate to me as I am, rather than having a relationship with — or being seduced by — my trustworthiness potential.

 

The better the relationship, the deeper the trust, and vice versa. When I trust you fully, I can open with you until I am but openness, sentient openness. When I trust you fully, then our relationship becomes a dynamic crucible for healing, awakening, and relational deepening, so that no matter what arises, it is workable. When I trust you fully, I become more alive, more fleshed-out, more conscious, more brave, more curious and caring, letting our relationship carry me beyond what I have taken myself to be.

 

When we are truly connected, even the arising of disconnection is okay. In fact, trusting each other with our disconnectedness only deepens our mutual trust. The deepest trust of all is but lucid opening to reality in the raw, at once rooted in and generating a sublimely solid faith, a faith that holds steady in even the stormiest relational times.

 

When it is clearly time to trust — as when our partner has consistently demonstrated his or her trustworthiness — do so even if you are afraid to do so. Better at such times to have trusted and gotten hurt, than not to have trusted.

 

THE CRUCIBLE OF AWAKENING

Issue 27 July 2007

Genpo Roshi and Bill Harris in dialogue

Thomas Merton on Love

 

"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone-we find it with another."

Thomas Merton.

The Price of Admission, Alone

". I want people to bow as they see me and say
he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of
the Creator".
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Allen Ginsberg.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Berkeley, September 8, 1955

. I want to educate in public so people can see me and say
he finally proclaimed like Ginsberg, his words admit the presence of
their Creator.

- Berkeley, 4:22 AM, Thursday 7 August 2008.

The Portable Thomas Merton (a stream of consciousness conspicuous only in the San Francisco Zen Centre bookstore)

I write everything for you.
Every key clicks your every name
of a memory we’ve all had of
your absence, writing these
wretched loops to your memory,
and hope inscribing
itself a retrospect of your
every name forgotten but for a trace
of ether and pencil swirling every
wretched looping day you’re my lost
companion calling a forgotten name found
in every name I call in these wretched
words who practice their howl in
every looping click of your every name
posted in binaries across webs of ether
and codes of your name looped behind
every forgotten roar I scribe in second person
to the only person I am forgotten to remind
us all of the binaries we aren’t when you
arrive, my companion.

Rolfing and Physical Reality - Ida Rolf

Rifling through the bookcase in our Berkeley pad this morning, a book of quotes from Ida Rolf found its way into my hands. It opened to this great little excerpt, which sits in perfect harmony with my bodywork experiences over the last eighteen months. (I nicked this from google books by the way).

Memories and Dust

But in the morning I can smell you on my pillow
I need to know we won’t get wrung out in the wash
I need to know there’s time for us
I must believe there’s time for some of us

’cause i saw two fall before they were ready to
And I found no sense or gain to bear the cost
Comfort comes to those with faith in mysterious ways
But for me faith don’t make up for what we lost.

- Josh Pyke

Fuck the World (or, A Worldcentric Libido Descends on the Sands of my Ocean Home)

Fuck the World
(or, A Worldcentric Libido Descends on the Sands of my Ocean Home)


All things must pass.

If this burning sand beneath me
were fired into glass
I’d smash it back to a thousand granules
and remember.

All things must pass.

With time as no constant,
I’ll fucking seize those mysteries
which lay beyond the boundary
where sea meets sky

and, I’ll take my position
both wonder and thorn
within and between
your moist and speckled thighs

and, I’ll cavern and soar
and advance and deny
and take what, for only then,
will appear to be mine

and on this ground,
which faces
past time,
only I,
will

draw

the

line.


All things must pass.

If this ocean’s call
were harnessed at last
I’d channel the song of a million sons
and remember.

All things must pass.

Animus and Anima

Magic

I never did believe in miracles,

but I've a feeling it's time to try.

I never did believe in the ways of magic,

but I’m beginning to wonder why.

- Stevie Nicks

Obama’s Hairy Struggle - Geoff Elliott

From The Australian - 14 July 2008.
(http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/geoffelliott/index.php/theaustralian/comments/obamas_hairy_struggle/)


BARACK Obama might be a political candidate for the times, appealing to an ideologically ambiguous internet generation, but he will not escape the culture wars of the 1960s easily.
The battles of yore keep popping up in this 40th anniversary of the biggest year in US culture wars, when the shape of modern US politics and its players were forged. In 1968, the civil rights and ideological battles reached a nadir when leaders Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.

Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, tries to fly above the fray, vowing to move the US beyond those fights and establish a “new kind of politics”.

Jesse Jackson, the leading civil rights activist of that era, this week let slip into a microphone what he thought of Obama’s post-ideological appeal. He wants to “cut his nuts off”.

Obama, 46, is attempting to appeal across the US’s racial milieu, and key to his message is to talk straight to African-American men, saying they share a responsibility in the social ills that affect the black community.

It’s the antithesis of the Jackson message. He attributes the problems of high crime rates among blacks to the country’s slave-trading past, poverty and the bloody struggle for rights.

But Jackson’s whisper that turned into a roar this week was just another example of US leaders fixated on the cultural battles that were waged so intently 40 years ago. Not just civil rights, but also the anti-war era and advent of ultra-liberalism that found its expression in free love and drugs and the Woodstock phenomenon.

Republican candidate John McCain, 71, is making the ‘60s a centrepiece of his campaign. He makes much of his failure to attend the 1969 Woodstock festival because he was “tied up at the time”. It is a reference to more than five years in captivity during the Vietnam War.
McCain’s record as a war hero while young Americans at home went psychedelic was the message behind a campaign advertisement he launched this week.

It starts with images from the ‘60s, showing student protesters, long-haired hippies and Woodstock. Then it cuts to the famous grainy images of McCain while he was imprisoned and then of him saluting when he finally landed back on US soil. The script opens: “It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change, the summer of love. Half a world away, another kind of love, of country: John McCain, shot down, bayoneted, tortured. Offered early release, he said: ‘No.’ He’d sworn an oath.”

Just what any of this has to do with Obama is unclear. He was six years old at the height of flower power and living in Hawaii.

But the ad attempts to make a link. The announcer says McCain will tell Americans what they need to hear. “Beautiful words will not make our lives better,” the ad says in a clear swipe at Obama’s speeches. “But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t hope for a better future, vote for one.”

Obama has tried to bury the ‘60s. To beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he cast new generational appeal. He said she would be unable to bring change, partly because “Clinton and others, they have been fighting some of the same fights since the ‘60s. And it makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.”

Obama says he will reach across the aisle to bring about big changes. Rubbish. What he is banking on is big Democratic sweeps through Congress that deliver him power not only in the White House but wide majorities in the legislature as well.

Obama’s appeal should help herald those big gains. And there’s the rub. This could be the best chance the Democrats have had since the ‘60s to bring about the changes they long for, including their nirvana of government-sponsored healthcare.

Obama’s hidden message is that he wants to end the culture wars, all right: by smashing the opposition and winning them.

Deepest Blue

In the absence between foregrounds
only inference, only faith
protects me from the uncertain plummet
that skirts the edges of this plateau.

To you I return to say my goodbyes.
To you I return to wash in redemption.
To you I return. Deep. Blue.

In sunkist daydreams I leap every time,
factoring consequences only modestly at best.
There’s finally nothing as the mind enmeshing
this defeated body irrevocably drops to eternal solace.

And to you I would return,
To again welcome the edge of my redemption.
To you I return. Deep. Blue.

These shifting sands are your solitary promise.
I have nothing left but will and clamour.
You will take what you will today, I’m certain.
And for a moment I'll float –
buoyant in the saltwater which obstructs my horizon.

And you will return me. Deeper.

The Mind is the Cause of Bondage and Liberation - Amrita-Bindu-Upanishad as translated by Georg Feuerstein

The mind is said to be twofold; pure and impure.
The impure has desire and volition; the pure is devoid of desire.

The mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation for humans.
Attached to objects, it leads to bondage; devoid of objects, it is deemed to leas to emancipation.

Because liberation of the mind devoid of objects is desirable,
The seeker after liberation should always make the mind devoid of objects.

When the mind, freed from contact with objects and restricted in the heart,
becomes nonexistent, then that is the supreme state.

It should be checked until it meets with destruction in the heart.
This is wisdom; this is meditation. The rest is diffuse speculation.

- Amrita-Bindu-Upanishad

Common People

Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.

- Jarvis Cocker

.

Illustration: Nicole Linde

More on threads, weaves, robes and carrying spirit on my bloodstream's current...

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,

and sleep.

- Rumi

Pity the Nation

"Pity the Nation"
Khalil Gibran

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
eats a bread it does not harvest,
and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.


"Pity the Nation"

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep

And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

Whose sages are silenced

And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

Except to praise conquerers

And acclaim the bully as hero

And aims to rule the world

By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows

No other language but its own

And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money

And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people

who allow their rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee

Sweet land of liberty!

The Eye of The Storm

I was one of those
breathing tornadoes
but now I live at the
eye of the storm.

- Ben Lee

I'm finding a self (or 'kind-of' no-self) in the space between conceptual dualities which I have brought down into by body and healed of late. I've got a lot more energy to battle the roar and rattle of those self-concepts which don't want their home in the mind to be exposed to the light of embodiment, which is revealing whiffs of what seems like the accounts of buddha nature I've read. As always, merely glimpes, but what a wonderful new beginning.

Working Class Hero

I Think I Like What I Don’t Know About You – Tim Rogers

This whole day was useless

Next one's gonna be worse

Cos I'm wearing this badge of fortune like

A criminals wears a curse

I want to chase that rabbit right off the rails

And rip this metal keeping my mouth in check

But I need that muzzle like a razor and a stubble

Cuttin' all this history from my neck

Do you remember the gear I first saw you in

Eating Mexican in '92?

In between your folks and a birthday toast

It was black from your fringe to your shoes

I'm picking apples out of paintings

And making record covers in the sky

I missed my boat sitting here imagining

Your face when you cry

Don't be cruel, come on be sugar in my tooth

I think I like what I don't know about you

This whole day threw up some tickets

None I'd ever choose

The sky's so heavy it hangs like a beer gut

Spilling stuff on my shoes

Don't get me wrong, I ain't complaining

I still got my legs like a cheap Christmas tree

But if I got faith why am I so scared

Of everybody dying on me

Don't be cruel, come on be sugar in my tooth

I think I like what I don't know about you

Don't be cruel, come on be champagne in my shoe

I think I like what I don't know about you

Fish and chips stall down the south coast ready

I can show you what I'm worth

So set me up a bottle and salt and vinegar

If you get there first

I said if you get there first

Don't be cruel, come on be sugar in my tooth

I think I like what I don't know about you

Don't be cruel, come on be champagne in my shoe

I think I like what I don't know about you

Ken Wilber Family Guy Spoof

.

Nad Iksodas

(c) Nad Iksodas, 2007

La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana

León Ferrari

La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana

Showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art

as part of the Sydney Biennale 2008

Chin Up

I'm pissed at you because you're supposed to be my bro'.

When your blood met mine we made a promise,

a promise that that we'd always sweep eachother's path.

A promise.

Between us.

A promise that's now little more than a hazy memory…

… oh, a hazy memory

and the asshole of this elephant in the room.

We worked fucking

hard

to get so hardly fucked, and I don't want another

lesson in how to suck it up.

I don't want another lip to chew.

I want a shoulder to cry on.

A shoulder whose veins carry my spirit

when I'm too weak to remember it inside.

I mean, c'mon motherfucker!

If I dared swallow the panacean advice you snore at me these days,

my chin'd be so 'up' that the rest of me might take flight!

Ah, wait on.

Is that it?

D'you reckon I'd be better off without my feet on the ground?

Better off forgetting the root of this longing?

Better flying in the cloud of dreams and belief with

everyone else fighting

for a payrise and an extra week's rest leave?

They're OK clouds, man.

Honest.

I'm happy for you.

Honest…

… but honestly, can't you hear us both looking for a place to land?

Don't you remember when it was you dreaming?

Way back before they started writing the stories for you.

Please tell me you do, bro'

'cause I'm not sure I do.

When all is done

Tell me old friend,
when all is done,
when our boyhood strivings
venture beyond their zenith,
when our grandest deeds
and our best laid plans
come to pass and leave us to remain,
when the wound of our youth
and the labyrinth it sews
is walked to its centre,
when all is done,
old friend, when all is done,
what will remain?

"At last on to the nether shore..."

Turning

I'm turning now.
I know it.
I can feel it.

I'm turning now.

Turning into you.

George W Bush, 2000-2008: A Summary

© Siegfried Woldhek 2008
http://woldhek.nl/

Varieties of Religious Experience - William James

Siegfried Woldhek, 2008

“The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow.”

“Our normal waking consciousness…is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

William James

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

The Cuckold's Call

The More Things Change…

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint."

Hesiod - 800-720 BC.

Nathan Barley

Gedthafugoudda'ere!

Today I realised that:

My favourite character, Nathan Barley, from my old favourite website, tvgohome.com, has been

mIGHTY B OOSH

\http://www.tvgohome.com/

http://thegestalt.org/simon/cunt/ compendium!!

The Mystical Cookbook

 

"The only good function of a book on Zen should be to persuade the reader to engage in zazen.

In the same way, the only major purpose of a book on mysticism should be to persuade the reader to engage in mystical practice.

It is precisely like a cookbook: You give recipes and invite the reader to go out and perform the recipe, actually do it, and then taste the results. You are not supposed merely to learn the recipes, memorise the recipes, and then claim you're a cook".

Ken Wilber
Eye to Eye

 

Who is he?

The friendly and flowing savage.... who is he?
Is he waiting for civilisation or past it and mastering it?

Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass

Skeletons - Ollie Brown

... and if we forget
all our ways

all the habit

from our days

what reason

resonates?

to never grow up

never grow old

never be found

never be solved

never be seen

never be known

like skeletons.

- Ollie Brown