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I completely agree! The 'moral law' interpretation of karma would require some kind of human lawyer-god sitting in the sky with his charts and calculators working out how 'bad' or 'good' we have been... sounds pretty man-made to me. The way I interpret how Smile sees it - it's like the concept of 'where do I end and another human begins?'... we're all interconnected so if you do something harmfull to someone, you're doing something harmfull to yourself... but I still cant get arround the idea of 'who the hell decides what is harmfull?' In many cases life is not so black and white... what if you steal some money from someone and it causes them to contact long-lost relatives and re-establish a powerfull, healing bond that they had lost for so many years. What if you steal money from a ridiculously rich guy who hardly gives a fuck, but the money goes to save 4 of your starving children. IMO life does not work in a cause and effect sort of way... there are far too many variables of possibility... it seems much more like the quantum world of interwoven coincidences... what I call 'dream logic'. I am, however, finding the concept of karma as 'lessons we need to learn' quite usefull... This goes hand in hand with the 'karma as an energetic knot' interpretation. Throughout life you create eneretic knots that you are blind to - they cause you to constantly repeat some pattern in your life untill you become concious of it and learn the lesson that allows you to untie the knot! This interpretation can be made to fit Neimad's 'karma as consensus reality'... Macrocosmically we create knots in our society... these knots are apparent in politics, economics, agriculture etc. Because these knots are agreed-upon by most people (most people agree that that piece of paper in your wallet holds some kind of value) they create the consensus reality we live in... and each knot has some wisdom hidden in it which we can collectively untie and learn from.

Im not sure,but we may well be using different language to talk about the same thing,& my last posts on this were shameless ranting (I was feeling quite expansive).I will have to ponder your first 3 points a bit & try & come back with something concise & not too wordy.Be patient with me Ian As for point 4,OF COURSE ITS MY OPINION,how could it be anything else I cant "prove' it in any empirical sense,its a metaphysical statement (which doesnt mean it cant be tested for internal consistency though). But its not an opinion borne of a blind faith in someone elses words.all this is drawn from my experience & tested as best I can.The metaphysics Im proposing is an extrapolation from my experince so far.Still a leap of Faith,so to speak,but not a blind one. For me,phenomena are not "just" a dream,or a sinful error.My models of them may be limited,but they are an outpouring of the Limitless in & of themselves,worthy of honour & respect.I luv Blakes "Eternity is in Love with the Productions of Time",this really says it for me,& thats what leads me to Daoism as distinct from other paths.It promises insights from far more experienced critters than me into the experience we seem to be sharing. Of course I think my opinion is "True",otherwise I wouldnt hold it as an opinion.But I also realize it comes from "subjective" experience,with all the qualification that entails. Iwill get back to you soon Regards,Cloud

my thought ont he matter is this, first of all I think we must dramatically redefine what is commmonly called Extra-Sensory Perception. We are bombarded by billions of signals from the enviroment every second. We are unable to process it all. Generally humans confuse their perceptual tunnel wth reality. Also the same is to be said of our current concepts of Space/ Time. Our brain organizes these signals, arranges them in such a way our conscious mind can deal with. Our sub-conscious mind organizes things differently, this is obvious everytime we dream. So if a times an indiviual who has done purposeful reimprinting of their perceptive instruments and an 'awakening' of the entire nervous system as a receptive instrument. It shouldn't be considered outside the realm of possibility that such an individual percieves things beyond the grasp of the majority of the population who don't have a clue that there is an entire world beyond their narrow view. But, then again what do I know I'm just a phone tech from Texas.

two trees - i will be writing eventually. i learn so much from both writing and reading.... also by talking and listening (the listening part i have only just begun to get good at... and it requires A LOT of focus to truly listen to someone, if they don't have anything meaningful to say it gets really exhausting quickly). as soon as i get the free time i am sitting down to write out all my spiritual views in the form of science fiction stay tuned. cloud - i took no offense at any of the analysing and suggestions going on, i just feel that it would be more worthwhile to make this a personal (in that we each talk about our own viewpoints without trying to alter anyone elses - because as you put it none of us can know where we each are) discussion, rather than a discussion aimed around me. hagar summed it up pretty nicely, as he is quickly gaining a reputation in my opinion to do so. hagar says that being a warrior is about being able to die and be born again. this is very much it..... to get more sci-fi, the 'matrix' has our whole pattern mapped out. in other words for any given situation there is a finite number of responses that an individual can go with (remember that scene in the matrix movies where neo visits the architect and for everything the architect tells him, he has a response on one of the numerous tv screens around the wall.... it's like that). in that sense an individuals life is pretty much mapped out. oh there is the possibility for variation within the map, but it's all been planned and free-will is pretty much moot. a warrior, by learning to die (death of the various personalities we have taken upon us since birth - the final big death being the death of the ego) and be reborn begins to free himself from this set pattern.... the more a warrior does this, the more irrational his acts will become as he is always taking the path where there was no choice... if you get me? this is where one begins to free himself from the matrix. of course, it's a lot more complex than this and i'm only getting my head around it myself. a warrior is simply the first step. all a warrior is is an individual that realises there is more, it's an individual that begins to see that he or she is a slave in an unfriendly system. a warrior is just an individual that begins the process of untangling him/herself from the system. this is why a warriors mentality is needed because it's hard hard work and all the odds are against the warrior and death is at his shoulder and time is running out. but the warrior is just the first stage.... next comes the "sorcerer", one who begins to enter the dream world and is able to move to other dimensions freely. following this is the "lucid" and here we are getting to the buddhas and the krishnas. those who have quite simply broken it all and are no longer contained by rules, save those they choose to use. but the most important point i want to make is: a warrior may appear to be ruthless and uncaring, but a warrior follows the path with a heart. a warriors only concern is freeing himself from the matrix in order to help others do the same, and a warrior will do anything to achieve this goal. and a warrior is the only type of human individual (the sorcerers and lucids becoming more than simply human as they break free of the matrix) that truly has a choice. a warrior chooses to have no choice..... that is, once a warrior makes the choice to be a warrior and seek liberation... there is no longer any other choice. this is all that is left. this is where i feel i am at... i no longer have any choice in the matter. to give up my path is to die.

agreed! oxygen is basically a free radical... if it hasn't got any infection or toxin to fight it's gonna fight your own cells... Funny you mention hydrogen, I had a dream that I should be supplementing with hydrogen, and I found this product: MegaHydrate. I've been taking it for the past week along with the oxy-powder...

I get you Yoda. BTW, you are a very lucky man! I saw the pics from your home, the veranda and your kids! Wow! As to what you wrote, I guess if you distill the message down to what you say above, the movie is not all that bad. My point was that if you show this to people who actually have a degree of need and suffering in their lives, you create more of the same. Why? Because it will not give them an opportunity to cut through their games, their delusion. It just gives it fuel. Like the Rolling Stones song: "You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes you might find You get what you need" I am handing in my masters thesis this week, so I really shouldn't write anything more here. So I'll finish off with this speech of Sakyong Trungpa on the nature of reality and suffering: "Buddha and the Nature of Reality "In searching for happiness in all the wrong places we continually perpetuate the basic misunderstanding that we exist. Our illusion of a self invades whatever we encounter--"my" family, "my" house, "my" country, "my" world. Day and night we feed and fortify "me." It's stressful and exhausting. When we begin to meditate--acknowledging our thoughts and relaxing with our breath--we begin to realize that we have a body, we have a mind, and we have different kinds of consciousness--sight consciousness, sound consciousness, smell consciousness. We realize that some days we feel like ourselves and some days we don't. We see that the self we considered solid is continuously changing. After a while this "me" is not so hard and real. Meditation shows us the nature of the dream as well as the possibility of awakening from it. We begin to see where true happiness might lie." h

Um,sorry if this is going to sound really dense,but I dont understand your statement here Im sure its really obvious,but Im not sure what your trying to say here.I mean I get the next bit about Dream/Life etc ,but whats are you getting at with the first question?Could you make that clearer please. Sorry if Im being a bit thick here Regards,Cloud.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells a story of when she decided to take a vow of silence. She was going to school, working, and had I believe three kids. She had a disembodied voice dream that said, "When you are perfect, you will be fit not to speak." I can understand the value of letting go of extraneous conversation, esp. conversation that is divisive or gossip-y or angry or signifies attachment. But I think communciation is extremely important for building connections...

Great, Freeform. Some thoughts.. Ah, but I really like that "dream-logic of interwoven coincidences." My view is that ideas are useful or not. If the idea of karma is useful for you, use it, but be aware that you are the one doing the using . Even trances can be useful as tools for waking up, the way hypnotherapy uses it homeopathically (like cures like, trance cures trance). Yes. You could look at this in a broader context, and see that wherever there is suffering, there's some kind of resistance to natural law. I just tend to think of this more as phenomena than conceptually. So you could be going around avoiding stepping on anything alive, uneasy about killing microbes by breathing, and you could be living a very suppressed life that way, with the suffering that follows from that. You can be creating harm in a misguided effort to practice non-violence. What is your own particular natural expression of that? Otherwise the word "respect" is just a nominalization, a generalization that doesn't have meaning until you embody it personally. It sounds like you're looking for some resource that you're not in touch with right now. My sense is that you have within you what it would mean to live in respect. A natural resource, so that it's not a matter of having to bring in this sense of respect as a sort of chore, but that you are that respect. And you may already know that in a certain way but not in a deeply embodied way, not in a way that the resource has seeped into all the nooks and crannies of all the contexts in your life. But as it seeps in, it becomes just a relaxed rhythm of getting your food and eating it, no concept of respect surrounding it, but you feel congruent with it. Meaning that nothing is missing from the experience, no deeper need is getting left out of the experience or going hungry. Exactly. The cave person isn't here now, and even you aren't who you were yesterday. Maybe that question is difficult because there are some hidden assumptions there. first, i think that we've set up this false polarity between the nostalgia and purity of native ways vs. the arrogant, soul-numbing civilized ways. I was into anarchism and primitivism for a time. But I think just like a lot of things that we grapple with these days, the polarity is a false one, a seeming either/or which is really neither. I also had an existential crisis in my 20's when I thought that I couldn't stomach beccoming an adult, which I thought meant dutiful assimmilation into the soul-numbing mediocrity of civilization, my only other choice being to live on the fringes, in poverty, isolation and suffering! Either the Matrix or resistance to the Matrix which amounted to a different sort of hell. Didn't occur to me that my resistance was just as driven and rigid as the way that was abhorrent to me. Well. Took me a lot of years to discover the way the choices could open up as I opened up. I think that the arrogance of agribusiness isn't answered by strict avoidance of it, a more subtle form of arrogance. I sometimes eat meat from the supermarket when it's just practical. I used to need to bring a sense of the sacred into my life. Now I don't have a concept of something being more sacred than something else. I just experience the moment, and trust my experience to guide me in everything. I make a lot of mistakes, but also I don't identify things as mistakes so much anymore, just things that didn't work out according to my expectation, and I learned something. If you feel it's not adequate, maybe you could say what it would feel like if it was adequate . Yup. I used to (try to) eat what Aajonus told me to, and it was with a lot of rigidity and fear. If I eat some store-bought sliced turkey because my sister is buying it for me and it's what's best for her, given the totality of the situation, I'm grateful. Maybe the critical mind can't reconcile it, but the resourceful, creative mind can. A ritual could be useful, but rather than have it be weighed down by heavy concepts, it can be a light, open and playful approach, just an opportunity to explore something. Karen

yeah. you've covered it freeform.... i don't have to say anything more about how shaky reality really is. we have set boundaries for it, but they are easily crossed. as far as i am concerned reality has no definable boundaries other than the ones we impose upon it with our own will (largely a collective thing).... and even those boundaries can be broken. i've experienced weird stuff too.... i've seen ghosts and beings that were not from this dimension. i've heard the sound the planet makes. all stuff that science would deem is not part of reality.... so who decides then what is reality? that which is commonly experienced? so you are saying that true reality is only whats common to everyone? so anyone experiencing outside of that common scope is no longer experiencing reality? what are they experiencing then?? and how can reality be something that is inferred but not experienced? to me it's all baffling.... i could never even dream of trying to put a label on this bizarre thing we call existance. i don't know if i am real, in all honesty.... i don't know if you are either, or if anything is. i can come up with no boundaries, no set limits. infinite possibility, infinite potential. yet it's all nothing. it's fun to discuss this stuff.... but when you really get down to it, you go nowhere because as i said above truth is personal and can only be directly experience. whatever we discuss is no longer truth (or "the tao" to quote some famous dude).

Lucid self, that is a great term. Did you make that up? It's exactly what I was getting at. Because the dream (that we currently call awake) is still there, but Now you are really awake in it.

I haven't had the pleasure to dream lucidly for awhile..mostly because of work and life demands. But I wonder if my lucid self somehow longs to awaken and if so, can I apply that knowledge to wakeup/return right now...hmmm food for thought.. Thanks sean, T

Did you just say "buttmilk" ??? I've always drank soy milk, because of lactose intolerance. .. but it's still hardly ever. But you're right about the carob rice dream ...

haha sorry bro, didn't mean to be freaky. i have a big problem with soy though.... i see it as the 'matrix' (that global elite who so seek to destroy us) method of dealing with the hippies who generally eat everything else right. i been going to a few alternative festivals lately, and alot of these hippies eat ok, lots of veggies and stuff.... but they all have way too much soy milk and tofu. you don't want to eat meat, is ok.... but soy unfortunately is probably worse than meat health wise. to be a vegetarian have to be very clever about protein intake.... good is to combine 2 of the three: nuts/legumes, grains, dairy... to get the full range of amino acids. something i have observed is young females who drink too much soy have pimples on their faces, regardless of how healthy they eat. i believe this is due to the hormonal imbalance. soy is the biggest grown crop in the world now and as a part of some scheme, all soy growers are required to donate a certain proportion (i forget the figure) of their profits to the promotion of (false) health benefits. i've recently stopped all soy, including miso (except the occassional splash of tamari in a dish.... not more, and frequently less, than once a week). p.s. carob flavoured rice dream = yummy! but i haven't drunk that in a long time either.

No, you have freaked me out now and I will be doing either water or rice dream for the liquid part. *dumps soy milk down sink*

That's right, neimad. And most the time, if you do this long enough . . . we are worth it, too. Besides, I've seen this exact same thing your speaking of in reversed roles (man and woman being the at the other end of the spectrum) There's plenty of women in my life that deserve great thanks for their lessons, here I'll speak of the easiest : My spiritual teacher of early life - constantly reminding of moralities and how savage that we are without them, what's in our power of humanity, being cheerful and strong in the times of stresses, not dwelling on or worrying about what our lives will be after death, comforting me when there was no other consolation to be found, but mostly emphasized being strong; not to fear in concepts like death, poverty, slavery, illness, solitude, danger ... because it is more humiliating and unworthy than worth giving our souls to - for you cannot be prepared to conquer fear if you've not learned, read or thought for anything before in the peaceful moments of your life when things were in balance and normality. You cannot expect them to remain there eternally, but you can do your best to adapt in situations that throw you out of this balance, certainly we are innate with amazing capabilities yet unknown to our higher selves and thinking. If you give in to fear and worry in those moments, you've drawn the conclusion for absolutely nothing about the value of life and the naturalness of death and the change of universal energies. A person who is filled with fear generally cheats life, makes excuses, dodges responsibilities, etc. ... and have not prepared theirself with a strong, true spirit for death and the exciting things to come in the following centuries ... My best friend passed on in early life : [she'd been told of a terminal disease (Leukemia) at the age of 15, and passing at age 17] Larger ones, it seems, in a special friend, a beautiful young lady with an unending smile through her tremendous pain - something more valuable than knowledge and intelligence, more precious than wisdom and maybe even perhaps a good heart or goodness itself. A kind of tact that touched on the highest acceptance of human accomplishment, a gentleness that was more invisible, colorless yet essential - warning you what is too much and too little, what's allowed and what is going too far, and the dynamic importance of the gentleness of silence. In these times of quiet where the normal conditioned human feels boredom, you should be doing of hundreds of things to fill your thought, intent, and growth within the web of the vast universe. There are little who can do these; pure and sincere goodness - conquering selfishness, despair, impatience, the many daemons that are mere reflections of ourselves . .. I spoke with her nearly every night in her 1 1/2 years of life living in a hospital, and we always spoke of something different, her listening very sharp, intent, undying... her example was incredible in that she'd had incredibly intense pain inside that she always supressed, and through her tensions and worry she was giving me this shining smiling face with no harbored feelings of resentment (for my health) or anger. She showed me the kind of patience that any human should ever dream of having. It's an ability we grab hold of at the hardest of effort because the most secret instincts of our being revolt because our time is measured ... yet it is a painfully important duty in regards to our life's work, without it there is no true creation on our part. She'd told me one night when on the subject, (I was inquiring about how she held her pain in) "being patient you often become similar to the greatness of nature and the universe" ... sadly, at that age, I'd not taken the statement fully into assessment. A shame. It's connontations are simple and profound and lend tons of thoughtful insight. Tact, gentleness, sincerety, genuinity, patience ... she'd instilled these in me with an almost subconscious manner, yet right before my eyes, I could see how they'd come to be ... - M

thanks brother. i haven't even begun to touch on my wildness yet..... the more i recover my body, the more i am able to access more fully the way i want to express myself physically... which is in craziness. I AM MONKEY! oh yeah, at the same festival i was partial to a bit of tree climbing too i love climbing stuff and am looking forward to the oppurtunity to once again engage in rockclimbing. i also have some ideas to build devices enabling me to get up those trees that don't have branches for several metres. one is with a gun, hook and rope.... the other is using some kind of 'glove' for feet and hands with metal 'claws' so i can climb up we'll see what happens in time. when i get an oppurtunity to live in the forest more then i'll begin to engage these kind of activities with more fervor. my dream: to live in a tree house

Anyone ever heard of *limerence*? It's something that affects (afflicts) men and women equally, but I as a man refuse to succumb to its lure anymore when considering women. I'll give affection and respect, *when merited*, but thanks to serious re-evaluations of my behavior and belief system, I don't feed the limerent impulses anymore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence On that note, it's interesting to contrast the original "Louie Louie" lyrics with the Black Flag version. Original: Three nights and days me sailed the sea. Me think of girl constantly. On the ship, I dream she there. I smell the rose in her hair. Black Flag: You know the pain That's in my heart-- It just shows I'm not very smart! ****************** I don't go around acting like some PUA, but I must say that I finally found the best female companionship of my life only after letting go of all the "sensitive nice guy" conditioning I was brought up on. Peace--it's a yang thang too! Peregrino

Actually Jeremiah posted something like(should have pasted it)'in the winter he's doing more passive, stillness meditations'. Going still and deep makes sense in the winter. Eating hardier, winter rootery foods. I haven't really made a conscious decision to 'do' winter, but I should. Sleep more. Exercise wise? Slow down, don't test limits, move gently into deeper endurance? Let Spring be a time for growth, Winter a time for sustaining, deeper inner growth, more sitting, more dream work. Thoughts? Michael

I mean, it's not my dream job, but I think I would be happy doing it. Anything that puts me around the intense energies of birth and death keeps my interest.

look, i'm not arguing that there isn't an alphabet to be learnt before you can create your own words.... my problem is with the methodology of learning it. this is where we have a misunderstanding between technique and mechanic. i'll try and use an example to illustrate my point: in aikido there is a technique called "kotegaeshi" which is a type of wrist lock/throw. the way it is trained is we train it repeatedly from the same attack (which may vary) i.e. we train it from a straight punch to the chest, or an overhead strike. thus we have a 'technique' we have a "when aggressor does this, you do this" scenario. the problem is that an aggressor never acts within the contexts of how we train, and we always train with compliant partners. what we end up training is someone elses definition of a reaction to an attack.... we are training how to be someone else, the particular teachers interpretation of the person who created the art. we are training to be them. the alternative is still involving the same wrist throw. but this time we dissect it and we investigate how the throw works. the throw works when the wrist is turned a certain way which essentially causes a chain of tension along the joints to lock up the elbow, shoulder and hip. we create drills to explore this mechanic and to explore how to displace an opponent by locking up the joints. we then explore this with increasing levels of stress and sophistication. there is no "if aggressor does this, we do this" scenario.... there is only an awareness of how someone can be displaced and neutralised through locking up of joints. we have within this a myriad of oppurtunities and learn to respond to each situation appropriately within the unique and ever changing event it is. what happens is that we are creatively exploring this for ourselves. we come to own this particular set of mechanics for ourselves by learning to express it in our individual way. we get the ability to create our own techniques based upon those mechanics inherent to human movement. it sounds and seems so similar, and it is. the only difference is the methodology of approaching the training. it's the difference between learning by rote, and by learning by questioning and forming opinions, hypotheses and theories and getting to test them for yourselves. learning through exploration. learning by rote you can pass an exam that requires memorisation, easily (as many of my uni exams did... i don't learn by rote though, so i never did well in these) but try and write your own opinion formed essay after you have been learning by rote for so long.... good luck to you! life (and combat) happens in the form of essays, not in the form of exams that we can walk into with a head full of facts devoid of any real understanding. in art class in high school do they ask you to paint the same picture 1000 times so you truly get the mechanics of brush stroke, texture, colouring, shading, etc? no.... we analyse the mechanics as seperate entities and then go ahead and explore them in our own creative way. if its going to be called martial arts then it needs to be treated as art. it needs to be a creative exploration of individual expression..... for that is what art is. it's not science, it's not mathematics.... it's art. why go to battle with a bunch of techniques in your hand, when you could go there equipped with the ability to create your own at will? if you are content with fitting into someone elses mould, that is your choice and i would never dream of trying to dissuade you from that. for myself i don't like being forced into a mould, i'm a funny shape and i don't fit.... no matter how hard you press! and lastly, was there any need to resort to sarcasm? i already think you are intelligent so there is no call to try to belittle me just because my opinion differs from yours. take the high and mighty ground if you like, but i'm not an opponent to be cut down... i'm an oppurtunity to learn and investigate, thats all. thats all anything ever is. for me i am very grateful for this whole discussion, it has enabled me to clarify a whole line of thought that was just waiting to click into place. so thank you for that, and blessings sean. p.s. this whole dialogue was in relation to the study of aikido... in BJJ there is a little more freedom of expression, however there are still restraints... from my point of view.

Shieky, Once again, the only reason you ask these questions is because you have no focus. WHY are you studying a martial art??? Once you can answer this question from a position of truth there will be no issue. If you want to fight in UFC, study BJJ. If you want to be a bouncer, study Aikido. WHAT do you want??? Do you enjoy contact with men? Do you want to get in shape? Do you dream of glory in the Octagon? IF you are learning martial arts for real-world application, this shit is all useless. In sport competition such as UFC and PRIDE here are a list of things that are not allowed: eye gouges testicle attacks wrist and finger attacks face locks along with many catch wrestling techniques ear attacks bites stomps (UFC) elbows (PRIDE) Joint strikes spinal strikes You know why these things aren't allowed? Because they allow someone with no training to take out all of your heroes. Ends fights in a few seconds. No $$$ can be made watching such fights. So figure out what you really want in life and just go for it.

Hahh... well that's what I am loving best about my life at the moment. Yeah, absolutely. I can picture you running something like an integral trauma center, where you can lecture to the public, help people one on one therapeutically and also train self defense skills ... all of this would obviously include a lot of writing as well, ie: preparing training materials, even writing books, etc. You know, this is really my deepest dream I think. Like one of those, if you could snap your fingers and be whatever you want kind of things ... I think I'd be a cutting edge film director. Cam, for you, I see you getting into socially conscious business, investing and philanthropy. And by socially conscious I don't even mean necessarily in an obvious way ... like "organic produce" or something. I mean just remaining conscious of how your business ventures fit in with your highest values and what you are trying to bring into the world with your business skills. I mean, now you are bringing art into the world. That is an amazing thing. And just staying connected with principles like that. I like what Tami Simon of Sounds True says about how money can't be the object, but it can't be ignored. It's the oxygen of a company, it's how it breathes and lives so that it can fulfill it's purpose of (hopefully) bringing particular values into the world. Sean

Hello Cam. I would like to give you my unique perspective on all this. And it might sound harsh, and it might sound unpleasent, but I do hope that it doesn't sound (or is) untrue. Look at your question: soul searching time... ... what is America to you ... who are WE as a nation?... Now just imagine, what would have happened if I where to write: soul searching time... ... what is Italy to you ... who are WE as a nation?... Wouldn't it feel strange? Wouldn't it feel extraneous. Being the only Italian here you might think it is only a matter of number. But I could have said: soul searching time... ... what is Europe to you ... who are WE as a union?... Because there are quite a lot of Europeans in this forum. And still it would feel strange. Or I could have asked the 'what is Italy to you' question in an Italian Forum. You know what would have happened? I would have been considered crazy. A Raving maniac. I am not making this up, this is exactly the attitude most Italian have respect to who idealises Italy. We accept this kind of phrase from the president of the republic, but only during official speach, and while he is in office. It's not that we don't love Italy. We just don't identify with it. But there is something more. We don't link our soul to our nation. Maybe you were joking, but also jokes has a line of truth. If anyone where to ask something like that as a soul searching question in Italy, he would be the joke of two generations. Still his sons at school would still get it:"And you know what your father once said... ? WaHaHaHaHa". And there is not this idealistic vision regarding Europe too. Yeah, we might have ways in which we like to procede, but there isn't this 'Europe is the greatest' belief. Belief that is as much present in the liberal as in the conservative from what I see in the USA. Ok more in the conservative, but slightly. And then there is this attitude of no one else exists. And sorry if I keep going back to your question but, I believe, it is foundamental. Was your question worded to consider people not fromt he USA. Something like: and what you Eurpean, you Australian, you Middle Eastern people think about how this nation is acting in the world. And this is why it would also feel strange if a European where to ask something like this in an international forum like this. He would surely have worder the question to consider people from other nations. From other backgrounds. And this is probably the biggest single fault that I see in American people. This attitude that ignores the existance of the rest of the world. I know you are aware of the rest of the world, but if in somthing as simple as writing a message in a forum, you forget us, what is this saying? After september 11 the article that I felt was better describing my emotions was They can't see why they are hated. (Which I invite you to read). Many things have changed, ad many American are more aware than they where 5 years ago. But the general attitude is still there, and I feel that attitude is at the core of what is happening, and has happened. Because nations seem always to get the worse government that can get away with respect to the people. And if the American people simply ignore what is the goverment doing abroad, then the government knows it can get away with many crimes. None of us agrees with the ways that Bin Laden used. But if you read his speach you realise how the root of his crime (and it was a crime!) was in previous crimes committed by the Usa. You know, in my view, why was America great, and why it isn't anymore, and also why was Hitler doom to fall, and what can you do right now. Because there is a single underlying thing which links all those together. It's called immigration and emigration. When I was a kid, America was the dream. The generation of my parents, the baby boomers, were grown up during the years of the Marshal plan. My father went to the US for 1 year when he was 16 and this gave him an extra strength in work. Knowing English well, having a view which was not limited to Italy (Europe was nothing at the time). Few people of his generation did it. But many many went abroad. How many American have a passport? How many European have been out of Europe? More. But now people are not going to the US anymore (and I lost the article describing this). Thirty years ago people would go to the US and study there. Make a master there. Sometimes a PhD. All this was a richness for the US. Now people come to Europe, go to Australia, China. I was once offered to study with one of the big guys in my field. I declined: I would have to go live in California. I don't consider my rights as a human being secure enough over there. I would feel more secure in Cuba, at least I am politically left. It's more unprobable that I would disappear. The Lord of the Rings was not shot in the US, it was shot in New Zeland. Increasingly big projects are not happening in the US. Which brings us to Hitler. Beside the invasion, the single reason why Hitler was doomed to fall, was (apart being a vegetarian, sorry I couldn't stop myself), because he made Germany a place so unpleasent to live that all the creative people, all the scientist, left. Fermi, Maiorana, Einstein, where all from Germany-Italy, and nations that were controlled by Hitler-Mussolini. But when Hitler rose the intelligentzia left. And they made the bomb somwhere else. They met all in Los Alamos, in the T-department. All together working on the bomb. But, it is not just the US right now. Also Italy. Consider this, I was educated in Italy, and now I am working in Germany. I will soon move to Dublin. The possibilities to become a professor in Italy are slim (too much political games), but I get invited here and there. Apart the problem of not finding a gf who is willing to relocate every 3 years, I am actually contributing to everybody else richness. My work is giving papers, projects, work, patents to other nations. Not to Italy. And Italy spent a huge amount of money in educating me. Think about this: There are more papers from Italian researchers aborad than from Italian researchers in Italy. Think how bad must research in Italy be. What should at this point Italy do? Russia and China faced with the same problem did not permit to people who are in their working years to leave. That is the last resort. And you are even protesting for immigration (as it is Italy). That's such a joke! I know there are different kind of immigrations, but the US became big because of all immigration, it had. So what you should do? Vote with your feet. Leave. Go abroad. Travel, and relocate. And then you will not be supporting the US anymore. You will not share the Karma. Stop identifying with your nation and identify with your planet or with the whole of humanity. Where can you be to better help humanity? And when you are physically in a nation you are supporting it.

The only reason I am sensitive to this is one of my teachers went through a major crisis in which he had to have people constantly watching him so he wouldn't harm himself. He described it like the infinite was jealous of the finite because it was the one thing it couldn't be (the infinite can't be finite). Those forces were expecting him to be the bridge and he wasn't grounded enough to handle it. Michael Winn helped him out. Michael told him that he doesn't teach individually but he would make an exception for him because he had a dream about him. The Waking Down guys helped him out with their transmissions and he had his Second Birth (a waking down term to describe when you know beyond a doubt that you are consciousness yourself). They talk about being embodied and rotting into your emotions. I think that was the point when he got his trust back. As for me...I love the Healing Tao stuff. I took the fundamentals 1-4 course last year and I am going for 3 weeks this year. The earth's energy is so nurturing and it has helped me to feel my emotions deeply and feel stronger. I am highly kinesthetic so feeling the different flavors of energy is not difficult at all. I tried a few phone calls with a waking down guy named Krishna Gauci last year and I have never vibrated at a rate like that in my life...all from gazing at a picture I emailed him. For 2 weeks the energy wouldn't stop churning up emotions...occasionally I would feel something shift but there was no break. In the end it kind of freaked me out so I stopped. Now I am much more grounded but I find the Fusion methods to be a lot more gentle. I guess that is the reason I am cautious with spirituality.