Crickets sing to their wives

Disclaimer - 'All creations declares the praises of the Lord' is the perspective of the film maker whose endeavours I highly respect.

My personal opinion - I personally find 'the Lord' a constrictive term to my experience and am more inclined to praise the crickets and their inherent divinity and the metaphysical presence of Dr Seuss in the universe

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Why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested? Er, I don't know why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested?

It's time to protect the women and children isn't it?
Read more:- http://ow.ly/2w8ks and at the International Criminal Court

Who should clean this mess up? Should the Arab world take more of an active stance? Who is arming these people?

Will it continue to be the case that Arms dealers from Russia, China, Israel, India and big business in the US continue to make money on the backs of this sort of suffering? No it will not continue, it cannot continue. Should we arm the women so that they can protect themselves, their children, their livestock and their villages - at least then they would be on an almost equal footing with those 'that come on horseback and by air' to destroy them an their homes. There are certain people that it serves to have an immoral politician in the seat of government who will turn a blind eye to the smashing and grabbing of resources in return for wealth. It is my opinion that they should also be up for war crimes - because they are paying for them...

If you foot the bill of a war crime then you are complicit. It strikes me that you want this turmoil to exist between the Arab world and the rest of it because it serves you.

If I was the International Criminal Court I would find out who arms these people, who pays the bill and that is who I would arrest for war crimes. Perhaps that would mean condemning these countries/companies.

Whatever it takes to stop 'business'. Whatever it takes - that's what we need to do. And we need to help the ordinary folk. Who need the cavalry. They need to be seen as the last marine that the rest never leave behind.
because we are leaving these 6year olds and 70 to be raped and brutalised. We are leaving these so militias to mercilessly burn and kill. We are letting this happen.

We are complicit by our inaction. Anybody want to start paying for some security for these people? I mean anyone can buy a militia nowadays. Are there any wealthy humanitarians out there who wouldn't mind seeing the back of some of these dirty dealing folk be they arms manufacturers or genocidal dictators and monsterous militias. Either they turn themselves over to the ICC or someone scary will come and get them. The scary good guys.
In WW2 millions of people fought to bring an end to such abominations. People want to bring it to an end now. We don't want to hear any more stories on the news of the latest barbaric atrocities carried out with no repercussions. We want repercussions. I want repercussions.

Why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested? Er, I don't know - why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested? Because...

If you know the answer to this question please contact me. I want to know and also you might be able to tell me how we can stop the murdering/raping b********

Don't you think that if someone doesn't comply with UN human rights laws that someone should at least take their sweeties away?

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The Big Picture

When I went to Auschwitz I couldn’t believe what human beings did to each other even as I stood with my feet on that ground. No doubt the same disbelief went through those people as their breath was stolen from them. Is it that we have to believe it to stop it? Do you have to say ’Yes’ without any trace of wishful thinking or escapism, ‘Yes, this is how it is’. To stop fighting the truth with denial, with doubt and with anything that makes it less real. We spend a lot of our time making life look as little like its real self as possible. We are the plastic surgeons of our life. The last thing we want to face is our impermanence – our one hard solid truth, more reliable than God; a truth as hard and solid as its counterpart; existence. Our awareness and our awareness of our impermanence do this awkward dance in life; it will always end the same.

Until we put our faith in the truths that are apparent, we may as well float around in a spinning teacup looking at the stars for all that we will ever find out and learn about ourselves. And if we want to stop suffering; well, then we really have to take off our tinted glasses and take a good hard look around us. We need a curing song. Our souls are starving as we stock the supermarkets of our days with false nutrition. We swallow a pill to mask our hunger pains. We want truth, understanding,, an answer to our ‘whys’. We want security and control and will even avoid joy to have such certainty. We cling to suffering; it is an old old friend. We know the outlines of its face, the haunting of its sorrows, the weight of it about our shoulders. But when we start feeding ourselves joy, and bliss, divine stories, unassailable truths; such a little nutrition begins to persuade us that it comes down to the way we look with our eyes, the way we hold with our hands, the way we enunciate and alliterate life with love.

The suffering happens because we enact it. It is a play we prompt and allow to unfold; and are forced to watch. But what I know is that there is a final act and that played out upon the same stage is a dance of joy, a poet’s rendition of recuperation. After all of it is said and done it is a stage that we are standing on, with all the plays of the world upon it and we are the Shakespeare sprinkling tragedies and comedies upon it. What never changes is that stage. It is unsullied by joy or suffering. It is reliable, it is pure, it is the same shining awareness that runs through all things.

Here is one of my favourite poems by the Yuma Indians of North America:-

The Curing Song

Your heart is good.
(Spirit) Shining Darkness will be here.
You think only of sad unpleasant things,
You are to think of goodness.
Lie down and sleep here.
Shining darkness will join us.
You think of this goodness in your dream.
Goodness will be given to you,
I will speak for it, and it will come to pass.
It will happen here,
I will ask for your good,
It will happen as I sit by you,
It will be done as I sit here in this place.

As much as I am undone by suffering and walk through it in lost disbelief, disassociating, denying, wishing it away. It undoes me in away that forces me to unfold, it bruises my ignorance, it bullies my stuckpoints until they give way. I wonder - can't such a thing be done with love. I think it can, but when I think of how stubborn and willful we are as children; how a mother has to watch her child make mistakes, get hurt, before she can rush in with a mother's love; I wonder if it isn't like this also on the big scale of things. Such a warmth of love can envelop us when we finally surrender to understanding. I think this can take more than one life. That's why I think there are so many inexplicable tragedies; things that happen to good people; our lense is to small to see the whole picture. Really what tiny focuses we have got.

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Doing more than not enough

I see Twitter as a kind of meme storage device. Therefore often I will post Tweets of news stories I consider a 'priority' i.e. something of immediate importance that I think deserves attention. I also consider Retweets to be a gauge of whether other folk also consider your tweets important and worthy of attention.

It strikes me that what most of us find worth of attention are quotes that make us feel better; that make us see the world through new eyes, that reaffirm the truths we already have figured out.

The desperation of the world's poor, economic prejudice, conflict fuelled by our economies; these aren't considered important. In my experience they NEVER get retweeted; but then I don't have thousands of followers I have a random 600 with a hardcore loyal bunch of tweetery folk and some interesting newcomers who I enjoy getting to know.

My guidelines for following folk on twitter are that:-

• You're not on a personal development pyramid scheme that wants to help me all for only a $100 or a $1000 or more become more succesful, perfect, healthy and the same as everyone
• Your'e not a giant corporation or individual twittering on behalf of said giant corporation
• You're not in the Tea Party or right wing anything
• You're not an idiot or a time waster

It doesn't take too much perusal to figure out who fit into the above categories.

Of course if you are any of the above, I will be eternally patient with you and your ignorance. But you should know that:-

A - I haven't watched a commercial/advert since I learnt to use a remote control and especially the mute button and

B - I will spend a small amount of my time attempting to dissuade you from your chosen path on your behalf - not mine - yours; I have better things to do; there are worthier causes out there.

What I have discovered about Twitter is that a Tweet can save a person's life. I have discovered that you can connect with like minds. I have discovered that people love a good quotation. It must be part of our byte size capacity for using information as an escapist diversion - its feels good, its quick fix, it affirms that other people are like us; though sometimes when you delve a little deeper they're sometimes not, it's just that you both like football but don't mention health care.

I have been doing a little experiment to see what people's priorities are. I think Tweets fairly accurately reflect people's priorities; they are an informal log of people's daily or weekly activities that they consider noteworthy. So Retweets should also reflect this; my conclusion... ...my conclusion is that we are not doing enough. My conclusion is that most of us (not all us) have our priorities screwed. Well and truly superficially screwed.

Many of you know that cake is a favourite of mine. I often tweet about cake. The fact is most of the time I can't eat cake not if its got dairy, or wheat, glucose fructose or eggs in and lets face it - that's cake isn't it. So cake is generally symbolic. It stands for something I love that is a little out of reach, it stands for wishful thinking, for memories of happy moments full of friends, family and fun. But next to my cake tweet you will also find a article about genocide in Africa, or economic prejudice in Europe. You will find links to the stories that are absolutely crucial to all of our futures. Next to cake you will hear me talk about violence against women and children, about the insane economic bandwagon that ALL of the world's industries are on; the one that says 'It's Ok to turn a blind eye to massive conflict, industrial pollution and environmental degradation, not to mention the huge possibility of world immolation in the nuclear fallout from some random corporate human error/intention - 'Oh oops I pressed the wrong switch...' Oops-y-daisy.

But then those things are things that have ALREADY happened -we've already had 1000+ nuclear bombs blown up on this planet albeit in 'remote' places. Chernobyl happened and they never told us that they narrowly avoided a second explosion which would have rendered the whole of Europe uninhabitable. Narrow in that it was the observations of ONE scientist and the actions based on his advice that avoided it at least for now. That possibility looms once again - except they don't want to fund the 1billion for the avoidance of it this time - they'd rather pay 18billion for the hadron particle collider or whatever that is.

Please all of you nuclear loving folks out there, carry on, feel free after all it doesn't look like any of the big corporations or the governments are listening to any dissenters does it. And why aren't they listening? Because they can get away scot free, or at least they've budgeted for irritating court procedures ahead of time? Or because we don't care?

Some of the comments on Youtube - 'Why should we care about the West abandoning the Congo when we haven't even heard of it?' So the fact that the UN peacekeeping mission is clearly failing miserably doesn't really matter does it. or that four baby boys were gang raped along with 200 women less than a month ago. But it doesn't matter does it - because that was in the Congo and we've not heard of it.

Clearly the big corporations didn't care in the first place because this was happening when they knowingly bought the shipments of minerals, or conflict diamonds, or sold them arms or nitrate fertilisers or GM seeds. I'm not just talking about the Congo, I'm talking about anyone that knowingly trades with those who don't care about human rights - and that's everyone. All of us by our silent acquiescing are buying up oil fields for the next fifty years, drilling for more oil; open-caste mining for nitrates to make armaments and fertilisers to feed us on our deeply eroded soils and fuelling conflict to destabilise areas for the smash and grab that is the 'free market' - .

My soul is deeply eroded by all the suffering we are willing to casually stand by and let happen because its someone else's problem.

There's some strange collusion between countries that agree to the capitalist manifesto regardless of human rights. China, Russia, Iran sell arms to Afghanstan, the Afghani police being trained smuggle them south to their opponents; we also do business with China, Russia and Iran. Anyone failing to see these connections or the careful balancing act that is international business and politics and considers them unimportant is kidding themselves.

'It's the governments who are dealing with it; they're doing something about it aren't they?' - we blithely assume. The corporations wouldn't do that, (sharp intake of breath at horrifying details); our almighty God the corporation would never do that - they love us and care for us like we are their children; this is a democracy.' Right, it is a democracy of corn-fed fatigued zombies easily mollified by technological gadgets, fantasy movies, anti-depressants and low-fat ready meals. There are no Churchill's or Eisenhower's standing in the wings ready to lead us; the Martin Luther King's of the present are dead; killed by clever advertising campaigns and distracted by Machiavellian political slandering and concocted media storms; while the corporations act out reckless smash and grabs around the world - wherever they wish.

We are not doing enough. The future is being wrenched out of the hands of children via the neglect of us - their parents. By our absence, by our silence, by our willingness to accept the status quo, by our willingness to let errant behaviour go, by our watching as power is confronted and then returned to those who were absolutely irresponsible with it. You think a corporation is responsible because they have high share prices? You think a government is responsible because... well fuck knows what makes you think any government is responsible. Four years is not enough time to prove integrity especially when most of it is spent maintaining power and deluding the public.

We are so myopic it sickens me. We are so willing to be ruled; to abdicate our seats of decision, to give up our freedom. We have given it up - everyone of us that rents or buys property, or lays claim to one kind of passport - that's nearly all of us except for those Aboriginals, or tribes, or travellers, or nomads, or homeless that don't fit the capitalistic 'ideal' of conformist zealots - especially those who don't adhere to one place of residence, address or country. Oh those address-less people, those country swapping parasites - they are sooo frightening. You know who they are? They are us before we became domesticated - before we became tamed or afterwards; after our moment of disillusion, after the matrix came undone, after we swallowed that red pill of flagellation by the world at large - when we became one of them, one of the parasites; by default, by flood, by landslides of falling stocks and shares. If you have a roof over your head do I consider you lucky? No, I consider you naive - as one homeless man put it 'I just got here first, it won't be long and everyone else will come and join me'.

We are not doing enough. We are not doing enough because the suffering is escalating all around and we are tweeting about 'community building', 'sustainable lifestyles' and 'raw food' - oh wait a minute, hang on, wrong list - those are my 'Redpill' Twitter friends. The bluepills are talking about the temperature their Ipad's melt at, portraits of weird germanic guys with flamboyant moustaches and beards and fox furs on their heads, (oh it's Dave Mead's Magnificent Specimens exhibit which recently came to New York city) and the endless advice about how to increase your presence on social media, or business acumen... 'Stop wait a minute; YOU wrote that tweet - you, my favourite liberal Obama loving leftist who supplies me with endless links from diverse and wonderful charities and dogooders around the world; and your Ipad melts at what temperature?

Because the thing is none of us have really taken the redpill.

We can not escape our realities that easily, though we try. We try with cake, with discussions about politics, movies, the news, the latest catastrophe. The conditioner for our reality, is our awareness - it's our life lube - except nothing goes smoothly, its hard to focus, we don't ever know what will happen next, so we Twitter about cake and German moustaches and devote our lives to distraction, to entertainment, to our children, or our nearest and dearest, to control and compromise.

Even if we're the Aid worker up to our necks in deepest darkest Taliban crawling Afghanistan we're talking about acquiring silk for evening dresses and the amount of cosmetics on display at the local supermarket - we weren't to know, were we that we would be next weeks latest victim. Why do we do that; talk about these inanities next to dire straits?Because it enables us, it helps us to do what we can.

Dr Karen Woo did more than not enough.

(See Karen's picture above)

She went to a valley to help 50000 Afghanistani people to have access to eye care and medical aid; she did it while praising the Shewee that enabled her to pee standing up or in a moving vehicle. She did more than not enough while caring for stray cats and lamenting the idiosyncrasies of Kabul that mean security guards are given the leftovers of Westerners to eat (and they wonder why there's a security issue).

Her blog makes for fascinating reading, shining light into the daily life of westerners, aid workers and journalists in Afghanistan as well as the lives of the local people. Throughout her concern for others is obvious - she laments the freedoms we so readily take for granted being unavailable in so many places; she grates at the disparity between the affluent and the poor and the ostentatious ways we try and mould the natural world and the human environment to fit our idea of how it should be. Poverty doesn't fit and we prefer to look away. Except she didn't look away, she was compelled just days before her wedding to go to one of the most hostile places on the planet and help people. Compelled by humanity, compelled by the needless suffering of others, compelled by the massive obstacles facing a mother bringing a child into the world in the rugged environment that is Nuristan where there is the highest infant mortality. Dr Karen Woo was killed on the way back from her successful humanitarian mission. She was one of a team of nine on that mission who were killed doing more than not enough.

They are dead but we are still alive. We can carry on where the inspired have left us - our options; to be humanitarian or die, or to be humanitarian and die. There is no other choice, we are going to die any way - all of us eventually.

So I will continue to Tweet about cake and when I do so please don't think that my priorities are screwed, or that I'm a bluepill. I am a redpill at heart. We all are. We are Churchill's, Eisenhowers and Martin Luther King's-in-waiting; with the political. military and humanitarian will there just when it's needed.

Karen set up an organisation called Bridge Afghanistan to channel hospital stock from the UK that would have been destroyed to where it was desperately needed. Her work is being continued by close friends who are setting up the Karen Woo Foundation to this end.

The question is what will you do? Will you let them, who ever they are, decide our fate?

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#140conf Roadtrip!

View The #140conf Roadtrip: Aug 22-28 2010 in a larger map

The #140conf: Roadtrip will be taking place from August 22 to August 28, 2010 and they intend on broadcasting live from inside our car while we are on the road. You can call them at the same time on Skype and join in. They are going on the road to reach out and meet community members across the Midwest in advance of #140conf Detroit, which takes place at the Fillmore Detroit on October 20, 2010.

Cities: Cleveland, OH - Columbus, OH - Dayton, OH - Cincinnati, OH - Indianapolis, IN - Bloomington, IN - St Louis, MO- Kansas City, MO - Omaha, NE - Sioux Falls, SD - Fargo, ND - Minneapolis, MN - Dryersvile, IA - Madison, WI - Chicago, IL - Detroit, MI

Have your voice and your stories heard in The State of Now. Thye’ll be having breakfasts, lunches, dinners and events including the opportunity to sign up for test-drives of Buick cars. They’ll also have t-shirts, give-aways, and more surprises along the way.

The #140conf events provide a platform for the worldwide twitter community to: listen, connect, share and engage with each other, while collectively exploring the effects of the emerging real-time internet on business.

Find me on twitter

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The cessation of doubt

The cessation of doubt is the beginning of fearlessness. Doubt also has a purpose - overcoming your own doubts gives you the tools to challenge and overcome the doubts of others. Doubtlessness is an extremely powerful and healing state but it is not to be confused with bloody mindedness. Doubtlessness is also a state without the crazy commentary we have in our heads. It is without the monkey mind. It is pure unadulterated awareness.

It is said that a situation will continue as it is until the lesson is learned, doubt is a good measure of thumb to know if you've learned it yet. We have to answer all our questions and grey areas to gain conviction. Oh and we have to have humility too, without that we won't necessarily have the grace to achieve our goals. Humility is an openness to possibilities, it is a friendly disposition towards impermanence, it is recognising that our not knowing is the truth and all of our knowing is rooted in that single unique mystery of existence. Explain that and you explain all things. Except most of us try and explain the things and leave out the biggest question.

My biggest doubt was 'Should I be this happy when others are suffering?' Both my perceptions of 'I' and of 'other' were wrapped up in this. In essence it was the lesson I had to learn. I had reached a place of doubtlessness, or quiet; a place where I was not suffering (not simply that I wasn't ill - I was at the time quite unwell) it was a place where I didn't have the anguish that accompanies suffering or the pain itself even. Somehow I recognised that my 'I' was not that. As a Tibetan teacher once said when he went to the dentists and didn't use anaesthesia and the dentist asked him if it hurt; although he himself was not hurting he answered 'The glass over there is...' He had removed his identifying with himself to a much broader version inclusive of all things and so the pain was displaced. Pain is something we 'identify' with. To be capable of fully lovinng something Amma says we need to lose the 'I' and 'mine' the past and the future. So there's a measure with which to check yourself - is there an 'I' in this problem, is there a 'my' in this problem, is there the 'past' in this problem or is there the 'future'. Then you can be truly present, fully loving and no doubt the answer is also waiting there for you. Freeing yourself up from those things provides a great deal of space around any issue, any suffering that you may have.

The reason I stumbled upon this place was because I wanted to find for myself that place without suffering that I understood existed according to all those enlightened people's experiences. I pursued it with great determination at a time when I was in unbearable pain and discomfort. In fact I didn't have a lot of recourse. I had understood that in any human state, at any point in time it was possible to free ourselves of suffering. One of the greatest tools for this was a single pointed mind, a focused mind, the other was self reflection - the mind looking at the mind so to speak, then a great wish for freedom and a wish to help others.

For many months I lived in that state of 'no thought'. I had no preconceptions, no commentary, no filter, no judgement. It did not mean that I didn't speak. The words came without any precursor or thought. It was much more like I was living in realtime as opposed to a step behind as we are when we filter everything through our 'experiences and judgements'. I also had a great sense of well being and bliss, I knew exactly what I needed, I knew exactly what level of vitality I had, I was helped with both western and chinese traditional medicine. It was the confidence I had that was most remarkable as though that is our natural state. My vision also changed, things seemed to emit their own light, and were absolutely beautiful, I could not separate myself, nor could I call something inanimate - everything was vibrating with a life, an essence that ran through all things. As my mind remained peaceful and still, so my body calmed. I even looked at 'my' self in the same way, its kind of an intrinsic detachment if that makes sense. i could treat myself in the third person and approach otehrs with the same care and attention I used to reserve for myself.

This state went on many months until one day I had one thought. My first thought in all those months. On that day I thought 'Should I be this happy?' I did not answer it, my mind returned to its clarity and stillness like a pebble has just landed in the water. The next day the thought continued 'Should I be this happy.... when others are suffering?'. And in that way my thoughts continued to grow right back up to monkey mind again. That chattery non stop commentary upon life and experience, only this time I was watching. I am still watching. It was an unusual doubt that interrupted my repose, but I think actually that it holds within it many answers.

Conviction overcomes doubt but sometimes looking for and finding the truth can be painful. Having the humility to capitulate when you're wrong is a marvellous trait leading to learning and peace. But one should not capitulate if your awareness would remove the suffering or the ignorance of others. Yet it doesn't mean you're there to proselytise; a silent example is enough, a word of warning, just as you would teach a child and even then, even if you have the ability to move mountain of ignorance, sometimes the right thing to do is to let them make their own mistakes.

You'll always be there for them, the rules are - you can't always take on their burden of suffering. Sometimes it seems we have to carry our burdens until we have exhausted the results of an action and then we can put it down. The act of carrying it, of butting our heads against the obstacle in frustration, the fighting, the loss and the despair, all of these can be great and pure lessons; the main obstacle that we are repeatedly confronting being ourselves. We have to step aside. One thing such suffering teaches us is empathy for others. We will help others, we will carry the bags of a stranger, we will share what we have because we know what it's like to suffer, or we understand we could be there too. And lastly there is a disentanglement from the self; much of our suffering is a direct result of our concept of 'self', remove that and a whole swathe of types of suffering fall away.

What is left when there is no doubt is a beautiful state of confidence. It is always there. My nan used to say 'Trust in providence'. Our confidence is profoundly shaken when we have an 'I' and the rest of the world, an 'I' and the other. What a frightening place to step into when we are so separate and so alone. But step into a place where everything is intrinsically connected, where your 'I' is not in bits, not an island, and then you're not alone; your awareness stretches out through all time and through all existence. It reassuringly blinks back at you. We are in a world full of mirrors of the same awareness.

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Glowing pigs

To me a glowing pig is pig abuse. You might think that's going a bit far especially if you're from the medical profession. You may tell me that this pig is well looked after that it hasn't suffered. I know that a lot of animals have and do suffer all over the world because of medical experiments, besides you say the pig is a GM pig. Like that makes it OK. People think because animals don't present intelligence like a human that its OK to cause them suffering, especially if it's to preserve human life. In the natural world the pig and the jellyfish would never meet let alone cross. I take umbridge that science thinks that in the name of medicine this is OK. I don't object to advances in medicine, I object to the proposition that its OK for pig and jellyfish to be crossed in the name of medicine. I don't care whether it helps you look up a donkeys arse - find ANOTHER way.

Take longer if you have to, people might die, yes, but at least there wouldn't be glowing pigs and you never know I expect there is ANOTHER way.

Another experiment where there was this issue was the mice growing human ears where they had the ear attached to them while it grew. If scientists want to grow ears perhaps they should attach them to themselves, and if they want things to glow they should inject themselves with jelly fish which is the aim eventually isn't it to use the jellyfish glow in medicine?

I see all living things as sentient. Pigs are very intelligent, dogs are very intelligent. Many animals present an advanced set of emotions, empathy, protectiveness, cognition - all sorts of human qualities. However they don't have choice, we have choice, they don't. In my opinion we should not cause suffering to any living being. Even if our modus operandi is to find away to reduce suffering of any sort, it should not be done through the means of suffering or genetic manipulation that would never happen in nature beyond what happens when you cross roses in your garden. That's the same species. Why it strikes me that that is OK and it isn't Ok for interspecies crossing and yet this seems to have been completely overlooked by science, I don't know. Interspecies breeding = BAD. Same species breeding = GOOD. Does it make it OK if the characteristics have been genetically isolated = NO. Why? because it has taken millions of jellyfish years to get that jellyfish glow. Glowing pigs were another billion years away and more than likely NEVER a possibility. So when I accuse science of playing God, that is why. I don't think we are wise or capable enough to take such decisions. That we do this on so many levels for progress is quite frankly frightening. Things like this include:-

• GM foods like Glucose Fructose sanctified by the scientific community, the FDA and WHO which are now causing diabetes, obesity and terrible allergies. People are dying because they drink soda with this stuff in
• Nuclear power whose consequences have the potential of just one incident; just one human error could make the entire planet uninhabitable. Also we are leaving a lethal legacy for hundreds of generations to be equally threatened by.
• Petrochemicals, nitrates, dioxins, radiation, asbestos - all these scary words are products of science they have said its OK to have in our world. That we previously didn't have that kill people, cause water on the brain in babies, make two headed babies, children with terrible deformities, cause asthma and eczema, leukaemia and cancer
• Medicines; antibiotics, radiation therapy, thalidomide, vaccines - all ostensibly OK'd by the scientific community - who it is apparent DON'T KNOW

We can choose not to. We can create new guidelines that protect us and future generations from all of these scientific breakthroughs. To me a scientific breakthrough should have its consequences considered when it is created and these should be fully considered before it is allowed into the mainstream. If the consequence is 100000 year old lethal substance, then it should NOT be allowed. If the consequences are NOT known, then it should not be allowed.

Science carried out without causing suffering, without manipulating the natural rules that already exist is OK. It could be amazing. Imagine a Buddhist and a Scientist being one and the same things; experimenting with wisdom and awareness, not causing suffering in any way- understanding the natural laws that govern. We have lost much of our respect and our roles as guardians, we don't know how to live in nature so we make misguided decisions that we consider OK. They're not OK

To me creating a glowing pig is pig abuse. I would not like it if I was made to glow in the dark or if my dog was; what are the consequences of such an action? A jellyfish and a pig who'd of thought they'd get it on?

Will we all one day glow in the dark because of a genetic accident?

To me all existence is sentient; my awareness doesn't stop at my skin. I sense some places to be lovely, beautiful, scary, horrible, calming, unsettling; places not just people. Take a rock from Auschwitz and rock from where the Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree; the Auschwitz rock is a sad rock, the buddha's rock is a healing rock.

And yet we cast about assignations that imply humans are hierarchically above everything else. This subtle perception permits us to blow vast holes in the earth, scar swathes of it with open cast mining, drill in it, spray DDT on it, irradiate it, destroy it. We have no comprehension of balance. A long time ago we lost our connection, our understanding and ability to live in balance with the earth. Even those of us that do care are locked in an inbalanced way of life. We are reliant on fossil fuels, or nuclear power that generates tons of toxic waste so lethal it could kill all of us. We accept this because we are not given other options when there are other options. We are yoked to a chain of paying for our basic needs, of expecting a certain level of service in return for which we pay and pay and pay and so does everything and everyone else.

I do not want to pay any more. I want to honour the rock around me. I want to have a healthy respect for the glowing pigs of this earth that symbolise such an erroneous assumption on our parts it is astounding. It is the emperor in his new clothes. It is madness argued as sanity walking amongst us. I want to honour the plants around me. We manipulate them, we package them, we sell them as if all the sacredness had been drained out.
I want to honour the people around me. They walk around as if divinity and freedom were myths told in fairy tales. I bow to the spirit within all things. You can find it, it begins with the recognition that you don't know. The question is - after all these scientific advances can Pandora's box be closed? I think that depends on us coming to our senses. How can we fight against the invisible, against the illogical when it is presented to us as truth, as the gospel of science, engineering, chemistry and economics? When it is dressed in the anonymity of a corporate brand and 'licenced to kill'. They have been killing with negligence, with human error, with arrogance, with disdain, with accountability, without accountability. They have been killing for years and years and years in the name of this new deity Science and his consort the Economy. I think its time to choose your religion and choose it wih care and consideration, to recognise your ignorance wherever it is.

I live in a country where 80% of its electricity is from nuclear fuel. Even though when Chernobyl exploded it spread a plume of deadly ash all over it, all over Europe. Even though the highest rate of breast cancer is here, even though they have to bury waste that is lethal for 100,000 years in a repository that will cost billions and only function for a century; with capacity for 20years waste. It will take twenty years to complete. It is illogical when a methane digester fuelled by waste, by rotten vegative matter, by the renewable resource that is poo, can equally capably provide for our energy needs, especially when accompanied by other harmless renewable resources.
We can grow organically instead of using pollutive nitrates, ferilisers, pesticides and GM.

I don't know why we are doing this. Why are we acting so insanely. I know most people have no idea about living in nature, they are clueless, a business man from the city who goes camping, who earns a fortune and is qualified up to the hilt, will take a dump outside his tent because he doesn't know. It is these same people deciding the fate of the earth, of nature, of ecological systems they know nothing about. How can they decide when they don't know the effect they have when they turn the light switch on or flush the toilet?

We are trusting animals. We believe what they tell us. We listen to them with our eyes closed. In the light of the lamp I am writing by and by the hum of this computer, my quota of nuclear waste has been produced by those atoms splitting and my legacy will be something that is hazardous for one hundred thousand years. When I could wait until daylight, when I could use a candle, when I could plug into a solar panel or a generator fuelled by vegetable oil, by methane gas, or by hydrogen.

I don't understand their plans but I'm going the other way. I expect they will catch up shortly at least I hope so. I guess they won't get lost in the dark as they have glowing pigs to see by.

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Choosing how to live

I love this quote - 'Where am I willing to die? It all depends on how I’m choosing to live.' Sheena wrote in this post.

In my life I have done my bucket list. I did as much as I could and then one day it became unnecessary. I had a dream I did everything it is possible to do in a human existence. I did every career ( did it all in a kind of sped-up real time where I remembered doing it). At the end when there was literally nothing left to do, I found myself in a red desert in that beautiful time of the night when some of the sky is still light and blue and yet it is dark. Nearby a group of bushmen elders sat (like Kalahari bushmen) they moved aside so that there was space for me to sit. They said nothing, but there was some laughter that I had finally arrived as though it took me a long enough time to figure out the truth. They had on loin cloths and a digging stick/spear and nothing else but the flames of the fire, the night, the desert and Oceans of wisdom. And then I woke up....

What do you do when you have 'done' everything already? That's how I woke up.

Since I dreamt that dream I have been in one long, extended gesture of thoughtfulness, like a two year long repose. Kind of like surrender or saturation or both.

I love finding the other yogis out there; Sheena yogis.

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