Encephalon

Well, I would take issue with your contention that AA preys upon the weak in cult-like fasion. I do agree with you that the elements of early 20th century American protestantism don't resonate too well with many people, and the effort to translate sin-imbued rhetoric into a non-theistic, non-moralizing language of awareness, of delusion vs wisdom, is sometimes very great, and sometimes I don't have the patience for it. But it ultimately depends on the meeting and the people. "One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps" by Kevin Griffin is great for understanding the non-theistic, non-moralizing message of AA that's often buried beneath its Christian language.

Some of the mainstream media are starting to sack up and have Matt Simmons on as a guest. Watch this - http://www.businessinsider.com/matthew-simmons-we-now-have-killed-the-gulf-of-mexico-2010-7

Ouch!! Ya know, I think my criticisms of AA are well-founded and shared by many others in the community but when they go BALLS OUT on 12-step groups I get a little defensive. Look, valuable help comes in many guises, some are appropriate at some point, and some we outgrow. Ghandi said that some people can be so hungry that God can only appear to them in the form of a piece of bread. That doesn't mean that we spend the rest of our lives kneeling in the bakery section of Safeway.

" the qualities you bring to the programs are even more important. and so a program that is designed for people who are broken is going to have a high failure rate if your ONLY measure of success is permanent sobriety. but AA goes WAY deeper than that. it helps people learn how to live, often for the first time in their lives. that can't be measured in days sober. many people who relapse STILL have changed lives and levels of self-awareness they would never have come to otherwise. I still get plenty of value out of my AA meetings. Myself and others in the sangha have spiritual needs that are beyond the scope of AA, that's all. (Some can handle the language of monotheism, some not so much.) But long term sobriety can absolutely be used as a measure of the quality of life. People do bounce back from relapses with more than they started with, but sporadic sobriety is not likely to facilitate deeper healing, any more than a sporadic meditation practice can. I guess you could say that a life of relapse is better than full-time inebriation, but the kind of healthy sobriety that goes deep and rectifies all the negative internal scripts takes a long time for most people dealing with addictions. The Dalai Lama said you should evaluate your meditation practice every decade, and I'm beginning to think the same may be true for some of us in recovery (but maybe not all).

Yeah, I'd kinda like to get in on the "spiritual" conversation too. I've read some of the esoteric Chinese stuff (English translations of course) and have plowed through a few works on the psychology of the Chakras (Anodea Judith and Caroline Myss have some thoughtful insights). I've heard people speak most guardedly about the fireworks that come with the Third Eye opens, but I still haven't gotten any solid depictions of these internal states. It sort of takes me back 30 years when accomplished LSD aficionados made lame attempts to explain their powerful insights, and now I've learned that there really is a language and vocabulary to explain altered states of consciousness without impenetrable abstractions. My guess is that these experiences will of course have to be defined with basic psychological principles. My guess is that Taoism, Buddhist psychology, eco-psychology all play an important role in getting us to a participatory experience of Indra's Web. There I go again - playing the ecology card again, but I don't see astral projection as a likely alternative, at least not for most of us. Any doctors or therapists care to chime in?

I bought Chunyi Lin's intro pak awhile ago and had some good results with his MCO approach - you inhale into each point on the circuit and exhale toward the next point, repeating as you go. There's no sense of forcing, more like a coaxing of the breath through a tube.

I imagine it's the pressure at the depth of one mile that keeps it submerged.

I will humbly investigate your very thoughtful points. I'm still moving to Canada, however.

Whoah!! I completely misread your post! Quite an exercise in interpretation and comprehension. So, for instance, when you wrote "Follow the money" I naturally concurred, but erroneously inferred that you were citing every modern oil-dependent industry and global consumer lifestyle they support as the source of money that keeps fossil fuel complicity out of the popular equation. When you suggested researching "other 2oth century warming/cooling warnings" I again erroneously inferred that you were pointing out the error of using too small a sampling size of time. Your third point kind of bounced off my forehead. The fourth point did the same thing, but the part about considering the reasonableness of the claims struck a chord. My inference was erroneous again, because by this point I assumed we were in agreement. Certain facts have a more intuitive resonance with some folks, less with others. Burning 1.25 trillion barrels of oil and pumping it into the atmosphere seems significant to those of us in Earth sciences, especially when you consider delicate and sensitive nature of the atmosphere, a very thin membrane indeed. (Oh, coal burning not included). And if you multipy 317 kilograms of CO2 for every barrel of oil burned... well you get the picture. Since the world total is just under 90 million barrels a day... blah blah blah... more math... The point I'm stumbling to make is that average human beings have an intuitive sense of the world's size and resilience that is almost universally and radically inflated. The natural world is riddled with instances where homeostasis depends on very narrow tolerances, parts per million, but the atmosphere is particularly so. I was right with you with the last point about "the ocean's role in carbon entrainment" and just assumed that we were in agreement about the rising acidity of the oceans due to the increase in carbonic acid, and the negative effect this has on small marine organisms' ability to construct their exoskeletons from the calcium carbonate. "Think Critically" was the clincher for me. I thought we were kindred spirits, you and I. Oh, well. I sincerely hope, from the bottom of my heart, that I am wrong and the world's scientific community is suffering some sort of greenwashed theistic hysteria. Imagine what a sigh of relief it will be to concede our foolishness and be proven wrong! The alternative scenario is pure Greek tragedy. A species with a moral capacity lagging behind its technical prowess spends 10,000 years heedlessly devouring the worlds resources and ultimately has to face the consequences. I know which scenario I'm planning for.

That would be "allowed." This was the initial direction when the Little Orbit first started circulating almost a year ago. I standardized it with the forward direction as this seemed like such prevalent advice, but the reverse feels great and smooth. I guess there will always be contrary views, yes?

You won't get any argument from me that carbon credits are a sham. It's a fake solution, as are most ventures in large-scale sustainability, but it's about as much as we could expect from an industrial capitalist world. We've already passed the point of being able to halt the trajectory. All of my technical classes were taken years ago as an undergrad, so my technical chops aren't up to speed either. The process one must go through in order to intelligently harvest information beyond the realm of ones own expertise is not a complicated one but neither is it forgiving. If there is overwhelming consensus amongst the world's scientific community regarding a particular issue then it's a fairly safe bet the scope of the conclusion is sound. The only detractors are those who have a vested interest in seeing the current fossil fuel era perpetuated (which is just about every major industry in the world). Maybe we should join them and concede that it's beyond our control. But this idea that human beings can't possibly be culpable is one that does not emanate from science, but from a desire to deflect accountability. The oil companies, especially Exxon, have spent millions muddying the waters of the climate change debate and spreading seeds of doubt via the news outlets that are sympatheic to their interests or are corporately-owned institutions themselves. Okay. We're done.

With all due respect Joe, your estimate of the earth's carrying capacity of 250 billion, as well as your recent assertion of the Chinese population of 6 billion, does not support the argument that your ecological education is sound. Neither does it provide any evidence that you have the technical expertise to evaluate the data you submit. Maybe you should cut your losses and stick with Milton Friedman?

Critical thinking? Scientific method? Are you serious!!?? So, lets compare retreat longlats.

If a truly satisfactory explanation is what you seek, then I could probably point you in the direction of the learning curve ahead. I may even have some tips on how to make the learning curve shorter and less steep, but there's still plenty of study ahead if you want a firm command of the issue. I have a Master's in geography, which means that I wasn't good enough in math to pursue life sciences,ecology and environmental studies, but I'm familiar with the literature. I'd start with James Lovelock, the planetary ecologist who popularized the Gaia hypothesis. "The Revenge of Gaia" is probably his most sobering work and has left many colleauges in the scientific community losing a lot of sleep. His piece in Rolling Stone 2007 appears here. http://www.uri.edu/artsci/com/Logan/teaching/html/HPR319_fall_2007/docs/lovelock_Rolling%20Stone_10-17-07.htm You'll get 206 titles if you run a "Peak Oil" search on Amazon, and 28,900,000 hits on Google. If you've got the time or inclination, some basic lower division bio and earth science classes at your local junior college would go a long way. Besides, Taoism IS ecology; Taoism obviously includes the study of the human experience, but the mysteries of the Tao are revealed to us through basic ecological principles as much as by our internal alchemy practice. Any formal studies in these subjects will only enrich your personal practice. (of course, tai chi masters like Waysun Liao, C.K. Chu and Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming all have advanced degrees in physics and engineering.) At this point, you could throw up your hands and say "It's a hopelessly politicized subject, this 'End of Oil Era' Broohaha! Who can we trust?" I think it prudent to read the works of people who've made their careers in the oil industry and are now sounding the alarms. I would maintain a very wary distance of people on the oil and chemical company payrolls who encourage us to stay the course. I'm curious to see how the self-described Buddhist and Taoist community members respond to contemporary End Times scenarios. Impermanence is a cornerstone of Eastern thought, but many people find the dissolution of the human industrial era too frightening to wrestle with, even in the midst of powerful arguments. The biosphere is vastly worse off than most people realize, but if Katie Couric doesn't say this, it must not be true, eh? The only reason this is not the subject of every major news outlet in the world is because glboal state power does not have the means to adequately respond to catastrophic depletions of energy, resources and the ensuing global pandemonium. There is a way through the 21st century bottleneck, however. I've written about this elsewhere, but guess what? Taoism is the answer!! At least for those of us willing to commit to the practice.

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I think yer tryin' to pull my leg, Joe. Reasonable estimates of earth's carrying capacity have never been more than 40 billion, and the quality of life associated with that number is nothing to wish for. The "people throughout history" appeal is starting to get quoted a great deal at this point in time. Because human ingenuity existed in the past, especially during the era of fossil fuels, many wish to abate their fears about an uncertain future by assuming that the same ingenuity will prevail in the absence of an adequate fuel source and resource base. I read a report recently that stated that tidal power could generate enough sustainable electricity to support 20 billion. If "faith" is part of your equation, then it needs to figure out how we're going to use the world's remaining oil reserves to construct this new global energy grid. Barring that, economically extractable oil will continue to be used for transportation and agriculture. This is just another paragraph in the "technosphere vs biosphere" argument, and you can't have one without the other.

Vaj should have no difficulty getting into Canada if his wife has Canadian citizenship. Funny how some folks tend to interpret the political spectrum through the lens of American partisan politics. The practice all but eliminates the possibility of nuance in meaningful dialogue. Orwell was right. Like the dictionary in "1984" that got smaller every year, we will eventually lose the ability to even conceive alternatives, much less discuss and implement them.

I would only ask you to consider some of the most basic ramifications of living with 7-8 billion people on a planet that can sustainably support perhaps no more than 2 billion once our fossil fuels and topsoils begin to disappear. These conditions will be forced upon us soon, certainly by mid-century. The subject is huge and interdisciplinary, and has received elaborate coverage in the literature of Buddhist environmentalism. The Buddhist scholars I've met, David Loy and Stephen Batchelor, are quite familiar with James Lovelock's works. Eastern philosophies remind us of the impermanence of all phenomena. Kissing civilization goodbye won't be easy, but denial is no enlightened strategy either. Cheers!

I would have to concur. The Spiral Dynamics model developed by Graves - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3637777359401476371# and http://www.spiraldynamics.net/ and incorporated by Ken Wilber suggests that no more than ten percent of the human population has ever been awake enough at any given time to effect paradigmatic shifts. I do agree that this post-industrial paradigm will arrive, but only after the herd is culled due to ecological collapse and depletion of resources. The good news is that the human populations that do get through the next bottleneck and see the 22nd century will not be shackled by some authoritarian state apparatus. Small-scale, stable-state communities will be the norm.

According to www.ic.org, there are currently 138 intentional communities in Canada, many of whom are actively seeking new members. These are only the ICs that are self-identified. If you have any skills at all that could be useful in a rural, off-the-grid setting - horticulture, permaculture, medical, hunting, construction, what have you - then you could do yourself and your family an extraordinary favor in checking out this option.

I too would recommend giving away all your spare cash, but ONLY after you've acquired the means for you and your loved ones to live independently when SHTF. Buy that piece of rural property, get CERT certified, buy that shotgun, get your medical chi kung up to speed, take some classes in permaculture, and make sure everyone else does too. Ancient Taoist communities were radically self-sufficient and resilient, so the more we approximate their modus operandi, the greater likelihood that Taoism will survive the 21st century, and maybe make it into the 22nd through our children and grandchildren.

Wow. I know we all have our differences in here but dietary advice seems to have a contentious category all its own. I don't see any way around this conundrum; I honestly don't know who is a registered dietitian or nutritionist, but I do know that many of us have practical advice and personal experience that can be helpful. But on the scale of intellectual integrity, personal testimony doesn't rank very high. So I'll take a stab at your question about getting off sugar, knowing full well that much of it will be contested by my friends in here. The single most important thing you can do is eat frequently to keep your blood sugar up. Protein sources and complex carbs are best. Hi protein grains such as quinoa and buckwheat are great, since they are complex carbs and digest slowly. (The idea that complex carbs cannot be separated from simple sugars sounds straight out of left field, in my opinion, but I could be wrong.) Some of your daily meals should also consist of low-carb fruits and vegetables and nuts too. The minute I allow myself to get too hungry I start dreaming of donuts. I'm into sprouting in a big way these days. I make my own mix of fenugreek, wheat berries, lentil, and mung bean, and keep three sprouting jars going in rotation. I sprinkle the mix with gourmet vegetarian baco-bits and roasted sunflower seeds. The mix is extremely filling and chewy as hell, which is part of the effect. In the afternoon, when I start to drag, I consume two tbs. of unsulphured blackstrap mollases in hot water, with 1 tbs of brewer's yeast. This will only give you 22gms of carbs, but the calcium, iron, potassium and B vitamin content is so high that it's worth every gram. I would also invest in some stevia and experiment a little in the kitchen. And perform a pantry raid; throw the bad stuff out. But... the bottom line is... reigning in sugar consumption is All about impulse control. It is nothing less than will training, zazen, or other means of character building/mind training. If you approach your dietary regimen with any less commitment, you're more likely to stumble. Bruce Lee was said to have only eaten food items that supported his martial artistry. I think this is probably the most important factor. Hold on. I need to edit/add one other important fact; the role of vanity. The moment you get tired of seeing zits all over your chest and face, you'll automatically cut out your sugar!

You could probably make the argument that classical marxism, not the political theory but the pure economic analysis, views capitalism itself as an alchemical process, insofar as it is concerned with the transformation of the earth's raw resources into commodities and commodities into pure liquid capital. "Late stage" capitalism, characterized in part by the presence of a global consumer class (globalization), is the point where all resources, including all elements of human labor, sunlight, water sources, even DNA, are commodified and the transformation of raw materials to pure liquid capital is accelerated, until a further alchemical transformation of capital into political power becomes the norm. The 200 year-old history of oil, and the power of the oil lobby throughout most industrial nations, should be evidence enough to any observer that the alchemical effect is real if not metaphorical. But just as we know that the elements have controlling relationships to others, we will soon see oil transformed into so much CO2 that all the political power in the world will not be able to cool us down. In fact, we've already passed the point of no return and will have to wait several thousand years for the carbon cycle to naturally re-sequester enough atmospheric carbon to make equatorial and mid latitude regions inhabitable again. Until then, the era of the Polar Peoples, characterized by semi-nomadic tribes within the Arctic Circle and Antarctica, will prevail. Sorry to sound gloomy, but I'm just relating James Lovelock's assessment. One could almost feel romantic for the adventures ahead for 22nd century humans. Unsustainable oil-based culture runs its course, the human herd is culled by 90%, and an era of tribal confederacies reign. That's alchemical, is it not?