Asking the big and small questions:
Why? Why not? What if?
There's something to be said for Kitchen Table Wisdom - you know, like in the old days when people sat around the kitchen table after a meal and talked about life, the universe and the meaning of it all - as well as the gossip doing the rounds in town...
Well, that's what this place is - a place to share common wisdom, thoughts and feelings about things important and unimportant, that bring us joy, laughter and happiness and that trouble, sadden, confuse and anger us ...
What I write here is what's 'real' for me. It won't always be PC or 'nice'. We're missing out on true connection and chances to grow and change because there's too little authenticity, too little honesty, too much holding back what we really feel and mean.
Welcome to my world...
I used to have a copyright claim here, but I've removed it...
Ideas don't belong to anyone -
they come to those who are receptive and are to be used for the well being of all...
I find images and movies and music all over the web
and I use them to accent/expand on my thoughts and understandings...
If you feel you have experienced or received something of value in reading my posts,
please consider either:
or paying it forward to those who need
material and emotional/spiritual sustenance in this world...
Thank You
As You Think, So It Is - Your Beliefs Create Your Reality
If your Reality isn't Working for You, Create a New One!
Life Unlimited!
Namaste
(the Divine in me, recognises and honours the Divine in you)
"There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we measure the well being of a society. In our upside-down system of accounting (GNP & GDP) war is productive, misery caused by it is not taken into account and a dead tree is better than a living forest."
This is a radio version of the feminist economics film about the New Zealand author and former member of parliament Marilyn Waring, directed by the Oscar winning Canadian director Terre Nash.
Well, its that time of the month again, for men and women all! Time to come and breathe your way to a new life... Please join me and discover the amazing benefits of circular breathing...
Date:
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Time:
10:00am - 1:00pm
Place:
5 Focus Fitness
Street:
1009 8th Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109
Who knew that just a little extra oxygen in the body would bring such amazing results? Use your breath to:
Achieve more focus, clarity, energy, motivation and insight.
De-stress, unwind, unburden yourself from the past month's challenges and set yourself up for a positive, productive, joyful month to come.
Clear blocks and release fears and other negative, draining emotions.
Work on specific issues.
Build and repair relationships and set goals - create an "Unlimited Life".
Establish/add to a physical, emotional and spiritual self-care 'maintenance' program.
Sessions consist of experiential teachings around uncovering and releasing sabotaging core beliefs and behavior patterns, plus 90 minutes of Conscious Connected Breathing.
Appropriate for both beginners and experienced 'breathers'...
Maximum 15 participants.
Refreshments provided.
Bring yoga mat, pillow, blanket and writing materials.
Cost: $75.00/session (2-hour individual session usually $125.00)
This workshop repeats on the 4th Sunday of every month. Discounts are offered for those who pre-register and pre-pay for more than one session.
email: sahila@metamind-spirit.com or call 206 679 1738 for more information and to register.
Speaking of old paradigms... there are some 'socially aware' businesses around the world who have adopted the Triple Bottom Line operating and accounting philosophy of PPP, which stands for People, Planet, Profit... Now, in my opinion, they've still got the focus wrong: It should be PLANET, PEOPLE, PROSPERITY.... As a species we are merely one variety of life in the ecosphere; we seem to have developed the arrogance of thinking the planet is our playground and we can do what we want to it, regardless of the rights of other species.... None of the beings on this planet can live within a damaged ecosphere, so our first responsibility is to the PLANET... And I think the word PROFIT ought to be replaced by PROSPERITY... profit still implies exploitation and benefit only for some, while prosperity implies benefit for all...
The Seattle public school community has had enough - three years of expensive chaos and incompetence under Dr Goodloe Johnson and its time for her to go.
Well, its been four days since we set up our Declaration of No Confidence in Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson online, asking people to read and to sign...
We're running this petition to show the District that teachers are not alone in their dissatisfaction with the Superintendent. Teaching staff at four schools have voted no confidence in the Superintendent, and we've heard at least three other schools are also formulating a no confidence resolution...
And this very serious step of taking a No Confidence vote comes after three years of letter writing, blogging, board meeting testimonies, filing law suits, attending community meetings, phone calls, other rallies, all to no avail.
We wonder how long it will take, how much more evidence the School Board needs before it has the courage and integrity to act on its' constituents' desires?
We're doing this now because the School Board is currently evaluating the Superintendent's performance, considering whether to give her a pay rise and bonus and/or to extend her contract until 2013. We parents don't want her in the District for a minute longer than absolutely necessary - in fact most of us want her fired with cause, or to have her contract bought out. At a cost of $750K, it would be cheap at twice the price, considering the multi-millions of dollars her policies and incompetence have cost us already and will continue to cost us as long as she is here.
We're rallying and presenting this Declaration to the Board at its next meeting on June 16th; it will vote on Dr Goodloe-Johnson's contract on July 7. If you want more information and/or to join us, please call me on 206 679 1738. If you haven't read and signed the Declaration yet, please do...
And no, we do not want privatization and charters and more high stakes standardized testing in our city... We want COMPASSIONATE, humane, common-sense, grass roots change, easy to implement, taking time and honoring each student as a unique individual with unique talents, skills and needs...
At some point on my journey, I felt I was being asked to choose whether I wanted to be apprenticed to a particular lineage of teachings or whether I was going to walk this path as a solo practitioner...
I chose to walk my own path.
I've studied religions/spiritual traditions from many cultures; at heart, they each say the same thing - the only real difference is the terminology...
I've taken from those teachings what feels 'true' to what I've personally experienced on a mystic level, I've synthesised what I've learned and now have my own world view that works for me...
That's all that's important really - whatever works to connect me with the Divine and whatever works for you; all the rest is about power and control and inserting an artificial (and unnecessary) intermediary between humans, the rest of life and the Sacred...
It's been in my thinking for a long time now (perhaps because I've been an immigrant all of my life, so far living in five countries), how ridiculous and anachronistic it is that we have borders.
Where's the logic and the sanity and the compassion in a world that is divided up into regions by invisible lines in the sand and ocean?
Where one's lot in life is basically decreed by a geographical accident of birth?
Where, if you're born one foot on this side of that invisible line you have a certain kind of life, and if you're born one foot on the other side of that line you have another kind of life?
And where some people get to control the majority of the resources on the planet and others get to do without?
Where's the equity and compassion in all of that?
And borders and flags and anthems and patriotism all lead us to separate ourselves from the 'others' and give us cause to make the other an enemy and to criticise and to disparage and to exploit and to fight and to exterminate.
Where's the compassion in all of that?
Isn't it time we did away with this ridiculously outdated notion of countries and national interests?
We're living in an interconnected web. What we do, how we live here in the web affects someone, something elsewhere in the web. Because we're living in a closed system, when we take more than we need on a moment by moment basis, when we claim our 'rights' to a certain piece of land or a body of water, to a certain lifestyle and degree of comfort, someone, somewhere else has to pay the price, do without.
Where's the compassion in that?
Who thinks about that when they're shopping at Walmart or Costco?
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people ...Living life in peace
~John Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980), English musician and singer-songwriter, political activist...
It's not the looks that make the impression necessarily - it's the 'energy', the body language, what's in the eyes (the windows to the soul), what's in the mind, what's in the spirit...
It's how a person carries himself/herself, whether they take the time and trouble to present themselves to you respectfully.
And show they respect themselves by dressing appropriately for the place/occasion, bathing, shaving, wearing matching socks and holding up their trousers with a belt and not the bungee cord I keep in my car!
Average or even ugly (who defines all these terms anyway - they're purely subjective experiences, 'beauty being in the eye of the beholder' and all that) - is totally transformed by eyes that shine with intelligence and humour and goodwill, by a body that walks confidently and yet not arrogantly, by good manners that demonstrate consideration, by language that articulates learning, wisdom, understanding and respect for others, by spirit that emanates love, acceptance and generosity...
Attraction is all pretty idiosyncratic and without any logic...
For myself, I'm not attracted to 'fleshy' faces and ears. I know why I have that preference, I realise its not fair or valid to apply that as a blanket criteria to all men...and it just won't go away...not very mature of me, but there you go.
And badly stained, crooked or missing teeth are a distraction that I have to fight against to give a person my full attention.
And bad teeth make me reluctant to think about kissing him...
And greasy hair - I do not want to run my fingers through a man's greasy hair - natural grease or product...
And the smell/taste of cigarette smoke on his skin and clothes - yuck!
The smell of too much alcohol, especially beer, is a turn-off, as is Old Spice after-shave!
And I'm short and round - I prefer to be with men who are at least my height, preferably taller.
I dated a 'little person' once. I was curious to find out what were my prejudices. I met with him several times. We had interests in common.
It was cool sitting with him at dinner and talking. Great conversation. We were at an equal height...
It was very weird standing up from the table and looking around and down for him. "Where did he go?" was my internal reaction, kinda like looking around for one of my children...
I was used to being the smaller person... and I couldn't visualise the mechanics of making love together...
It didn't go anywhere partly because he wanted to move too fast, and partly because I couldn't get past the height difference... some might call that being shallow and prejudiced and they'd be right ...
I've done my share of volunteering in my life; however, I've always thought that volunteering was a double-edged sword.
Volunteering ensures that our world keeps running in a somewhat humane manner, that the social supports are there to help those who can't help themselves.
In fact, volunteering and other unpaid work is an entire economy unto itself, without which much of this world would cease to function.
And there are some economists (Marilyn Waring for example, in her book "Counting for Nothing") who've made the point that our current national accounting systems seriously misrepresent what's really going on in our world by not counting volunteering and unpaid work, undertaken mostly by women and children.
Volunteering lets society and its institutions off the hook in fulfilling essential functions/delivering essential services to its citizens, and is also exploitative of people.
I see many non-profits operating from a commercial business model, but paying their staff relatively low wages/salaries. They claim lack of funds for this disparity in pay between the private and non-profit sector.
And there's an underlying implication that people ought to be OK about being paid less because its for a 'worthy cause', they're giving of themselves and a degree of altruism is required to prove they're sincere in their motivation.
I think this contributes to the continuation of the imbalance we have in our world.
Firstly because it sends the message that someone else will come along and clean up the mess...
And secondly, those issues are not important anyway, because we use volunteers so much and don't pay staff enough to show we value the work.
I've been part of a discussion amongst social entrepreneurs about what drives innovation?
Many people are still stuck in the 'free market' model, thinking that its the only one that fosters true innovation.
I disagree that competition in and of itself drives innovation. Innovation basically is problem solving, curiosity manifested in creating something new. It doesn't only happen in a competitive environment. I believe its an inherent drive within the human spirit to create something new/different; its an extension of our need to express ourselves and it has little do do with what's going on in the outside world/market.
I think competition restricts innovation because there is so much at risk in daring to think outside the box - profits, reputation, social position, livelihood. That's why we have so much of the same thing with only minor variations available to us as consumers - small (often only cosmetic) changes are hailed as being highly innovative.
I think true innovation happens in an environment which is supportive, where there is no economic/political attachment to the outcome. Innovation is an organic process. Think of children being creative - how many children can think freely when they are under time or other constraints? How many artists or authors can come up with their best work if the clock is ticking and their publisher is pushing them to meet a spring deadline because another popular author has a new book due out then? How well do you do, if someone is standing over your shoulder, demanding that you produce something entirely original by a particular day/date, meeting highly defined criteria, using a tightly controlled set of resources? If you can't do it, you and the process are termed 'failures'.
How much more likely is innovation to occur, if you could talk/collaborate with all the other people working in the same field, no matter what they're doing and for whom they work? Imagine the incredible outcomes that might spontaneously present themselves out of the synergy of working without boundaries?
I come from a space where I'm not interested in competing with anyone. There is no need - there's enough to go round (its an issue of ownership and distribution) and competing sets limits, boundaries, conditions and chokes off the ability to be innovative, expansive.
I'm interested in collaboration and cooperation. I'm into 'synergy' and 'synchronicity'. I'm a natural networker - information and people cross my path, I keep tabs on who's doing what and where I see synergy I connect people and resources. They go off and 'make wonderful music together' and I keep on with my own interests.
I do this informally (because I would get bored and feel fenced in, and it would spoil the INTENT and the organic spontaneity of it) usually without any recompense or ongoing stake in the outcome - which some would say is foolish, naive, self-sabotaging and will keep me poor!
One of the major reasons I do this in just this way is because I see the spectrum of wealth-poverty we have in the world, even here in the West, and I think the imbalance we have going now is shockingly immoral and indefensible.
Doing business as a social entrepreneur, using the existing competitive business/economic model, does not do enough to redress that basic imbalance - in fact, one could argue that it enables and perpetuates the imbalance.
I don't think things will change until individuals (as well as corporations) recant their involvement in competition and in the drive for personal wealth - when is enough enough, on a personal and societal level? How much money can any one person spend in a lifetime, and how much stuff can you fit into your coffin? And who/what really paid for all those beautiful things we beautiful people surround ourselves with? What was given up/lost so that we could enjoy the kind of life we do?
Social entrepreneurship is a laudable pathway IF we take it down to the personal level and consider our own, individual, daily lives part in the equation. If we don't do that, then we're pretty much being hypocrites, aren't we?
Why do women say looks don't matter, but then they don't give us average guys a chance?" This complaint/question was the topic of a conversation I was involved in a while ago with some younger men... It seems to me we have some double standards operating here. I've heard very few men say that for them 'looks don't matter' when they're talking about what it is they want in their 'ideal' partner.
But they do seem to have different criteria for women they're considering as their potential mates to those with whom they're having a casual relationship.
I remember a conversation with my first husband when we began to get serious; we were talking about former boyfriends/girlfriends and the whole sex thing.
We were discussing attraction - what was necessary to develop any kind of relationship and whether there was a difference in what men were looking for if sex was the only thing on their minds. One of his previous 'connections' was mentioned during this conversation. I remember asking him if he had been attracted to this person. As a young woman, I was quite shocked and upset to hear his reply that the general consensus amongst his peers was: "One doesn't look at the mantelpiece when one is stoking the fire"
I find it a little confusing to hear surprise and an "it's not fair, what about the average guy?" lament expressed when men find that women can also have preferences.
Men have been judging women in the looks department for the entire history of the human race and have been refusing to date women who don't look like "Barbie", or Bo Derek or Naomi or whoever is the latest airbrushed fantasy doll.
Remember all the women down through the ages who were considered 'homely', who were the wallflowers at the local dances - trying to believe their elders telling them that it wasn't their looks that counted but what's on the inside and that a genuine person would see that in them and be attracted to them.
So many women living in fear of being that dreaded class - spinsters - because men didn't find them attractive.
I notice on many men's dating site profiles that they are quite picky and detailed in what they find attractive/acceptable/unacceptable about a woman's looks.
Some men are quite specific in their criteria; I've seen men write that they like their women to be all 'girly' - makeup, mini skirts, and high heels. One person was really specific - the heels, he stated, needed to be more than two inches high, and the woman should wear them on casual occasions also. Men have no idea what it takes to maintain that look or what kind of restrictions it puts on your life and activities, or how bad it is for your back and feet to be wobbling along on stilts that pinch your toes all day.
It seems to me these men don't want to be real - have a real relationship with a real, living, walking, talking, feeling human being. They want to live in an illusion. Good luck to them and pity the women they connect with, having to maintain that facade for him for the rest of their lives; the minute they forget to put on their lippy one day and the wrinkles come, he'll be off looking for a younger,'taut and terrific' version (see movies such as The First Wives Club)
Times have changed. Most (western) women don't need partners to survive in life, so maybe they aren't accepting whatever's on offer just out of desperation, and now many men are finding out what it feels like to be judged in a superficial manner.
Love it - Karma - what goes around comes around. Now that the boot's on the other foot, is this complaint sour grapes because some young men don't have the brawn to make the football team (and score with the cheerleaders) or the brains to get into Harvard where all the thinking chicks will line up and fight for them and hang on every word they utter?
And the serious side of that is that this is an opportunity for men and women to move beyond the surface of both themselves and of each other, for growth and understanding and acceptance (not just tolerance) of diversity.
I wrote this piece on an Open Standards thread at the My Social Actions site.
I don't have much knowledge about Open Standards in technology, except that wherever possible I use Open Source software. And I have talked casually to senior government and business leaders from around the world about the need for IT companies to break away from proprietory software and hardware competition/branding and to collaborate, if they truly want to create ubiquitous connectivity using cloud computing.
I'd like to comment on the idea of open standards and collaboration across all of society.
I think the Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' competition model our economic and social worlds are built on is leading us to extinction, dragging with us many of the planet's other inhabitants.
I don't believe we can afford to be participating in that model, at any level, any longer and the sooner large businesses and governing institutions can accept that reality and move into collaboration, the better.
For some more ideas around this, I'd recommend that people read Peter Senge et al's "Presence", which really is a distillation of the knowledge contained in most of the world's spiritual (not religious) traditions, especially in the indigenous cultures.
For me its interesting that Senge - an MIT professor specialising in systems theory/organisational management - has come to these same conclusions that many spiritual traditions have been espousing for thousands of years.
Buckminster Fuller also said a long time ago, that we are now in the age of collaboration, not competition; that we have the technological means to provide for the needs of every human on the planet so competition is no longer necessary or useful.
Competition is killing too many of us, and the fact that we still have to fight each other for basic life-giving and supporting resources such as food, water, shelter, clothing, moving up the scale to education and medical care etc, is a completely immoral and unjustifiable state of affairs in the 21st Century.
Juxtaposing the consumerism and waste of the west with the poverty and death in the east for example - where is the sanity in that?
Taking it down to the most basic level, how can the west justify the idiocy of multiple brands of laundry detergent lining supermarket shelves, for example, when its confronted daily in the media about the reality of life and death struggles undergone by billions of other people in other places on the planet?
Within its own borders, how does the US justify the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, and the lottery system that's in place that determines whether or not a child will be given the opportunity to mature into his/her full potential?
It seems to me to be a completely irrational economic argument that the free market and competition are the mechanisms that best encourage prosperity. Capitalism, by its very nature, is exploitative, driving up the cost of finite resources with the winner being the person/entity at the end of/controlling the 'value-added' chain.
Its non-sustainable - look at the cycle of expansion and contraction, growth and depression - the system keeps imploding on itself and only those very few at the top are immune to the effects of that cyclical binge and bust phenomenon.
Look at the pyramidic wealth structure that exists in the west, notice the fact that 90% of the wealth is controlled by 3% of the population; competition actually costs incalculable amounts of money, resources, time and energy in lost human potential and 'ambulance at the bottom of the cliff' measures to contain the societal damage and dysfunction of a system which is in reality, the ultimate hybrid Pyramid-Ponzi scheme...
Remember the Reagan and Thatcher economic battle cries of the 80s - be patient and wait for the trickle down effect? Statistically and in real terms, people are worse off now than they were post WW2. How many years of economic decline does it take before people realise there never has been, and never will be, a sharing of the profits from the top down to the middle and bottom?
Running out of people and resources to pull into the bottom of the pyramid? Easy - sell the 'dream/fantasy' offshore and suck people into the pyramid from there - globalisation....
Limited resources on the earth? Easy - start claiming ownership of the water and the air and the fuel and the medicinal plants and the trees and the minerals and now even human genomes and make people pay for use and access...
Natural resources becoming rare or too expensive from which to make a profit? Easy - start planning to go off planet - see http://www.abundantplanet.org/home
And then we have the nonsensical accounting structures we have in place in measuring costs and profits. Goods are sold at a fraction of the real costs of production. We don't count the costs of environmental degradation for example, and we seem to think it justifiable to pay some people less than a living wage to produce goods and services which then are sold at 200+% the cost of production.
Referring again to Buckminster Fuller, he estimated that the actual cost of production of a gallon of gas over the millions of years it took to form in the earth was more than $1,000,000 and he said commuting to work could not be justified.
For a more detailed, scholarly look at this issue, I'd recommend people read Marilyn Waring's "Counting for Nothing". Marilyn's an internationally-respected New Zealand economist. She was at one time the youngest member of New Zealand's Parliament and brought down her National Party government led by Robert Muldoon.
There is nothing in all of this enthusiasm about capitalism and the free market about equity, stewardship, collaboration and sharing. And none of this will change until major businesses and governments turn their backs on the current paradigm, turn their backs on the idea of competition being a good thing and commit to equity and sustainability.
And the cynic in me sighs and says "yeah, and pigs might one day fly"... One can live in hope, can't one? After all, what else is there?
I have to admit that when I come across the dating profile of people who have either of my exs' names (or my father's), I pass right on by, even though I might be really interested in what they write about themselves.
Guess its quite immature and unreasonable and shallow, and I'm unfairly tarring them with the same brush, but I'm kinda superstitious about this and don't want to be hit by lightning twice, and it would be too creepy to call them by the same kind of nicknames, terms of endearments etc.
But - there are also other names that have nothing to do with exs, which I'm just not attracted to, in fact, which are an actual turn-off - Bruce, Dwayne, Murray, Colin and some others...
I used to have men with those names in my broader working life and while they were OK guys, I just was not physically or emotionally connected to them, even in a platonic sense, and found it hard to give them their due. Unfortunately, those men spoiled it for all others of the same name who have come after. I'm sorry guys - its nothing personal really, just me having a shallow moment...
Born in Europe and raised in the southern hemisphere, I've lived in five countries on three continents and in two island nations...
I'm a communications, marketing and PR consultant, broadcast journalist, writer, editor, event manager, fund raiser, narration and voice-over artist...
I'm also a personal growth facilitator, teacher, breath worker, shaman, healer, ordained non-denominational minister and celebrant, in private and public practice...
Diversity, equality and equity, social justice and sustainable community issues are important to me and I'm active in social change groups...
I'm the parent of four children, three of whom are grown up and living in other parts of the world... kinda interesting doing the parenting thing again, from the far side of 50! Not as much energy nor as fast on my feet, but maybe a little more relaxed, wiser and certainly more street smart... as I tell my youngster: "with three older siblings, there's not much point in you trying anything - I've seen it all!"
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