Apech

A new zodiac It still looks like an old car Just love all that chrome.

You sound slightly angry.

Karma means action. And the law of karma means that every action has an effect of some kind. The idea of good and bad karma is a bit of a sunday school version. However it doesn't take a genius to work out that the consequence of being genuinely nasty to people results in being shunned and hated ... and so on. Having said that the issue for this and every situation is not about guilt or blame or such but more about your ability to assimilate energy ... given that everything is energy (supposing you accept this idea). If you act in the world the consequences of your action will come back to you sooner or later. Thinking like this is a way of sobering your approach so that you respect the energy, the situations and other people you deal with. Meditation on the law of karma strengthens your resolve to behave in a self-consistent, honorable and warrior-like way. That's what it is for really. In Buddhism they call it one of the four thoughts which lead the mind to dharma. In other words it is a spur to practice.

Please stand by for a (hopefully) short Mod Team discussion

I wasn't trying to misquote you - I literally didn't understand what you were saying. The Great Depression affected all of the industrialized world including the US and Europe and had knock on effects everywhere else. The US being the largest economy is the focus of much attention and quite a lot of what is written is written as if only the US was affected. I think both the causes and the 'solution are disputed and not everyone believes that the New Deal was actually the solution. Probably more likely WWII which stimulated industrial growth. But I have heard it said that the responses of the private sector (banks) i.e. becoming over cautious an stopping lending causes the money supply to dry up and chokes recovery. And that this was the immediate response to the Wall Street crash. I see signs of this now in Europe where the banks have gone from credit driven boom to being mega cautious. To come out of recession you have to have some way of economic growth and wealth creation ... I don't see how this happens without credit for new business. Also the governments are pouring money in to prop up the banks (and also countries like Greece) but this is causing massive sovereign debt ... which again drives up the public borrowing requirement. Its a vicious cycle and at the bottom the individual people get screwed.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do next week. Procrastinate now!

Blue sphere shower Has anyone else got strange goo incidents to share?

Are you sure. Really sure?

You can post in other forums now you have posted in the lobby.

Create a bio-containment force field then bombard the fridge with gamma radiation. If you open the door slightly a light may come on. This means that the bio-phosphorescence of the rapidly decaying food particles is still active. Shut the door quickly and run out of the house/apartment and scream 'run for your lives!' at anyone in the vicinity. That is all.

Wot nobody think its aliens??? Disappointed.

I say yep.

I think the distinct categories of philosophy, religion and shamanism are quite modern. Until the 18th Century the terms alchemy and chemistry were used inter-changably. All religion (IMO) has its roots in shamanism - since there was a time when there was only shamanism. I don't see any difference between the various forms of mysticism, magic, alchemy and shamanism for instance ... though I accept some people might. Even science was once called Natural Philosophy. So the idea that writing from the time of LZ could be called strictly philosophical in the modern sense is highly doubtful.

lost in the stampede your cross legged calf cries out ma! dry dust in nostrils.

Rainy, You are right about ancient cultures. The Egyptians had up to seven part aspects of the individual which separated at death. Most important were the body, the ka, the ba, and the shade. If they were not reintegrated after death then this resulted in the 'second death'. I think that this is similar to hun and po etc. I have learned over the years to trust the insights of the ancients .. but of course it is not something to dwell on really as ultimately there is only now. A.

Maybe but they always sell it or are already funded by the big corporations.

Its ok you don't have to be grateful ... ... if you wanted the fast-track solution it would have taken longer.

Sinfest, Looky here Sinfest personal practice I moved your precious threads ... I can't give you mod rights over your journal but you should be able to post there ... A.

'The rest of world wasn't at all' ... wasn't at all what? in a depression... yes they were ... the rise of the Nazis in a great part due to the effects of depression in Germany ... Anyway back to the more interesting future ... what I would like to see is a radical new idea about how political power actually works. In other words how is it determined who gets to tell others what to do. And when they do this ... what are their aims. For a long time the worth and self-worth of a human being is their earning capacity .... success is high earnings ... and so on. Without getting all wishy washy and touchy feely ... is there another way? is there another hard value other than currency which can be used to evaluate how power is distributed?

I think what is missing is a convincing idea on an alternative way to live. I mean an alternative to the various forms of capitalism. I know they exist but they don't emerge as attractive or convincing to large numbers of people. When people vote at the moment (no matter how we may argue) we are voting about shades of the same grey. There doesn't seem to be a way for someone to put forward a radical new way to live which gets popular support of any kind. It has to be appealing, practical and meet peoples needs. After WWII in Britain there was a landslide victory for Labour (Socialist) ... rejecting Churchill who had led the country through the war. They then implemented the national health service, education reforms, housing programmes and so on. I know this is an anathema to Americans but the fact is it was a democratic choice freely made by people who had made sacrifices and lost a whole lot during the war. So in the late 1940's socialism was seen as a viable alternative which would meet peoples needs. Now (despite the current crisis) we are so much richer and our lives have changed. So no one wants or sees any advantage in old style socialism .... and there is no real communism anymore. So we need a new alternative model for living which is also economically viable.

As long as there's no red spot on Uranus.

**** Moderator Message ***** Just a kindly warning. This thread is getting heated and while you are discussing some high level ideas ... its getting personal. Please could you remember that no matter how much you disagree with another poster they are entitled to their view. Maybe they are wrong, maybe they have a different understanding, maybe they are right in their own terms. Please keep it respectful and no personal insults or attacks on the person rather than the ideas. Thanks. *** Mod Message Ends ***

I'll stick with my regular gloom, thanks.

I agree ... you are doomed. Too bad.