redcairo

Darkness is a lot more than that. Being over-literalist about language doesn't make you accurately semantic Karl, it makes you myopically obtuse about a great deal of human experience and concept that can only be described with words designed for the physical. I said it that way so you could make fun of myopic referring to vision also. :-) RC

I like that! Kinda like "easy listening funk" :-) RC

Oh yeah I almost forgot What does as mosque have to do with geography in Germany? And even if it did (e.g. here are the buildings common to the region over there which is nowhere near here...) surely the "geography" portion would not require being inside the mosque. Which doesn't seem like it would hurt anybody, honestly. But did they send the kids to all the other religious buildings and make them practice praying in their format too? I realize the dogooders (not a compliment) in Germany are still trying to make up for a brief but horrific period in their history, but really the country has a lot of issues with middle eastern immigrants and it seems like that whole choice of outing is just begging to cause some controversy. Of course, the philosophy propounded in a mosque might be that they could enslave you, subvert your government, and/or kill you, but if your philosophy is that you'd rather not have your kid visit a mosque, you are the bad guy, LOL. RC

I'm a little confused by why even in high school you're not allowed to have a 'quiet time for prayer' (at best you can suggest a moment of thought) but you can have small children doing religious stuff like that? I don't really care, personally, but it seems rather inconsistent. I do utterly agree that blaming any race (like jews) for stuff is pretty ridiculous. On the other hand there are times when a given race actually does dominate a given group of people (all the citrus pickers I knew were from Mexico, for example) and if you are complaining about those people (the citrus pickers) it's pretty difficult to separate it from race as a result. Obviously it's best to refer to the people ("bankers" if that's the gripe) and not the race ("jewish bankers" if that's the claim) -- that is technically racist, not because it might be wrong in some cases, but because plenty of jews are poor, certainly not all are bankers, and there's rich bankers who are not jews. So at best it's simply inaccurately over-generalized. At worst it is leveraging one issue (economic issues) for another (racial) which seems to have some agenda/motive hard to understand if it's not racism. * A very long time ago, I got a second job at a 7-11 convenience store. The guy who owned it prided himself on having only local, EFL, ridiculously overqualified employees (my main coworker had an advanced physics degree. Long story) and he talked me into it when I was telling him about how insanely bored I was in my very solitary job. (He was a psych major. I should have known better than to get myself into that conversation!) I worked for him for six months, two nights a week the 6-2am shift, which was one of the most interesting and educational experiences of my life. Not that I hadn't done retail (food) work when young, but I had a different perspective when a bit older (~22 then). Anyway the day I started, two employees were training me on various details and one of them said, "Watch out for the black guys. They steal." The other agreed, and they went on in conversation like it was nothing. I just flipped out. Mind you at that point one of my best friends in the world for a few years was from Nigeria, I have people in my family who happen to be black or half black, and I was so offended it was ridiculous. I literally just told them off, fiercely, and every other employee and the boss heard about it after from them (and he heard about it from me, when I told him it was unprofessional and I'd better never hear it again). So as it turns out there is always a theft issue in such stores but most of it either comes in individuals you don't see, or the individuals who will just grab a case of beer and walk right out the door, and only in one case did theft come predictably from a 'group' of people. And it just happened to be a group of locals who generally dressed and behaved about the same as each other... and who happened to be black. By the time I was leaving, training someone else, I actually heard myself say, "Oh, and watch the group of black guys that come in. They steal." Swear, I heard myself and almost had a heart attack. Then I realized, that really sums up most the problem with prejudice: most is not racial, it is CULTURAL, it is merely that the people fitting that cultural thing "happen to be recognizable by" their race. I hastened to assure this person I did not mean ALL people of that race, only a specific group that would come in 4-6 guys at a time, so to look for that. I was ashamed and yet I knew I was accurate and yet, it was just horrible anyway. Me of all people. I'm like 15 nationalities (depending on which family members I believe), and my family is like a walking united colors of benetton ad... I'm the last person on earth who should have any racial bias. Bob, the owner, told me when I joined him I was a bleeding heart liberal and when I left I was a conservative army general, lol. Working on the border between HUD/SSI/Welfare neighborhood and middle to upper middle class was a trip -- kind of polarities -- I made friends with many people in the neighborhood behind the store, several kids, and after a first hand look at people growing up on poprocks, coke and chips and sometimes hot dogs, I no longer wondered why some people say the ghetto is often 'uneducable' -- biologically you gotta have proper nutrients for brain and nervous system development, just for a place to start. All the people who just decided around 10th grade+ to get pregnant and leave school, when they could have college paid, and scores padded no less, is just kind of sickening, especially when birth control is FREE. It really changed my perspective on a lot of things. I was a hippy of sympathy but there's nothing like being close up to a lot of this stuff to make you think hard about why things are the way they are. You can give people food stamps but you can't make them buy food at a more affordable grocery store instead of chips and coke at an (overpriced) convenience store they feed their infants and toddlers and kids instead. You can try to support everyone, but when one group of people are out working at McD even though they hate it and are embarrassed about it but they need money to live, and another group of people for the most part are too proud to work retail, and won't even bother to take the free schooling and more, it's hard to be sympathetic when people just will not work, will not school, then make lame excuses about how everything is someone else's fault, it's Da Man. What is most enraging -- and I feel this 'on behalf' particularly of racial minorities, despite that all my races blend to a generically mostly-white plain-wrap result -- is that all the rhetoric that makes them victims with sympathy is the most devastatingly destructive thing ever. This would be easy to test but anybody who has worked with people let alone children knows the result in advance. Take two classrooms of kids. One, tell them that most people in the school are against them. And it's SO unfair. And nobody understands. And there is just such unfairness everywhere. Then tell the other class of kids that there is often prejudice against them, but you know what, they are so rocking that they are going to do awesomely, kick ass, and show those bozos who's boss. The first group is going to be an abysmal result. The second group is going to rock. Basically -- back to jews -- I think this is one of the reasons why as a generality (VERY general only), the jews throughout time have often done very well in any culture, economically (the tendency of many nations to eventually want to kill them is probably not accidental given human response to all things 'money and power' and their doing so well with it, but since this is the daobums I will mention that the whole chosen people philosophy is the most fundamentally racist thing possible so it's possible to some degree that energy generated is reflecting) -- basically, their underlying religious belief about being the chosen people, and a microculture that (like immigrant asians I have known, but perhaps less so) often feels they have something to live up to, is excellent for turning out a person who, at the least, TRIES. If surrounded by a culture of people many of whom don't, actually, "try" much if at all, it's natural to expect that kind of cultural effect would result in people who, comparatively, often moved ahead of others. This is not a negative bias, it's actually a bit of an admiration, but I can see how the situational result from the outside could be perceived in the negative. If we admit this is the issue with some cultures (e.g. the vietnamese immigrants) (who I had in school and one of whom as an adult became one of my closest friends) having effects that result in more successful kids, I'm not sure why nobody ever seems to bring it up about the jews since their results are patently known, I'm not sure if it's because it's a religious belief, or because everyone is so afraid it will seem biased, given the previous bias in Germany being greatly marketed regarding "jewish bankers." (Riiiiiight. So Jewish Bankers were the problem, which is why they had to kill millions of jewish people who were, I'm pretty sure, not bankers or even wealthy most the time. Impeccable logic, sigh.) I once watched a movie about time being used as income. Everyone began with the same amount. You couldn't just give it to your kids if you had a lot of it. And yet, there was still rich and poor. It was a terrible movie in many ways (I mean quality wise) but it was really good food for thought for me for a long time. Guess it qualifies as sci fi. I cannot find the title to share it because that stupid movie "In Time" is polluting the search engine results to such a degree no matter if trying to omit it. Cillian Murphy was the only decent acting in that whole show. I think I've completely lost topical focus so I'm going to shut up now. :-) Time to sleep. RC

Look, there is something I think Buchanan is right about -- that's novel. :-) I saw this TIME cover that suggested Putin was going to question the legitimacy of the election, and saying don't believe him -- and I thought to myself, how perfect. They know a lot of people including Trump are likely to question results when HC wins. But they can't just question Trump directly at the point when they made that cover. But they can get their warning out, their argument for it out, AND as a special bonus get in a dig at Putin. Who keeps making all our politicians look bad in pretty much every single public appearances the man has. I agree with PB that media bias and rigged elections are connected because, obviously, the same powers actually manage both of them. Of course people question the legitimacy of elections. If the entire 'system' is overtly, not even secretly, hostile to a certain outcome, and the outcome is a result of something "invisibly" electronic -- let alone superdelegates and the electoral college -- nobody will ever trust that unless it has the result they want. "The media today is whatever you want it to be." That interviewer thinks everyone is a moron -- even the libs admit that 90% of all media is owned by six megacorporations. People like Trump because they hate the system. Trump is an offensive bozo -- nobody would like him if it weren't for him saying so many things that are ridiculously true. The media bought Obama's election -- both of them. The media will ensure the 'appropriate' person (to the primary money in the world) is in that chair. We should be glad. If DT won, someone (funded or arranged by the opposition) would probably shoot him, then someone would use it for more power to restrict firearms from law-abiding citizens. RC

You don't need to quote an entire post to respond. It interferes with the flow of a forum. Just a note. Yeah I once had a guy ask me for permission for something, and it wasn't even a big thing. I was horrified. First because I was mortified-embarrassed ... I didn't want to have a conversation about it ("Yes, please touch my breast!" for godssakes) and second because just his asking totally put me off. Like if you can't tell from my responses... and if you're that insecure... and if you feel you need my permission in THAT overt a manner -- like I'm your mother... -- gah! Sneak one from the cookie jar dude, the cookie jar loves your enthusiasm, and it will scoot away or squeak if it doesn't. If you haven't the courage for even that, you are just not for me! The whole permission thing for me is likely to stop everything and utterly. (Unless it's just all out up front. "I like you. Can we have sex?" Never had a guy ask that -- and have had a very conservative life, so hardly any dating expert -- but I think if I liked him and he did, I might just say yes. Richard Feynman talked about an experience like that once -- having the courage to just up and ask a woman he met one evening and how astonished he was she said yes.) Re: DT: first - yes, it's a total bias but as far as I am concerned, porn stars and prostitutes waive all rights to say much of anything about sex besides "I am taking him to small claims court because he didn't pay me for it." That is a legit complaint. The rest, the nature of their profession -- and specifically the personality that goes into the profession, and the personality that results as a professional deformation as a result of it, make it difficult to evaluate anything on the sex topic. Back to the point I was originally making above though: The real issue is, why the hell would anybody even give air time, let alone legimate concern, to what "some porn star" said about a KISS in the PAST when the issue is the qualification of a person to be the CEO of the most powerful country on planet earth? Hello? We're worried because he kissed a porn star or in fact anybody -- who cares their profession? How insane is that? And by the way much of the testimony that was read into the congressional record about H/B-C was actually about their extremely active -- separate -- sex lives. And the national guard guys assigned to guard them during those times. And how they turned up dead. You know, like accidentally pulling suddenly off the side of the road and shooting themselves in the back of the head. Or being assigned very suddenly to WACO and being in front and dying in the firefight. You know. Shit happens. Attacking Trump who runs a pageant and is a millionaire because he kissed a porn star goes so far beyond asinine especially comparatively I don't even have a scale for it. He's got plenty of flaws that are the reasons I won't vote for him but that particular thing is just stupid to even get a second of focus. RC

And drove the evil spirits into the swine who drowned themselves. What did the pigs ever do? Oh, and cursed the fig tree for not growing! (That'll teach you to not grow! Now you'll not grow more! So there!) :-) :-) I have nothing against the dude. I'm being light hearted there. Anybody who cares is sometimes irritated, I suspect. I once had a dream where a voice told me that Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. had this in common: that neither were nearly as perfect as everybody assumed they were, and that they both to a great degree lived for what amounted to an ideal and a dream they held. No idea why I dreamed that as I certainly hadn't been thinking of either of them for any reason. RC

About anger. I have felt anger clearly but when I do, it's in the 2nd chakra not the 4th. In fact, one time, sun and I were having a talk about this. I was really mad about something and he told me "the sword is love, not anger." And I got all belligerant and argued that being angry had given me the will to accomplish plenty of stuff (in meditation, I meant, mostly). And he said in those cases I accomplished it and had that will despite my anger, not because of it. And I wanted to know why that was, why he would say that. And 3rd chakra piped up and told me it was because anger is from below him and drains some of his energy downward to feed it, while love is above him and pours some of its energy downward into him. For whatever that's worth -- I am not any kind of enlightened being, and even if my HGA, archetypes and aeons and guides are valid and have decent info, translating it through the usual muck of me might make it worth what yer payin' for it. I think I might have a difficult time allowing myself to feel anger/rage. Maybe lack of allowing that is actually the underlying problem, less a heart issue than a 2nd chakra issue (I have other issues there, significantly, so maybe so). But I feel like those issues are interfering with things at the heart. RC

blue eyed snake wrote: Mine certainly has both polarities, the whole spectrum. I have been dealing with issues of the heart chakra for some years. Physically not just 'spiritually'. I do not actually consider these unrelated because I believe the body/mind/spirit are really just different perspectives on the same group of energy. (Easy to say, harder to live.) I've had a really difficult time of it as I've had some serious blockage there. Not anymore. Kundalini cleaned me out one night, at request, which was quite lovely until the heart attack it inspired right after that of course (just what I asked for, perhaps not what I wanted). In any case, after spending years dying of an undiagnosed genetic heart valve defect, I then spent six months officially dying of it, but got surgery and four months later I am doing really well. It'll take me a couple years to develop the body systems to handle the 70% higher flow of oxygen/nutrients (good grief! no wonder all the docs were so amazed at how 'with it' I was despite those stats), and quite some time to get properly mobile again given three years of nearly bedridden, and to deal with a truly insane amount of edema slow to come off it seems. But it's all good now... it's all getting better though I have a long way to go. On the bright side, as the docs said in real surprise, my arteries etc. in the heart area where all totally clean but for that valve's problems. So at least there's that...! Since then I have not been meditating very well or often I confess, but I am still at a low level working on my heart and I think spontaneously my 'self' is trying to help, because I find that lately a few things from my past keep coming to mind and really bothering me. Stuff I haven't much thought about in eons and seldom think about. They are all things where people I was forced to be close to really, really hurt me. Thing is, I'm a pretty assertive personality and not particularly emotional (that is changing radically as I age but wasn't present until recently). So the number of people that have hurt me seems pretty small, maybe it's not. Most of my relationships have been positive and many life-changingly good. But there are five (I am 51, I've had some time :-) is that a lot?) who were all in job or avocational areas (nothing romantic, but the force of association made us very close and it became personal), and one past relative, so that's over a period of 35 years... even when I try to be objective, I simply cannot understand it. I literally have to invent in my head some hypothesized past life where I must have like, kidnapped and tortured them for years to account for anybody being so pathologically lying, intentionally devious, ongoingly evil and harmful toward me and so very personally, when I was actually so good to them (unusually so in most the cases), and totally believed in them (to the degree of refusing to believe indicators and others telling me of the problems, I gave them the benefit of the doubt). I believe that reality is a reflection (or rather, the actual embodiment of) my energy, so I "assume it's my fault" (I know that is the wrong perspective; it isn't about fault). Clearly, if something happens more than once (which with a list of five, it has, although of course all were very different in detail, though similar in nature in some points) then I am part of that energy, or all of it. I know the energy is rooted in me, and I want to take responsibility for that and not just blame others. But it is so difficult not to feel the emotion now. I think most of it, I felt then and suppressed and repressed, and now that my heart body issues have actually seemed to open me up a lot more to emotion, I am suddenly 'dealing with' emotion stored up over the last 35 years about this. I don't feel like I have anger or rage, but I do think hearing of their as-soon-as-possible and as-painful-as-possible demise would seem well deserved and make the world a better place, so obviously I am not at all clear with myself, I must have those emotions or how could I be that way. Consciously I still just feel horribly abused but mostly just so betrayed, due to my trust, and the surreal injustice of the situations. I realize their known pathologies are part of it. They all had literal extreme-textbook-degree pathologies, but some are the sort that are hidden as part of the pathology itself. Like reactive attachment disorder, which is mostly in kids/teens but does not magically vanish when people turn 18, it just makes them the most terrifying person short of kidnappers and serial killers to be loosed on the adult world. Because nobody ever suspects, why would you, that anybody would behave that way and it is self-protective (and well practiced, and pathological liars are the most utterly convincing people in the world). It's such a horrible condition, a psych friend told me all the mental health places he knows of in this region will take anything in a teen or young adult, suicidal, homicidal, you name it, but will not accept people with RAD. It is just that difficult to deal with and that scary... you can't fix it and it is about 100% certain to cause serious problems with the staff who have to work with them. It's like people are just broken and we should take them out and shoot them for the good of society or something. Another in my life was later diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic but I don't blame myself for that one! -- my father married her when I was young. I know the constant reminders -- I just keep thinking about this stuff when I haven't thought about most of it very often since it happened, some for decades -- is my inner world telling me this is energy in focus now, I need to deal with it. I do have some exercises the sun (an archetype whom I consider a friend) gave me that are kind of like a heart energy kata and help "push out" "stuck energy forms" in the body (in the heart area in this case). He helped me push out one that was very powerful, from a traumatic experience I actually had in meditation/dream nine years prior (can't recall which it was, my dreams are unusually linear and vivid, and I have visions, and I do imaginal meditations, so frankly it's really all part of the same spectrum for me), that had created immense grief and fear in me ever since. As the shape (that had about the size, shape and firmness of a peppermint patty :-)) pushed out of my chest finally, just as it started hitting near the surface, I was totally "In" that energy -- as if that event were happening literally in the moment but condensed in time, and I was literally wailing loudly in reaction to the condensed pain -- but as it passed out of me, then it was gone. Utterly! I still remembered the event but it was "Information, not emotion" after that. Wow. Just totally gone. It was slow though. I know I should do more of that (and I will) to help with these other things but every time I think of any of these people I had those hurts from, my sudden desire to stick a knife in them (still absent the conscious recognition of rage) interferes. :-) I used to think of myself like a jellyfish in air instead of water, and wind and emotion would "blow through me." It was a good exercise for letting go, especially when working to be calm with thoughts and not hold on to things... not so good at that now... and these things just trigger me. I fall into daydreams where oops. They accidentally die horribly. Haha! Too bad! (mwahahahaha) So far it's just not ending well for my enlightenment, suffice to say... :-( Any exercises besides "just let it go" -- obvious, but obviously not easy for me -- I'd be happy to hear from anybody. RC

Hi Bindi, ...maybe. I'm no expert at anything, but in my own experience, it's more like a sort of shallow spiral upward, where every spiral you gain another odd %, except, within that spiral, there are tons of places where you are 'missing spots' and some where you have more than one layer in some little spot. By the time you get a little ways up, which you (I mean me) may think is progress but is probably infintesimal LOL, from the top down it probably looks less like anything opaque or a road than it does a very low % array of white noise, interspersed with spots all over that run the spectrum from higher than average level to utterly empty. I run into the same things over and over and over again, but it always seems like "a new level of understanding." A new level of the spiral. Which reminds me of one of my favorite paintings, "Modern Shalott" by John Stephens: I loved that pic partly because I had once had a deep dream where (to summarize greatly) I was cared for by a part of my larger-soul working as a medical guy, in a cave up high, then run down a winding path in a rickshaw by another part (my twin/mate), then put in a small boat with my hands crossed on my chest and sent down a river. I loved the symbolism of that later when I thought about it! This pic made me think of it. RC

The ref to the article about "listening to a Trump supporter" was really good, thanks for that. Sadly I forgot to click thanks and now it's pages back there somewhere. I couldn't read the whole thread. I'd leap from a ledge if I had to, on this topic. I posted elsewhere my feelings (a rant about why I am NOT voting). Anyway, a few thoughts. 1 - If we removed from history every leader who was a bonehead for sexual, racial, political, or other reasons (there are so many to choose from in life) we'd have probably like two people left. So you know, there is some degree of "comparative consideration" that ought to take place here. This is not some exceptional thing we should be shocked about -- it is the overwhelming NORM. Gary Hart anybody?? And nobody, even the people I like BEST, is free of character flaws and some of those flaws are deep (Schwarzenneger) and some of those flaws are horrible and criminal (Cosby) and damn it, those people are so good in so many OTHER ways that it has left me grieving and ambivalent. There is a saying, something like, when the divine light shines through a person, it magnifies ALL their patterns. Not just the good ones. That's what this makes me think of sometimes. 2 - It is a testament to social media, mostly, that anybody would actually choose "the leader of the most powerful country in the world" based on something like whether they might be a jerk to a given gender or race. Talk about a problem with priorities. I would expect that of teenagers! Or people who have never worked in the real world. Not of adults. That job is so vastly demanding on so many levels that frankly, putting those things first or primary just seems incomprehensibly ridiculous to me. Some of the most brilliant and competent people I ever met were total assholes and I mean of the first order -- but they were really good at jobs that required certain talents they DID have. I think people really ought to consider the kind of skills that a president DOES need. Putin is a good example. The man is last in line for bleeding altruism about anything or anybody (and he's still the enemy) but damn it he is an excellent stateman. Every time I hear him talk I am impressed all over again at how intelligent, respectable, reasonable he seems. Which is marketing and statesmanship -- most of it's probably BS -- but he does it so well. He is a good example of what a statesman really ought to be on several levels. It has been a zillion years since our country had anybody like that in the big chair. 3 - Margaret Thatcher once said that she always cheered up when people attacked her in some personal, wounding way, since it proved that "they had not a single political argument left." When someone's enemies' worst insults about them have nothing to do with their qualifications to do the job they're campaigning for, I think it's a support for that person more than a detriment. 4 - This is likely to get a lot of people hatin' on me but it's got to be said: much like "consideration for the feelings of others" is turning into an anti-free-speech fascism, this issue of "that man did something sexually wrong with/to/near/around/about me and I didn't report it until now" is creating the most orwellian-state bullshit I have seen out of all the topics messing up our world today. EVERYONE and I mean every-freaking-one that someone doesn't like at a high level IMMEDIATELY becomes publicly crucified as a rapist with *no trial* and no evidence usually except "she said" and a LONG time later. For example, when WikiLeaks went under fire and our gov't wanted to kill the leader, he was "suddenly publicly accused of improper sexual behavior" and oh gosh now every country is supposed to arrest him for his 'assault' on that conveniently placed-time-person. When the Pirate Bay (warez downloads site) finally had the US gov't (after years of leaning on Sweden) convince their country to pursue them and their leader over our corporate profit losses, the leader was suddenly accused of improper sexual behavior oh gosh, now there's all this reason to arrest him, or extradite him anywhere he goes, and so on. This country is supposed to be founded on "guilty until proven innocent." We allow people to mass murder their entire family and set the bloody dog on fire to be innocent until proven guilty and have their day (their often multiple trials) in court before we pass judgment on them but gee, all you have to do is get anybody to say "That man did ___ to me! Like, years ago! And, I'm just mentioning it now!" and suddenly that man is a vile criminal and is not supposed to be "allowed" to do or be anything else because hey, shouldn't criminals be punished? Well shouldn't we have to prove someone IS a criminal FIRST, please? And 'multiple people' are not a testimony necessarily when someone is high profile because there are plenty of people willing to say, believe, or even "honestly misremember based on their current emotional frustration" -- whatever. You know what, I am a woman, but women and men have to work together to make our cultures feasible, and the profoundly skewed injustice of this entire topic is literally going over the top into sheer insanity. It is so injust to men. And that hurts everybody. The point here is that no matter how women feel about legitimately punishing rapists, it does nothing but support the worst, the absolute worst, of control-manipulation, whether it's from governments or from various political groups of any kind, for us to ALLOW this "instant criminalization of any man without any trial based on accusations from women." (I might add that some of the most famous cases have turned out to be so far beyond belief when it comes to completely wrong and injust, that really it does defy belief, and gets into "Big Lie" categories of marketing insanity repeated enough to make people just assume it has to be true.) IMO, if women report something promptly, fine. Otherwise, STFU about it unless or until you are in a court of law. It is completely inappropriate, and violates not only the entire spirit of one of the most important elements of our nation, but violates all human decency frankly, to behave like children about this, not only in the after-the-fact element but in the believing, and perpetuating, and reacting to, that being used as emotional leverage. AND, I think it actually makes women report it a lot less, if they have the arbitrary ability -- supported by media and their fellow over-emotional reactionist citizens -- to simply ruin his reputation/life later at their whim, as if that is ok. Like anybody could even defend to 'prove a negative' years after the fact. 5 - It should be pointed out that Trump has provided a whole lot of opportunity to women in business. He may be an asshole but he seems to recognize competence and that is a lot more than I can say for a lot of men I've had to work with over the years. 6 - Of course, he's immature and possibly a borderline personality, or he would be better at not making himself into a totally asinine easy target during all this, which makes me completely doubt one of the most key elements of his qualification for the role of statesman. THAT is actually a legitimate and very serious complaint and is the reason I won't vote for him. 7 - People are distracted from the fact that the most fundamental problems in our country relate to our economy, and the jobs situation, and to the inability of anybody (besides Trump) to just openly say you know what, we should put ourselves first and quit dicking around to allow tons of stuff that hurts us but pads the pockets of corporations and other countries -- our own good should come first. It is so crisis-level necessary that someone DOES believe that, say that, and act that, that I think that element alone has won the guy tons of supporters who otherwise would never be into him. The fact that his other most-primary things include, for example, a real focus on veterans, is a huge thing too. 8 - It is also profoundly injust to take someone who says, "These stated goals about some of the most primary issues facing our country, well suit what I believe is super important, so I am going to vote for that person," and then say about that voter, "That person is a racist and a sexist and basically evil because the person who has those goals is a jerk" -- it's like we are living in this world where social media has somehow made the majority of the population into 13 year olds -- all emotion, no reason. It doesn't matter. Hillary Clinton will be president. Then we can watch as our collective handbasket continues its descent. As I've said elsewhere, DT winning might be equally depressing but it would have been more interesting. HC has been planned for the chair since the day BC first won his. And the last 30-odd years have had only 3 families running that house. It's a dynasty at this point. It's so powerful that trillions of dollars -- more, even -- here and around the world -- are at stake. You don't think the people with the most money on planet earth are just going to let that role fall to chance, do you. RC

I thought it was 'mental fasting' like 'mental state as a result of fasting'. A blank post. Empty stomach, empty mind LOL. OK maybe I'm the only one with that abstract a sense of humor... RC

I liked the Monkees! I especially liked "Last Train to Clarksville." Tom Petty is the only person who writes really simple 4/4 time music that I actually really like. Some of his stuff (like Free Falling, Learning to Fly, etc. which is sort of the archetype of his style) is just sort of so-simple-its-genius. I hadn't heard that song Face in the Crowd above -- thanks! I remember being really moved by a line in his song 'Refugee' when I was young (and he was barely older then) that said something like, Somewhere, somehow Somebody must have kicked you around some Who knows, maybe you were kidnapped, tied up, Taken away and held for ransom Honey, it don't really matter to me (baby) Everybody's had to fight to be free You see you don't have to live like a refugee It sort of put life in perspective a little, that someone was basically saying yeah, you suffered, BFD really who doesn't? Find a way to move on. It's a good message since many people like me at that age are so lost in their still-seeing-everything-through-the-trauma-of-their-past it's hard to realize that really... we're not special. Nearly everybody has it. Whether we learn to get up and find a way to keep moving on is the only question and you know, most other people are doing it, so it's gotta be do-able... boy that was a long time ago. You know what group I recently realized I utterly love and yet mysteriously have no albums from, is the Hollies. This is a playlist but the first song "The Air That I Breathe" is a lovely languid-blissful resting-in-the-Tao-after-sex kind of thing (really, from the lyrics!). RC

Total aside. So I had a (double-blind) psi session on a 'cloud buster' machine once. The data experience was really interesting! After some initial trivia on the machine itself, I had this experience where I perceived what seemed like a lot of energy together, and then there was this sort of "blitz" as if it was suddenly fried-into-white-noise for a moment, and then empty -- nothing. I was utterly baffled at what this could be, not that one is supposed to try and guess that during session anyway of course, but it was certainly a novel experience. When I got the feedback it made me very thoughtful for quite a while. I have to say that the data-experience seems like that tech is probably valid. (Not, mind you, that psi work verifies anything at all, except for the individual experiencing it.) I am finding it hard to wrap my brain around this. That supplement has been utterly life-saving to several people I know, and I've taken a lot of it at one point and had significant improvement in eyesight and lung clearance as a result. What is it that you think it did to your kidneys? Especially ONE pill?? I'm not doubting you, I'm just amazed and curious. I guess I missed the post if you described it previously. RC

I wish I had evidence for that. I don't think we know it yet. So, totally mystic mumbo-jumbo. But I think cultural legends as well as modern acoustic physics at least 'imply' this sort of thing may be possible. Sorry to be useless... was only theory. We don't know what we don't know! RC

Oh. Is that what it means? I have a whole cosmology about awareness, self-awareness, energy, space, time, and so on -- gradually instilled in me through meditative insight, not intellectual consideration (might be the worse for that :-)) -- but I never really considered any of these topics, aside from 'energy' related to dualism. I exclude 'energy' because I don't think we can discuss any topic that exists without 'energy' being some part of it. A long time ago, I did have this huge (and horrific) long experience where, to summarize, I had "three stages of realization." It ended with an extreme degree of 'nothingness' however I understood the polarity of 'everythingness' was the same thing, as all polarities are. Is that an example of non-duality? I had a sponsored insight (as I call it when someone-internal-I-perceive-as-not-me shares a perspective on something with me) related to the issue of 'dark and light' (a sort of deep eternal battle on some level), where they said: Darkness is not of the Nothingness. It is not the opposite of light, as it only exists within the realm of light itself. Darkness is just something-ness lacking color. The universe is fundamentally of light, and darkness fails to hold dominance and fails to understand why: its nature precludes it: awareness itself makes all identities children of the light. -- Insight during Authority and Money meditation Is that non-duality? Sorry to be ignorant, but, I am. Never gets solved if I don't ask questions. :-) RC

I suppose there is a middle ground, you know. My father for example was the sort who would slicingly insult someone he loved, with no particular malice, because in his mind this was true, so why pretend about it. I'm all for honesty, but first, perspective is subjective so he is always part of those evaluations which may not be as objectively true as he thinks; and second, most of the time it is simply unnecessary to for example tell someone they will never succeed in something because of X or Y, because maybe they didn't ask, so why be a brutal asshole by volunteering; and third, many times people try to do X, and in the process start doing Y, fail at both and end up doing Z, and that works for them, but if they'd been beaten down socially so they never even attempted X, none of that would have come about. There IS such thing as keeping your own counsel; and there is such thing as diplomacy. Some of the "politically correct" stuff -- such as how we label people -- might fall into that category. Although, realistically, most of the politically correct BS about what labels we give things, only come about because the existing labels have a negative vibe. And usually that vibe is not about the label, it's about culture, and culture is only going to attach that vibe to the new label. I absolutely agree, though, that any speech which is essentially either mandated or punished by government (or social fora {I think I just made that word up. All forms of forum of social gathering} based on government-enforced norms) is fascism. It's one thing to say you have free speech, and if you carry swastika signs through a jewish neighborhood and tell innocent passing strangers they're ugly you're an asshole. It's another thing to say you cannot even refer to a process of doing something being 'retarded' -- quite literally, something which retards the development or growth of something -- without getting your case jumped by a gigantic coalition of people who will ruin your career and reputation because you were insufficiently sensitive to the fact that someone, somewhere, has Down Syndrome. RC

Forum rules request new members post here. My internet handle is Red Cairo (refers to Mars) but my name is PJ (or Palyne). I'm female, 50, from the West coast USA, currently living in the Ozarks territories. Have a respectable job and am nothing unusual in my outer life I suppose. I don't tend to read or belong to forums of this topical matter, despite that it is central to my life and has been, though with some cycles, since about 1993. Usually when I search on such topics (every six months or so) I come away from it feeling like I've been drenched in dead intellectualism. Nothing against the latter, but there is a certain life and fire from truly living things that is recognizable (and required for genuine understanding) and is so often missing. Particularly since much of this topic falls into the occult area, which in my experience is as much a uniform as anything else is... Kumbaya in a minor key with cooler clothes, I joke. (I am not trying to be inflammatory in any way -- I signed up for this forum because I found a few threads that were in fact exceptions to this, and it impressed me that some of the members seemed... er, alive internally, hence my request to join.) I began some personal exploration as a skeptic hypnotist with some anomalous stuff that led to a kundalini experience (partly blocked, which caused some damage and more extreme effects as a result) that sent reality into surreality for a couple years. During which I had a lot of life-changing experiences, some beyond-words horrible (and a bit long term), including some I later found are almost predictable (in the same sequence, no less!) for esoteric development. Which I knew nothing about (still don't know much). I got married and pregnant just as I felt like a thick dark blanket had settled over my crown chakra, and I could no longer 'feel' a lot of stuff that had been a constant connection for a few years. I was fairly tuned out of most spiritual stuff for a long time then, mostly in working/single-mom/survival mode. Some years ago, slowly but significantly, the inside of me started opening up (sometimes without my requesting it, for sure). I'm not sure if it's age or something else, but I gradually developed what I call a "capacity" that I simply didn't have before, that I'd say maybe relates to the ability to... recognize holiness perhaps, wow that sounds stupid now that I put it in words, I probably need to think this out more. But I don't think I was even capable of certain inner relationships and understandings before. I was impressed that my 'inner guide' after 20 years of barely ever speaking (though it had slightly increased over time) was finally having whole conversations with me, and I could "read" inside our interworlds (stole that word from Henri Corbin), and eventually I was able to absorb enough of her (she was my 4th version of IG) to realize she was what our people call angelic. I think it's a cosmic sun/planetary thing, but never mind. Anyway, she changed my world. And pushed me into IG5, they were the only ones who'd given me names -- it was a 'role' not an individual for me until then. IG5's made no secret at all of his nature -- he is what some call the HGA. And I am part of him (actually every mote of my reality is) vs. previous IGs that I had always assumed were some psychological part of me. Every possible thing about my reality, body, identity, spirituality, etc. has pretty much been dissolved and rebuilt so much that first, whatever I think now, is likely to change, and second, by now it's rather difficult to have a conversation with anybody normal about the topics I used to call psychological, until I realized they were as deeply spiritual as they come. I feel like I'd need to spend a year educating someone to have some clue of the cosmology model I've been given from the inside, and its implications, and then maybe we could talk. But I want to -- I live in the middle of nowhere, work via internet, I would like the community of people who might have some similar interests and experiences. Well I've been as honest as I can and that's likely much more than anybody wanted to know. Hopefully having posted something will free me to post on the larger board now.

OK you guys. It took me 320 days to finally end up with 200 posts so I could be cleared for the rest of the forum. :-) RC

Good question. It may not be a doorway. It is merely a recessed shape. I'm not saying it's there for no reason -- I'm just saying the reason might not be what we would attribute to doors... I see you quoted that word, so you thought of that already... Yeah, that's incredible. Or, they used sound (acoustics) to soften one surface to fit the other. No, I'm not saying I can personally do this or know the tech, but my gut instinct believes this is do-able. and yada yada yada it's just that people bound skulls to look cool -- A few skulls found compared to modern 'cranial capacity' RC

Ha! Funny you guys. When I was 8 and we were on welfare (in between being homeless and living in 'the Projects'), mom took me to a dentist. He said I had eight cavities. Sadly, I refused to open my mouth when he turned the drill on. I mean refused. No amount of him or my mother could get me to let him do that to me. I was in disgrace. The next dentist, an adult dentist (er, dentist for adults), said I had zero cavities and anybody who would say I did must have, "at the least, have really lousy x-rays." I always suspected he just wanted to make money. I was glad I was so stubborn, later! RC

Earlier in thread - thanks for the ref to The Sherlock Holmes School of Thought http://sherlockspy.blogspot.co.uk/p...and-skills.html An interesting idea. Although I do think memory is vast and expandable, maybe in general there really is something to not learning for learning's sake -- perhaps not because there is limited storage, but because there is limited server time for searching (what I mean is, our memory might be infinite for all I know but our attention is certainly limited). I always liked learning just to learn, like some people ski just to ski. This got me thinking about how I educated myself for the most part, 'around' mostly useless schooling. But then this got me thinking that such a thing is really a natural event and anybody who pays attention to life will naturally find everything educational and most things of at least passing interest, at least once. This led to considering information. Information is not education or even educationAL, but I think we blur those lines. The point of "all the crap I learned in high school" as songwriter Paul Simon once put it, might be the same point as the current memes in the media: to supply so many "information units flooding the brain" that we are rendered relatively inert. We don't seek more. We don't really seek anything. Like the brain's response to television we just sort of sit there, the TV taking care of the stimulus and the response/feedback, and a good couch potato state of mind is a lot like being in depth hypnosis without a guide and you could just sort of sit there in trance forever. So maybe (yes I'm getting to the point finally), maybe the overwhelming, exponential rise in the sheer quantity of information in our culture -- so many orders of magnitude more than people likely encountered 50 years ago, thanks to visual and global techs -- might literally be "crowding the mind" -- the attention, if not the memory -- of people today, so that there is simply not as much 'room' for paying attention to much else. * People remember what they find interesting. I think it isn't merely that we teach people to memorize instead of think (although that's a huge part of it). It's that schooling makes even the most fascinating things and people absolutely bloody BORING. I hated science in school. I hated history. They are my two favorite subjects now. They would have been my favorite subjects THEN if someone had actually presented them to me in any kind of interesting fashion. The moment I met a teacher who finally did (in history, which I was repeating for the second time -- my third time in class, each with a different teacher), I was all about it, read every book in the library on the eras we went through, loved it. But when it was "Read chapter 17 and answer questions at the back of the chapter" -- even though I read well (I'd usually read the textbook the first day or two and read scifi/fan the rest of the year) it did zip for me. But this guy "told stories" -- he would learn of something and then tell us, orally, and made it INTERESTING. That made all the difference in the world. My daughter was once telling me how she was reading about Marie Antoinette but it was so boring. I told her of Marie being from a convent, and being very polite, and the story (not sure if it's true) of how she stepped on the foot of a man when climbing to the guillotine -- he was her executioner -- and apologized ever so sincerely for doing so. I did tell her I wasn't sure if it was a true story. But she said that story alone made the topic vastly more interesting than everything else she'd heard. I thought it was because it humanized it. Finding out that someone lived in year X and died in year Y is enough to put anybody to sleep. RC

I'm trying to figure out if three blank posts on a 'mental benefits about fasting' thread are, in fact, the thread, and some droll sense of humor. Or not. RC

I don't have any jokes at the moment, but I could mention that I just recently ran across a video on youtube that was a song my friends and I loved a million years ago: Cows With Guns RC

His driver's the Pope! That's funny! Thank you. I'm all for more humor in the world!! RC PS the Swiss leader giving the utterly somber speech about humor is pretty funny too, in a sort of inverted way!