markern

Well China is now a capitalist country. A capitalist country with many types of state intervention but a capitalist country none the less. You seem to have the mistaken belief that capitalism equals freedom. Chile, Taiwan, Singapore and Spain are all countries that in the past were capitalist but also dictatorships. They were all much more capitalist than Sweeden for example but much less democratic. In general, most of the bad guy dictators the west supported during the cold war were running capitalist dictatorships. I don`t find these much better than the communist dictatorships the Soviets supported during the cold war. Capitalist dictatorships were and still are abundant. Now as I have said I don`t think the US is THAT BAD or especially bad at all. I just think a model with a moderate increase in income redistribution and a higher level of state welfare services such as government paid health care is a good and humane idea. I am going to link in some interesting rankings about the US here and I do that only to counter the myths many americans and people in this thread seem to have about their level of freedom and democracy, about the connection between capitalism, democracy and freedom, and about what the situation actually is in the rest of the world. American citizens are, with some very impressive exceptions, unusually uninformed about what the state of affairs is outside their own borders. When I am in the US I find it hard to find any news about foreign countries except for perhaps THE most important international story. Average newspapers hardly have any international news at all. In Europe they actually do. This is the wrong kind of navel gazing. Now read this and get some bloody perspective: THe Economist, a well respected magazine that strongly believes in capitalism with the least amount of state intervention, does rankings of which countries are the most democratic. The US comes in 18th!!!! place. COuntries with large welfare states, something which the editors of the Economists DO NOT like, such as the scandinavian countries, all score much better than the US. The Economist bases its ratings on: civil liberties, conduct of elections, media freedom, participation, public opinion, functioning government, corruption, and stability So much for the link between level of a free market and democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Ranking_of_2008 Reporters without borders annually rate countries according to their level of press freedom. Here the US comes in as number twenty. Again beaten by the evil socialist states of Scandinavia which come out as the freest. Funnily Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are also rated as having larger press freedom then the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index THe Economist also rates countries based on how economically free they are. Even here the US comes in behind Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I am including this as you also seem to be under the illusion that the US has the highest level of economic freedom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

Soviet engineering schools were of far greater quality than the engineering schools in several Western European countries at the time. Did that make the Soviet Union a good place or much good at all?

What more answers do you need? If you do then argue specifically why my response was wrong/insufficient. I might add that under apartheid many black africans from countries neighboring South Africa immigrated to South Africa (illegally for the most part I presume). THis was used as an argument by the white supremacists that South Africa was good for the blacks and that obviously most had to be happy with the state of affairs. Can you see were the fault in this argument was?

Not sure if this is the same thing but here is something called low latent inhibition that I think I have. Most people when they perceive something new in the environment or a sensation or a new thought after some time just disregard the new thing. For example after some time most people will get used to a foul smell and not smell it much more. Or when someone enters a room they will be a lot more perceptive of their environment and look at the walls and the furniture much more then normal but then after some time stop being more focused than normal. People with low latent inhibition do not as quickly stop caring about sensory input. They will frequently stay longer with the new input and will often take a huge amount of time until they feel they have felt and reflected enough about something to just let it fade. They will also frequently start becoming aware again of the stuff they have let fade into the background and feel and think about it again. It might be kinda like being on pot were all sensations overload you and everything is reconsidered. In people with low IQ low latent inhibition is strongly associated with mental illness. In people with high IQ it is associated with high creativity. According to the Harvard scientists that did the study that found these correlations a high IQ probably helps people to sort out the immense pressure of information they are bombarded with because of the LLI. With a high IQ you not only manage to sort out and process the constant pressure of bombardment and reevaluation of input but it also leads to creativity because what is normally taken for granted is not by these individuals and their high IQs help them get something useful out of the different perspective and extra information. THose with low IQs will not be able to handle the load and can be swept away into psychosis or less serious mental disorders. I see a lot of this in myself. I can not help but feel bombarded with either minute sensations or with thought and it is always impossible for me to lay something permanently at rest. A friend of mine who come over might disregard the paint on my walls after a few minutes but I will still be drawn to looking at it and maybe to some extent reflecting on it despite seeing the damn paint everyday. I find meditation to be the only thing that helps balance this out. Increased concentration allows me to keep many impulses in my mind at the same time without feeling overloaded. This would be a similar effect as that of having a high IQ. ANother helpfull aspect of meditation is that it helps me have all the clutter in my mind without being absorbed by it. It can be there but not cause trouble. A third way is that I can learn to be more one pointed. I can learn to disregard if I want to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_inhibition

Nice post:)

THe authentic man stuff looked like something that could be good for you Non.

Someone once told me that America is a little bit uneven so everything that is not bolted down slides to California.

Obviously if you come from living on the border of starvation a lot of places seem better than at home. Also, Europe is flooded with immigrants. Anyway, no one is saying america is THAT BAD. We are just saying there are real alternatives other than communism and that some of those might be better. Being better does not have to mean the difference between night and day but an improvement.

Sure but try working full time at Mcdonalds and a job at night and still not being able to afford health insurance for your children, then report back how fun it was. You should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed

No of course not but if you compare with for example Sweden you have a much larger percentage of people who are very poor, people who have to work two jobs to make ends meet, people who are homeless, people who are in prison, people who is not offered proper health care by the state and can not afford it themselves. THis is combined with a large middle and upper middle class were especially the upper middle class are better of materially than the swedish middle class in that their house is bigger and they have a car that is larger etc but I don`t find much benefit either in economic growth that benefits primarily the upper middle class and upper class as long as none of it benefits the poor.

If you look at GDP in Europe over the last decades it has grown almost as much as in the US. Hence the welfare system has not at all created the economic disaster FOX news would argue that it would. There can be plenty of reasons why the US ahs done slightly better. THere are advantages to being a larger economy, there are advantages to being the largest economic and military power in terms of negotiating favourable terms for yourself, the US has a younger population, more skilled immigrants etc. Primarily I think the main reason is that you work more hours a year. Not that more people work necessarily (which the welfare is bad argument would imply) but that people who do work choose to or have to work fewer hours. I think thats a good thing. You get more time to spend with your family for example. Anyway, little to none of the growth in the US economy has, as it was repeatedly promised it would, trickled down to the poorest. THey are largely no better of than 30 years ago. So, even IF it was the case that the US model was economically more efficient I find it irrelevant as long as the only one who benefits from that are the richest. Interestingly enough the difference in the long term unemployment rates between the US and Europe is explained largely by your much larger prison population. It has been written quite a lot about you should look it up as it makes for funny but tragic reading. Anyway, thats it for me I have no interest in partaking in a lengthy debate about any of this I just thought someone should mention the fact that a discussion of pure capitalism vs communism largely misses out on how a lot of countries in the rest of the world is run. Your neighbour Canada for example of such a successful compromise.

Were did I say that? Although it was your housing bubble though and you are still indebting yourself so much that you might very well be the next Greece if China and other countries in the world stops artificially inflating the US economy by borrowing it money. Discussing the merits of two different systems based on the current economic climate and not a longer term assessment is just silly anyway.

Plenty European countries are doing fine. THe US has huge economic difficulties, unemployment at around 10% and a debt at a level that could cripple it amongst other things.

You can have plenty of social benefits without people loosing the will to work. Plenty of European countries have loads of social benefits and still a higher productivity per hour than the US, although people usually work fewer hours which I think is a good thing. You can get into trouble if unemployment benefits are so high that there is little or no money gained by actually getting employed. You just have too avoid that and otherwise people do work. In Norway for example where benefits are very generous unemployment are frequently at the lowest possible level. What is generally considered by many in the US to be communist level social benefits and state involvement (total bullshit but thats how many see it) have existed in Europe for decades without leading to any of the supposed disasters. From a happiness point of view researchers have documented thouroughly that beyond a certain, quite low, income level there are almost no increased happiness from earning more money by aquiring the money itself. Almost the only thing that matters above this level is how you perceive yourself to be doing financially with regards to other people. THis is the main reason the average level of happiness, to the extent it can be measured, has not risen in accordance with increased wealth in most industrialized countries the last 50 years. So from a happiness point of view what really matters is that you avoid poverty below a certain level. If it is possible to earn 100 000 dollars as a doctor or 1000 000 as a doctor has almost nothing to say. So having a system that ensures people don`t have to work two jobs to make ends meet, that people don`t become homeless no matter what etc. but that does not give as high income oportunities as a system were there is much more poverty, homelessness etc. but were you can earn twice as much if you are a CEO seems a lot better to me. Even if according to an abstract notion of fairness you do view it as important that the CEO can get rewarded with double what he is today, from a happiness point of view it is more or less meaningless.

THanks a lot for a very informative reply Shaktimamma! Would "physicalising" the energy also help slow things a bit? I have read many people advice rather hard physical labour, weights and stuff because the energy gets pulled into the muscles (and bones?) and gets more physical, sort of, and that is not such a pain in the ass. I have sometimes myself done bodyscanning sessions were I choose to focus on the very physical muscular sensations to the exclusion of sensations of energy and I have found that energy then tends to disappear to a large extent. I am guessing I am moving from the energetic body to the physical body and find comfort in that.

Could you get to a bagua workshop somehow. Even if you don`t have teacher at hand learning in workshops from time to time would help a lot. You could also videotape your practice and post it somewhere online and link to it here in a post and ask bagua people here to comment on your moves.

I think you should start practicing some sort of qigong to build up your health and balance things out.

Hi Shaktimama! Are there anyway one can slow things down while continuing to practice? I cam a cross a guy on a forum that has attained first path through vipassana some time after getting kundalini. His problem is that although he feels he needs to ground and do some other things too balance himself out, anything he does seems to accelerate a process of "purification", or whatever you want to call it, that in it self is a huge problem. So although orbit, standing, secret smile etc. could be good in many ways, he feels he needs something that actually slows the process. Is that at all possible? He even stopped all practices for a month but it did not really slow down much.

I think bagua and tai chi are way too complicated to learn from a DVD. Even though I learn tai chi from a teacher it will take ages for me to really start to move correctly. There are plety of very simple qigong sets that can be learnt from DVD though. Primordial qigong is very powerful, very balancing, grounding and easy to learn. It also moves you in a circle sort of so maybe it will have some of what atracts you to bagua. Maybe in your situation with kundalini this form is not what you need as it can be quite powerfull but it is very balancing and especially balances heaven and earth so it might also be very good for you.

When people go with what they feel instead of the intellectual lens what we get is this crap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_%28conspiracy_theory%29 Which includes a bunch of not only irrational but dangerous belief systems. I am a strong beliver there are are situations were feelings are better to go by then intellect, the book Blink has interesting perspectives on that, but with regards to whether or not there is a secret conspiracy that is well aware that armagedon is approaching going by what you feel is a horrible idea. And what exactly would the something feels horribly wrong point to. That there is also a secret military base? THat it is part of a conspiracy? "Talk about "through the lens", it seems to me the desire to not believe something is as potent as the desire to believe something. " Sure, I agree that is often the case. But in this instance!!!??? The level of intellectual dishonesty and delusion at that site is incredible and if you cared to check up what has been pointed out to you would see that instantly. Or do you just "feel" that Anna Lind was murdered by the NWO and that the ridiculous 32 000 dinosaur artifacts are real so you do not need to relate to facts?

cogmed.com is solidly proven to improve your working memory. Two months might be a litle short time but should still lead to a fair improvement. Working memory is key for all learning and thinking skills. You would have to spend about 20-30 min or so a day on it to get good effect. There is a similar thing you can get on your iphone for free I think that there also have been done some preliminary studies on. However, there is of course the dilema that spending time on this takes away time and energy from learning what you actually need to learn. Not sure what would be the best option. Do you do meditation or breathing exercises or some such stuff. THat could help a lot for learning, memory concentration and relaxation and energy levels. If you do such stuff one usefull thing I learnt from Mantak Chia is that when you realy sink your mind and energy to the dan tien you sort of save energy because any process that involves the lower dan tien is done with a lot less use of energy then when the same process is done with the head. So when you sink down and do as much as possible from your gut/center/dan tien then you will save a lot of energy that will give you more energy for those activities that actually needs to be done by the head such as logical thinking. I first noticed this myself doing pilates. It realy gets you down into your abdomen and that gives my head more energy. Rest and sleep is key for learning. Meditation beely breathing or similar of course helps here. Yoga Nidra is superb for this. Consider taking a few massages to reduce stress and help you rejuvenate. Also you mgiht do acupunture to give boost energy levels and strengthen your kidneys to help your memory.

He did not say that he did not know the Anna Lind murder was connected or not in what he wrote. I have only read what was written not seen the movie so although he might have said that there, in his writing he did not and implied as strongly as possible that it was. By the way her statements are no more critical of the Bush government etc. than a huge amount of key european politicians. Plenty of them were more powerfully placed. The dinosaur stuff from Mexico is also a hoax. HTe guy that found them actually paid some poor locals money for each such dinosour they could find for him. He ended up with 32 000 . I will post the links another day as I have to dig them up again and can`t be bothered today. Have a look at this basic overview of the New World Order conspiracies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_%28conspiracy_theory%29 You can probably divide them into about ten main groups that totally contradict each other. All of those again have around ten sub groups which also contradict each other. All of them are absolutely certain they have EVIDENCE that the "powers to be" or "they" consist of such and such and want this or that. They all of course use sources and references and critical thinking up to the highest academic standards . Kinda funny seeing new agers taking over conspiracy theories that have traditionally been reserved for the extreme right such as the federal exchange nonsense. Has anyone been in Berlin? Look at the picture of the tower with the cross in the ninth row of pictures. http://www.german-architecture.info/BER-032.htm In the DDR they tried to eradicate religion as much as possible but still built this structure that reflects a perfect christian cross because of the sun so the result was the most prominent display of a christian cross you could get. WHat I was told when I was in Berlin was that the christian architect made it to be so and fooled the government but I will have to check that part. Anyway if it was a miraculous accident or if it was an ingenious plot by the architect this beats the swastika and penis at Denver airport hands down. And it shows that either the architect can put in such stuff for fun or it can happen by accident. Unless of course you belive that the DDR was secretly plotting to spread christianity at the same time they were working to eradicate it. Anyway why would the government or anyone other than members of a fertility cult or an architect having fun design stuff like this to look like a penis from the sky Furthermore the amount they spent over budget wouldn`t scare anyone that are used to Norwegian oil platforms which has historically sometimes gone scandalously over budget. It shouldn`t really surprise anyone that has followed politics to a modest degree as going over budget to such a degree happens all the time. Other airports and public projects have also been built that failed completely at calculating the actual amount of usage either in terms of too little or too much use. Anyway, I have no problem imagining the US government building a huge civil airport in a mountain region to be used for military purposes in times of war or natural disaster. THat obviously means it would be built in ways that are not completely rational from a civil users perspective. All governments have crisis plans for how to use civil structures in the time of war and many have of course been built for dual purpose. Of course one prefers to keep the military part as secret as possible in most cases as you don`t want to give more information to your enemies then you need to. The US have been planing for invasion, nuclear war, terror and natural disaster for decades now so of course there will be plenty of secret facilities and and plenty of them secretly dual purpose. THat does not however prove or even imply they are there to welcome extraterrestrials or are there for specifically awaited phropecised comets. The prophecies are kinda scary though and I am glad I read them. But the author of the site is so untrustworthy I feel a much stronger need to see them in the context they were originally written and even to verify they are not just made up then I would usually do. Plenty of what circulates around the internet and that is claimed to be by Nostrodmus is made up for fun but has fooled a lot of people. Especially after september 11 people had a lot of fun making up prophecies that gave strikingly precise predictions but are in none of his books. The author of this site probably fell for all of those hoaxes.

Annah Lindh the swedish minister that was killed was killed by a serbian swedish man that had been a psyciatric patient and had previously stabbed his own father with a knife and threeatened and attacked several other people. He was seen killing Annah Lindh by FIFTEEN WITNESSES in the a SHOPPING MAL and he was caught on video by security cameras fleeing. By putting her murder in there and by starting what is written by writting about her resistance to the iraq war and other opositional statemnts and then following it with writing she was murdered it is implied she was killed because of this by this whole grand conspiracy. The CIA or whatnot. Clearly she was not. THe guy who wrote all this have either conciosuly omitted these facts to suport his theories or he is delusional enough to have pushed it out of his mind which, in such a case, is very very well done. Not a very trustworthy source or theorist I would say. Also the crystal skull he writes about is a well known fraud. I saw an hour long documentary about it. Had he cared about truth rather than his theories he would have easily found this out. I wonder what grade I would have gotten if I had done this bad research for a paper in middle school?