mindful chatter

I think problems often arise in relationships over a commonly held (if sometimes unconscious) equation of "love" with "obligation." The obligation is more about a desire for security. I think what we hold as the ideal of "love" has to do with being totally blown away by this being's existence, so that it is a primary value and honor to you to have them in your life.



I have no idea why we would want to embrace a philosophy of "life is suffering." It is untrue. Suffering is not a condition of living, but an interpretation. All life is moving, learning, adapting, metamorphosing, interchanging with environment.



I was brought to mind about the intense thrust of energy that was the late '60s when everyone seemed so actively involved in creating new ways of understanding our shared experience. We felt the older generation was mired in traditions. Scientific traditions and the "realism" of the "modern" world had reduced the mysteries to material cause and effect. Somehow we got a spark of something else, and a desire to pursue alternative visions.

Yet the conservative material world insisted that anything beyond their careful straight and narrow was just fringe. Many were co-opted by material realities. Others found compromise between science as stolid knowledge and crazy new ideas that just might have validity. Thus "normal" folks now accept ideas about multi-dimensional universes and cause/effect paradigm shifts.

Thus, I am perceiving that old cyclic expansion/consolidation wave



These days, when we are learning more and more about nonobvious interconnections, mind/body/spirit whole systems, vast ripple effects of the cosmos, etc., how can we not understand that "science" and "spiritual truth" are not inextricably entwined?



There was a neuroscience of education docu-show on PBS tonight which revealed quite fascinating results from studies showing that kids-teens-adults, contrary to popularized belief, can and do learn, grow new brain cells, all through life. Many get teased/bullied or tease/bully because of "learning disabilities" which target them as different in a less-than sense. One kid on the show talked of being tempted to join a gang and enter a violent lifestyle because he could not learn in school and got treated badly by the other kids there. Violence begetting violence. When will our collective brain cells grow enough to learn? They spoke of (and showed real kids in the classroom) new discoveries that show quite simple techniques (no drugs or stigma of "disability") that can help kids whose minds are to some extent disorganized or slower on the uptake in certain regards catch up to their peers in learning. I have also seen evidence (I read a lot on neuroscience, especially in regard to healing through dance) that cognitive-behavioral kinds of therapies work better than drugs or traditional psychotherapies for kids with mood disorders. You take the kid for who he is, and teach him how to more effectively interact with his environment. It's not about punishment or blame or labeling. It's about teaching the kid what he didn't naturally pick up on his own.



I say, if exhausted, take the time to really feel it all the way down, all the way through. R e l a x, drift, let your self float on an eternal breeze. Find the music that resonates with this moment for you, and dance, at whatever level your body feels it. Let go. Swirl into the music, entranced. Repeat as desired.



oh my goddess, what sweetness
my breath trembles
my heart recognizes
these words



We move along a path, but it is not clear, straight, narrow, nor linear. We believe, or we work through ideas, ways of connecting and disconnecting, moving through the steps and scenery. We believe we know something about how things are, and we want something different. We develop plans and goals and measurements. As long as we are not attached, not too invested in our beliefs to change, it is all just another class, another experiment.



Far from a character defect, anger when used correctly (which we rarely do because we are trained against it) is a powerful emotional purgative and precursor of useful action.



what are the "effects of poverty"? Just not having money is not really an adverse effect. It's not having the support, the safe haven home and community, parents away working most of the time and too tired to even really be there when they are physically. It's food that keeps you hungry even when you do get to eat. It's impure water and air, pollutants that get passed off to the poorer neighborhoods. It's assaults of all kinds from those around who have pretty much given up on life and just fall into violence until it kills them. I'd say there are pretty bad effects of the unhappy lives around them for kids in a variety of economic situations.



Words
refined tools in
clumsy hands
cannot grasp such subtle
consistencies
Existence in a word
is but a play, a farce,
a comedic troop
signifying their wares
Reality -- this word we
freely swear
in imagined duress
or attempts at superior
demean is but a remnant
from a dream
when words came soaked
in conscious context
we do not seem to have
the wits to hold



I was envisioning (so shoot me, I'm an idealist) community healthcare facilities, community healthcare professionals (maybe even community healthcare colleges). Those who could easily afford it would be encouraged to pay for sustaining subscriptions. Those who had nothing would get free subscriptions, or would get government subsidies such as Medicaid, but with much less cost. Those of moderate means would pay less than they do now for "insurance" yet get much better care without all the denials. Healthcare professionals could spend their time giving care, not dealing with insurance companies or billings. Just a little common sense, enlightened self-interest and calm deliberation could do it.

What if we boycotted unsatisfactory "health" insurance? What if instead of paying these corporations, we had direct subscriptions to healthcare facilities and providers? What if people within communities got together with local healthcare providers and developed systems in the best interests of all groups involved?

We need to take back our health; take back our bodies; take back our minds; take back responsibility to make sure the marketplace provides what we need at a cost we can afford -- or find a different market, place, and paradigm

It just stands to reason. We don't want sick folks cluttering up our workplaces, markets, schools, good neighborhoods. The sicker you are, the more you cost, until you can't pay anymore, get hopelessly in debt, become a drag rather than a driver of the system, get by on "social" programs and stop yer bitchin'.

The insurance industry has big gun lobbyists, big money interests that speak loudly to lawmakers. Not just health insurers. I was recently in a conversation about auto insurance in which I was struck when someone said that if you don't have enough coverage or personal assets and injure or are injured in an accident, there would be no payment for medical bills over the insured's coverage. Thus, auto insurers benefit from responsible drivers (or those who don't want personal liability) getting the more expensive coverage. Yet, for all those employers complaining about paying for their employees' health insurance (and those maligned because they don't provide employees health insurance), for all the people spreading diseases because they can't afford medical treatment, for all those people getting so sick that their treatment costs when unavoidable are much higher than necessary thus increasing the spread out cost to us all, for all those much lauded anchor of our economy small businesses who again lose so much potential business because people are bankrupt or just broke and hopeless due to medical bills they cannot possibly pay, for all those with pre-existing medical conditions who can't get insurance at any kind of reasonable price because they actually need the services, for all those seriously ill or with close family members seriously ill who have to stress out over healthcare costs when they need to be concentrating on wellness, and so on, and so on, and so on ... can't we figure out a way to do the right thing for all of us?

It's not a matter of whether smoking, or any potentially dangerous activity, is a great idea. The point is, we don't (I don't) want anyone telling me how to live, even to make me healthier. That's my own business. On the other hand, there are a great many things that are public: air, water, ground, food supply, medications, all those things we either share or buy. I want regulations to keep my resources what they are meant to be, or at least to tell me clearly when they are not. This is not about paying for healthcare.

And it is the paying for healthcare that is the issue, here. There are a great many other possible issues about healthcare, service providers, availability, greater inclusion of modalities, and so on. The points you make here about payment for healthcare are quite valid. There is no free healthcare, unless you are caring for yourself (which we each ought to be, not because the government says we have to). When we have healthcare insurance, the point as far as the insurance company is concerned is their profit -- not our health.

doesn't it strike you as a bit weird that we have to fight over status in terms of institutions like marriage or employment to get such "benefits" as health insurance?





I suppose it is important that we have this debate, that the hidden misconceptions or even pure hatefulness get aired. It is sickening on so many levels. That we reduce our horror that our country would condone this whole program of interrogation based on what one might hope were medieval mindsets and techniques to a debate over "is waterboarding ("controlled" drowning) torture," is to me fearful/dreadful.



some people want to worship Barack Obama. They make excuses for his policies that appear to be different from what we expected from him. I understand. We want to believe. We want to be made safe from above. Yet, Obama is just another man, another politician, another world leader. We can admire what he does when he does what we find admirable. We can support his positions when they are also ours. We can accept what is available from government, do what we can to make it better, and live our lives responsible for our own needs and desires.

-- something akin to a parable





Gitmo MUST be closed! Oh, and our prisons are mostly crowded up with nonviolent drug offenders. Certainly we could find better ways to deal with our drug issues.





They say history is written by the victors
They say we must heed history or repeat it
I have visions of spiraling archetypes
Great warriors, great inventions, simple
living in ecology's eternal change



We seem to like the fighting just fine. It's the day-to-day keeping freedom as a value we prize and work to protect that needs some serious advocacy.

It is a difficult path between rights. We don't want people incarcerated simply for possibly threatening behavior which may never result in harm. We don't want to allow people to go around making threats which may result in harm without restraint. Possibly there ought to be a different kind of mediation system, different from a criminal justice system, for airing of grievances and giving oversight that could keep hostilities from getting out of hand.

The United States was founded as a liberal nation, a great experiment to put into practical use the Enlightenment ideas of the nobility and sovereignty of man. The Bill of Rights were specifically about limiting the scope of government's rule over the individual. Democracy is about rule by the will of the people, but not necessarily strict majority rule. The point is that all of the people be represented and none have our freedoms expediently dismissed.





I have found (if I can make myself) that turning on some evocative music and letting go into dancing will take me to another place where creative ideas flow.





It is quite sad, tragic, that many older people would want to die out of probably a combination of pain, loneliness, feeling useless or at least that they have too little left to give. It is sad and tragic that people have to endure excruciating pain knowing that they will soon, but not soon enough, be dead. It is even more sad and tragic when people endure long horrid years of suffering. We know there are ways to ease pain that often are not effectively administered or sometimes considered.

I believe the choice to end one's own death is a right. As for assisting, perhaps that needs to be clarified. I can certainly see providing lethal poison where the person desiring to kill themselves can reach it. If someone is truly braindead, well, they're dead. It becomes necessary for the living to make appropriate arrangements for the remains. Meanwhile, we do need to arrange for others to know at what point we have decided we no longer want medical care if and when that becomes an issue.





A world of words can be a refuge
holding back, through, outcast deluge
emotional wreckage of incredulous (to the merely weird or mostly indulged)
not because you're of a color or gender or lowered expectation rendered
by those who make the castes
We who watch the normal daily carnage, set back aghast
Deciding not to whimper, but to take up arms, to attack
against the slings and arrows and outright lies by those who
despise based only on their twisted malformation of the facts
When we arise, armed words in hand to demand our inauguration,
our command of all the nation
When we arise, casting off our shackles of dismay
That will be the day
foretold in fables, the turning of the tables,
the day of reckoning
Tell me you will sing
as loudly as I





he bows

flourishing with sudden shyness

unpenned emotion





In my opinion, people get so fired up about governmental interference with their firearms because they see the 2nd Amendment as their guarantee of being able to rise up against unjust governmental authorities. If they were only interested in hunting/protecting their families and themselves from criminals with guns/collecting/sport shooting and such, their would be no need for this fierce opposition to what we may see as reasonable restrictions. Personally, I have always advocated the kinds of restrictions be placed on gun use as are placed on the operating of those dangerous automobiles we so love in terms of licensing following testing. It only seems reasonable to me that someone acquiring an obvious dangerous weapon first show that they know how to operate and maintain it responsibly.

For those who do resist registration for reasons of protection against renegade government, Randy Weaver and David Koresh had plenty of weapons. It could never be enough to fight off the full power of the US. We will have to come up with more effective means to prevent/overthrow government tyranny than armed combat.





Torchwood is a very slick, risqué, funny in that British offhand way like Dr. Who from whence it sprang, scifi series on BBC America (and presumably BBC Britain). Kind of a CSI meets The Avengers meets a rift in the time-space continuum, in Cardiff.





I can see a story
of a world under the sea
of a woman under illusion
that she is living this modernity
we call civilization
busy make a buck and buy
keep churning, never looking backward
to the natural magic that
continually creates us





Man is a happiness seeking animal. Woman has to clean up the mess.





I can't take aspirin without nasty side-effects. None of the otc pain medications do anything for pain for me, but leave me how-do-i-describe groggy/cloudy/molasses-like in brain/body instructions/unable to actually function

It is well known that drugs affect different people differently.





Judges show blatant bias continually. They are the judge. They rule in their courtroom. That's why we have the appellate system, the Supreme Court, and reporters, students, community leaders and others often complaining.





Religion is not fundamentally about spirituality. It is a social construct to keep members of a tribe in line with tribal interests.





I think what people forget in their rush to be holier than the norm is that "enlightenment" is not the goal, merely a signpost. The goal is to feel whole and at home in one's life.





I think it comes down to checking out the individual ideologue's conscience: do you believe in the right to life, or the right to murder? Yeah, yeah, innocent fetus vs. big, bad horribly conflicted mom making an agonized decision based on quite serious considerations and the underpaid, over-worked, highly harassed medical professionals who earnestly work to do their best for their patients -- so you get to deliver "justice" as homicide because you are on the side of the angels rather than the side of God's gift of human reason? See, it's not the Christians, but those who use scripture to worship Satan that held the soul of this murderer.

Yes, they are terrorist extremists. No, they are not Christians in the sense (and what other sense could there be) of following the words and example of the Christ. I know we've all heard that old saw about Satan quoting scripture to His own end. There really are Satanists among us, exacting blood sacrifice and scapegoating whoever they perceive as unholy.

In a perfect world the rights of mother and child would be balanced, each respected, valued and cherished by society which requires them for its very existence.

It is important for the debate to be in the open where we can all see regress, progress, festering wounds before they become lethal. Don't whisper. On the other hand, what we need no more of (been there, done that, have plenty thank you) is angry diatribe, hatefilled warmongering, blasting emotions into situations that are already fraught and frightening thank you.

I understand the frustration and anxiety that leads to a desire to go to extremes in the interest of sincere convictions. As a protestor against the Vietnam War in my teens, I strongly sympathized with the violent rhetoric of the Weather Underground in defense of innocents being outrageously murdered. Note: I never killed nor promoted the murder of anyone.





The cure for bad speech is more speech. We need to stay alert and take evil-speakers, death-mongerers to task with facts.

First they undermined the media, but as we weren't media we did nothing.





People bully because they think they can get away with it. You tell 'em; out 'em; keep them from scurrying back into their hideyholes under the sink (or is that stink).





It's amazing to me that people who are not even aware of the meaning of the words they throw about as epithets have the audacity to accuse those they erroneously call "liberals" of not thinking for themselves.

You see, those who wrap themselves in a flag banner and insist we must follow their revealed code to love America actually are the ones who hate our freedom. It is great to them that people fight and die, as long as we're on top; but they would (and sometimes do) be even happier to kill those of us who actually live a belief in liberty. They hate "liberals" who love our country's ideals and work to keep them, because they are "conservatives" who must obey and be obeyed.





Some believe in happiness. Some believe in murder. Some believe in a holy redeemer who does your murders for you. Yet, we are each happy or not every day, unless, of course, we so sincerely believe we are happy (or not) that nothing else can get in the way, including other beliefs.





you do not realize that "true desire" is true to the individual's deepest self -- not those intermediary "selves" that mistake their desires for the desires they feel are expected. Or, if you postulate a true desire that is not apt to the natural talents of the individual, then, if that desire is true and abiding, the individual certainly can move their lives in the direction to find what is needed to attain that desire.





Believing in oneself is more about knowing oneself, becoming well-acquainted in a deep loving relationship, therefore knowing what is truly meaningful to oneself. Once we know, love and understand our true desires, we can do that which we then set our minds upon, because what we set our minds upon is what we can best do.





Maybe we could usefully speak of "Ego" and "ego." The fully functioning human organism makes use of the Ego, the "I" in internal conversation, the "me" we relate to when acted upon, the "individual person" living out personal life that includes inner and outer relationships. The "ego" would designate that psychological sham syndrome people develop when their Egos are maligned to the point that they don't really relate to anyone.

Perhaps this "spontaneous enlightenment" is what Maslow called peak experience, aha moments when the veil of ignorance is lifted. Imho, not to be bragged about, but enjoyed and learned from.

it's not just "Christians" who are arrogant usurpers of divinity. In fact, the real followers of the teachings of the Christ are generally wonderfully fine folk. I tend to see those "evil" Christians as Satanists, using scripture to worship the evicted angel who was punished for the great sin of hubris.



Dance! The best stress-buster is physical activity; the best physical activity is the most enjoyable. Also, the attendant music is great for getting you back in tune.





I've heard every time a door closes, a window opens so you can jump out. Probably, though, there are a great many doors, open, closed, locked, easily permeable, invisible, temporary. The point is not the door, but where you are going. Which doors matter to you?





You can so easily believe without knowledge at all. You certainly can think with no knowledge at all. But, thinking is what we do when we are examining what we perceive. Believing is what we do when we have already accepted, with or without evidence. Knowledge is in the same house as thinking, not believing.





Astrology is a study ever so much more complex sun signs. It is also not a belief. It is a philosophical practice, a way of describing and analyzing, a theoretical tool.





Hell is creation of the horrors only humans can devise





I had an idea awhile back, not yet gotten beyond that stage, to put together and send out by email an "art for the day" or possibly week, or whatever seemed most desirable, of work by different artists who would subscribe to be part of the service for people who subscribe to get the mailings.





words are not bad

they are tools which get used by people





people don't seem to understand that it is not "New Age nonsense" -- there is a very real body/mind intertwining. Behaviors which we tend to think of as mind based are correlated directly with physical changes in the body. Forces physically affecting the body are interpreted and acted upon by the mind. It is not either/or or even cause/effect but both together every step of the way.





It occurred to me (while watching one of those ubiquitous pharmaceutical ads on tv) that we are living in this time of ironic dichotomy where big business sells us whatever the market will possibly bear of dangerous, addictive, psychoactive substances under the auspices of treating disease while vast numbers of the underclass get vilified, potential lives for themselves and their families destroyed, for self-medicating with (often less dangerous) substances.





A crisis of ineffable beauty
resolved into a painted sky
Cloud Wolf grins





It is unfortunate for many families that their time together is severely limited by responsibilities. For those parents who have to work many hours away from their children to provide material necessities, though you regret the time away, there are opportunities. The important part of parenting is to be there internally for the child in that they know you adore, respect and value them. When you are with them, LISTEN, reflect, show them who you are and who they are to you.





I have found George Soros to be quite intelligent, a creative and practical analyst, and well worth listening to.





I know that it is done, finding perfect peace and contentment. It is a truly wonderful feeling, relaxing all tension, making the ride completely smooth, for a time, for a period of rest and re-creation. I don't think it is a desirable state to stay in though, except at the place of eternal rest.





it's a lot easier to have liberty when you are alive.





Marijuana is not addictive, except in the way that any habit can be. Bi-polar Mood Disorder can be better dealt with through cognitive-behavioral type therapies than medication. It's a matter of reframing your energy fluctuations in a way that becomes useful rather than limiting. Blaming can be a way to avoid useful action toward finding better solutions.





We are all changing all the time. We look to the crowd to find the security of the same. Mirrors merely show us what we expect to see. Look, inside, all around, throughout eternity. Feel the change. Dance it into the change you want to be.





Fabulous eccentricities
Folies a deux in extended metaphor
Rolling through grecian fields of "nevermore"
daintily to dine on word salad
and broken dreams





I think the point is that all kids are special. We have to give them the opportunity to find and sing out with their voices.





Oh Holy DSM
Read for me my fate
I am not as your God of normalcy
would approve
for my symptoms are foretold
within your pages
so diseased I must be
There is no other way to see me
like, perhaps, a complicated being
working my way through the intricacies