We each have our own views on life. Those views can be as different as our DNA and fingerprint. Today, do not think about only what youâve been told to think about, or what youâve been made to believe is the truth of your existence. Think like your DNA. Think like your fingerprint. Think different. Think about what was lost and what was gained. Think on all those who have entered and exited your life and have transformed who you are. Consider those whom you have never met, yet, their affect on your life is as profound and lasting as if they were living in the room next to you. Those affects can be both positive and/or negative, there is no real way for you to know whose past influence is affecting the trajectory of your life at this moment. Honor and mourn all who have gone from this place and now live in a distant past spanning possibly thousands of years before you. You are because they were. Meditate. Connect. Remember.
Archive for the ‘wisdom’ Category
life in perspective
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
manifesting the non-existent: the notion of overpopulation
Monday, August 15th, 2011I love to travel. I donât have the opportunity to go many places, but I get around to some degree. Me and my road partner drive everywhere. We have driven from the Poconos in Pennsylvania to Indianapolis, Indiana–ten hours drive. Weâve driven from Indianapolis to Grovetown, Georgia, just a few minutes outside of Augusta–eleven hours drive. Weâve driven from the Poconos to Florida–sixteen hours. And from Grovetown to Florida–about seven hours drive. Weâve also driven from the Poconos into Manhattan in New York as well as from Indianapolis to Elkhart, Indiana–three hours give or take. We plan to take a road trip out west to see what the other mid-western states are like. Our ultimate destination, California. We plan to stop off to see a number of places, including the Grand Canyon. During our drives, weâve experienced many interesting things, but none more interesting than the vast landscape that always begins in less than an hour outside the city limits.
Driving has given us time to think deeply about our planet. One of the notions that is central in much of our conversations is overpopulation. Each time we drive through a state, we are amazed at the amount of land available, some of which sits unused and covered with grass. As I write this, we are passing through yet another large tract of land, seemingly well over one hundred acres as far as the eyes can see. Many things have come to mind from our conversations and observations.
Take a moment to grab an empty glass. Imagine the glass is earth. It is empty, void of anything. Now, begin to fill that glass with water. Imagine each drop of water represents a human being. As the water enters the glass, the level begins to rise. Remember, the glass is earth and the drops of water are people. Continue to fill the glass and watch the water rise to the rim. What happens if you continue to let the water run into the glass? The glass obviously becomes full and will then begin to flow over. That is because the glass is overpopulated and you are now seeing and experiencing the visual manifestation of the overpopulated glass. The water will run onto the floor and eventually wet all of your kitchen. Soon, if you continue to let the water run, your kitchen, now representing the planet, will become overpopulated with water. If there is no outlet, the water will rise, filling the kitchen. You will need to remove yourself from the kitchen because you and the water cannot reside in the same space without the obvious problems arising. The water will begin to displace all air space and you will be forced to leave your home. In essence, the water has overpopulated your home, leaving you with no where to live. If you remain in the house, you will eventually drown in the water that continues to rise.
Letâs look at another scenario. You are in a school that contains one hundred rooms. Each room holds twenty students comfortably, with room for at least another thirty students semi-comfortably, but still with space enough for everyone to move around. At times, the teachers will place forty students in one room, leaving a room empty. There have even been times when this has happened rather frequently, and as much as fifty rooms are left empty. One day, the teachers decide they want to pack the students into about ten rooms, all squeezed in with no room to walk around or even turn. If the teachers were to do this and the students were left to uncomfortably live in only ten rooms, would that mean the school as a whole, with ninety empty rooms, is overcrowded? Or simply the ten rooms the students are in?
In life as in science, anything that is overcrowded shows visual manifestation of such. If a glass is overcrowded with water, it begins to run over and wet the area outside of the glass. If a classroom is overcrowded, one can visually see how uncomfortable the living arrangements are for the students. If a school is overcrowded, the same manifestation will occur. If a bowl of marbles is continually filled with more marbles, all additional marbles will eventually roll out of the bowl. So what is the evident conclusion one would come to?
If a planet is overcrowded, as many claim is the case for Earth, then it would be physically impossible for us to drive the thousands of miles that weâve driven and see thousands of acres of land stretching across hundreds of miles between cities without seeing a single human being. People would be spilling over onto the roads, there would be no room to move. You could not drive, walk or fly anywhere without seeing people shoulder to shoulder, bumping into each other, squeezing past each other and having no where to go that is empty and void of large groups of people.
Those in power bank on the populace not using any critical thinking skills to ascertain the truth of our existence. They tell us what they want us to believe and we should merely believe it without thinking. We no longer use our eyes to see what is right before us. We no longer use our ears to hear what is there for us to hear. We no longer use our minds to contemplate anything outside of what we are told to contemplate. We therefore never realize, unless triggered, that we are being tricked, bamboozled, hoodwinked into believing fantasy rather than recognizing reality.
Leave the city you live in. Drive to another state. Take a long road trip. Drive across the mid-west even. You will find that the only places on the planet that are crowded are cities–like being packed into a single room in a school containing one hundred rooms. The single classroom is your city. Look around you, there are many empty rooms for you to explore. All those rooms are empty. Youâve been tricked into believing that it is alright for a single person or monarchy to own ten thousand acres of land, or that it is alright for the government or oligarchy to own a hundred thousand acres of land or more. And now when this âownershipâ is announced and at gun point you are forced to stay off certain areas of your plush, rich planet, ripe for planting, growing and living, you are then told, with a straight face and authority, that the planet is hereby overcrowded.
The laws that govern land distribution and ownership are not in alignment with natural laws. Yet some translate this imbalance into the planet being overpopulated. The lack of willingness of those in power (those with the biggest guns and most propensity for violence) to equitably allow for everyone to live on the planet as rightful owners of land, tax free, does not magically create an overpopulated planet. What is created is the illusion of overpopulation by virtue of denial. The fact of the matter is that people are being denied their basic human right to live freely. Those denying the populace the right to live on land freely were not and are not the keepers of the land, yet they have dubbed themselves owners of what does not belong to them and what they did not and could not create. They cannot see that land is not meant to be owned, but lived on. The bullies now run the playground yard.
Look around you. Travel outside the comforts of your city, which is at this very moment clouding your ability to see truth. Travel to other countries, leave their cities as well. Go see their countrysides. Visit the Serengeti, see and experience the vastness and how empty it is of humans. Visit the Amazon, the Sahara Desert, the Congo. Go see the Canyons of China. Visit the hillsides of Ireland or the flatlands of Australia. If like droplets of water filling a glass you do not see droplets of people filling the land and spilling over into the oceans, valleys, mountains and hillsides, then you have come to the realization that your planet is not overcrowded and someone has just played a grand joke on you. Now, the only question you have left to ask is, why?
monkey see…
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011Start with a cage containing five monkeys.
Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.
Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.
As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result-
All the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.
Pretty soon, when a monkey tries to climb the stairs,
The other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put away the cold water.
Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.
The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.
To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.
After another attempt and attack,
He knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.
The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.
The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!
Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.
Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.
Most of the monkeys that are beating him
Have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs
Or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all of the original monkeys,
None of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.
Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.
Why not? Because as far as they know thatâs the way itâs always been done!
THE END
Ponder this deeply friends. Think about what you believe in life to be the truth. Think about your daily actions. Are you acting based on what you’ve chosen? Don’t react. Think on it.
my soul…
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011What is your soul?
When I first read that question I was stumped. It is not that I hadnât thought about it many times over, but to actually write down an answer, now that was difficult. The first question that comes to mind is the one not often considered. What if we donât have a soul? What if what we have defined as soul is merely wishful thinking, the hope that what we are experiencing here is not all there is. So as one with any psychosis, such as the belief that one is Napoleon, Jesus, Cleopatra or the Queen of England, we now believe that we have a soul. How different are we in our belief than the person who believes they are Jesus? We would answer, Jesus is long dead, so that person cannot be Jesus. Or, Cleopatra is long dead & we donât know what she looks like anyway, so the woman (or man), who claims to be her is in fact crazy. But has one seen evidence of this soul? Like Jesus or Cleopatra, are we not only taking the word of long dead writers that these so called historical figures actually existed? In the end, we really donât know if they did. Equally, we really donât know if Mrs. Anderson down the road isnât in fact the embodiment of long dead Cleopatra who just may have been real. She says she is Cleopatra, so maybe she is. We say we have a soul, therefore, that is all there is to it. Right? We sit beside Mrs. Anderson, making claims that no one can effectively prove beyond a shadow of a doubt; yet, we would put Mrs. Anderson away, claiming she is utterly insane for believing in such fantasy, such nonsense she cannot readily prove given that we know the âtruthâ. But do we know the truth? Or are we basing our judgement of Mrs. Anderson on what weâve been told through the years? Even more, what if Mrs. Anderson is right & she is the embodiment of Cleopatra? So where does this leave us?
It would be wrong of me to claim anyone is crazy when I myself have decided to take on a belief that may or may not be true. It feels safe to believe. It gives hope. But is hope the only reason to believe a thing? I wonder. I believe we do have a soul. But I equally know that that belief means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It is merely my belief, not a truth anyone can concretely prove.
If the soul I perceive I have does in fact exist, it would be all that I am and all that Iâve ever touched, seen, heard, smelled, tasted. It would be comprised of everything that ever has been & will be, with the ability to tap into all that is. My soul would be a singular entity with the freedom to move about and learn, grow and share, while simultaneously being a part of the collective All in the universe. It would be One (in a collective sense), while still being âoneâ (in a singular sense). My soul would BE the cosmos, yet, BE the âIâ.
In the end, I donât really know what soul is, much less IF soul is. But whatever the possibility, I would define it as all encompassing. All understanding. It would contain within a profound unshakable wisdom. My hope is that soul is a thing that continues on, while still seating itself inside me as I type. I hope that soul is a powerful energy force that never dies. Because if it is all that Iâve imagine it to be, that means there is the possibility that what we live here is not all there is. And there is a chance to live a different life, one where continual adversity isnât a part of daily existence.
What is my soul? If it were anything, it would simply be…me.
hooked fish vs. free fish
Monday, March 7th, 2011“When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.” - Karl Menninger
on truth
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011This is from a section of a book that I find very interesting. It speaks to how I view the notion of truth seeking.
“In Elementary Orthopathy, Lesson No. 1, the student is asked whether he is searching for Truth. All students invariably answer in the affirmative.
“People think they are searching for Truth. But experience proves that this is wrong. Experience proves that most people are searching for evidence to confirm what they already believe. They reject with scorn that which fails to harmonize with their belief, and yet their belief is inherited from their ancestors, who based their belief on traditions, handed down from father to son during the ages.
“There have been martyrs among the religious of all countries, but their zeal and confidence was no evidence that their religious opinions and beliefs were rational, or in any way corresponding with the deeper laws of the universe. A person may be ever so sincere in his belief, but that sincerity is no evidence of intelligence on his part, much less is it proof of the truth of his belief.”
from The Secret of Regeneration by Hilton Hotema
A tree stump sits out back, near the porch, surrounded by rhododendron. The life that once stood taller than the house is now a mere semblance of what it was. It waits for time to pass. For more life to surround it.
Ever since I’ve stopped using salt, I find that my taste buds are healing. The flavors in fruits and vegetables are coming alive in ways I never imagined. A simple orange or yellow bell pepper bursts with flavor in my mouth. It is an amazing rush. I am now able to create much simpler meals.
