Epiphenomenal Annihilation

About a month ago I was at Trader Joe's, staring at their coffee selection, unable to decide on a variety. I glanced at the shelf to my left and noted their extensive tea selection and thought what the heck, why don't I give tea a try for once. I haven't so much as sipped coffee since.

Once I started drinking tea in the morning I completely lost all desire for coffee. Black tea has about half the caffeine, so I can drink more of it without the side effects I get from coffee. Plus there are so many flavors of tea out there, everyday is a taste adventure.

Then I started to wonder about the health benefits of tea. I knew herbal teas have beneficial nutrients, but I wasn't sure about black, green, and white teas. As it turns out, these teas are chock full of antioxidants, and studies show that drinking tea everyday dramatically reduces risks for various diseases as well as maintaining a healthy weight. This WebMD article goes into more detail:

http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/104/107641.htm

I am not at all surprised, I do feel a marked health improvement, particularly in that I don't get tired as easily. And antioxidants are especially good for me, since I don't release toxins through sweat.

My favorite morning teas are the black varieties, nicely subdued with a splash of milk. Earl Gray is my favorite, followed closely by Masala Chai, English Breakfast, and Assam Black. Chamomile is my absolute favorite herbal variety, and for a really nice flavor sensation I'll mix a bag of it with Chrysanthemum or Honeybush. I'm not a big fan of the fruity teas, although I do enjoy a milky Black Mango once in a while. I have White Pomegranate, which I'm not too crazy about flavor-wise, but it's a mega-health drink.

Gingko and Ginseng teas chill me out. I like mild minty teas, but overall avoid peppermint unless it's part of a mix. I have a couple of mint teas with licorice root and ginseng because those ingredients are good for healing the sensory nervous system. My right arm and back have been hurting from repetitive stress, and these teas help repair nerve damage. I've only just started this particular regimen, but I'll try to remember to report back in a month or so.

I wouldn't say I've totally sworn off coffee. But I must say, I simply don't desire it anymore. With all these yummy healthy teas to drink, and many more I have yet to try, coffee just feels passé.

I began this morning with Assam Black, time now for some Earl Gray. If I'm feeling extra adventurous, I might even follow that up with some Rooibos! Can you feel the excitement?

Go get yerself some good tasting, cancer killing, stroke reducing, nerve repairing, body rejuvenating, mind expanding plant leaves in a bag! Today!

Greetings! Today is my birthday, the big 35, a mystical multiple of the number seven. Vedic astrology says a person's destiny begins at age 35. Numerology states 35 as the age of the second "turning point". It's also the age Mozart died.

Today I received an e-mail from FaithfulAmerica.org, edited and copied below. On this day I can't imagine a more suitable message to share with whoever stumbles across this blog. If there is anything I have learned in my blink of time on this planet, it's that the world is utterly what we think it to be, for what is in our minds is the very fabric that crafts our reality. Our thoughts manifest as words, and the words we choose become the life we live.

Therefore, I unabashedly give THANKS for the BLESSINGS of HARMONY and HAPPINESS brought to us by BEAUTIFUL FAMILY and FRIENDS, in an ETERNAL Universe of LOVE, LIGHT, FREEDOM, and SPIRIT.

Love is the word, my friends. Live it, care for it, be it.
-bja

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All that God created began with a single idea – a thought – then a word – then a conviction – and finally a reality.  “Let there be light.” And there was.

Whenever we invoke the words of the prophets we participate in the powerful process that ushers creation into being. By speaking the words we give them a space in reality. Yet speaking the words alone is never enough. Faith is the ingredient which keeps that space for creation so that it can unfold, and according to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, it is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Faith is not whistling in the graveyard - it is not ignoring the uphill battle that good people face when changing the world for the better. The assurance of things hoped for is often less about when a hoped-for dream becomes a reality than why that dream must become reality. The conviction of things not seen isn’t always about when or even how it will come to pass but rather why it deserves our energies and skills. We hold fast to our faith that the world may be someday safe for children because we have assurance in the rightness of it and the conviction necessary to see it through.

Faith means living not by our feelings but by our commitments. When we can focus on the “whys” we can be assured that the “hows” will arrive in due time.

Whatever your faith tradition, may this be a Holy week for you!

Blessings,
Vince Isner
FaithfulAmerica.org

I recently stated to a friend that the counterculture movement of the Sixties was without heart. He felt my comment was somewhat extreme and he interrogated me further. I thought I'd discuss my response here.

Certainly my statement was a generalization, and yes there were plenty of people with amazing hearts doing amazing things during the late 60s / early 70s. Berkeley was a magical place then, I would love to have experienced it. And let's not forget the brave souls who fought for the civil rights movement, suffering injury, imprisonment and even death while peacefully asserting the rights of all people to live free.

But after the Vietnam war, the counterculture movement simply dropped out of sight, more entranced with the riches of the 80s than with any real cultural change. Just when the movement had the most strength, it let itself die. Kinda makes ya think "well what the hell did everyone fight for, anyway?".

Also consider, for example, the Weathermen. A nationwide counterculture organization based on violence that ended up (accidentally) killing some of its own people. They then decided violence against people was bad, but destroying property was okay, so they bombed the Haymarket in Chicago and the water main system at the Pentagon (among many other targets). They seriously hurt the overall counterculture movement by instilling fear and destruction into the cultural psyche. No wonder their movement died.

I can of course only base my judgments on what I've read and seen in documentaries, since I was only a twinkle in my father's eye at that time. But what strikes me is a certain reckless abandon, saying "free love!" to mean "free sex and drugs!", using "free" as in "free beer"; the current counterculture movement, while certainly also having its share of miscreants, has shown a stronger commitment to a deeper spirituality ("free" as in spiritually so). What is happening now, such as at Burning Man, covers a breadth of spiritual territory unseen before in human history. Culture is being completely redefined, and it has caught on like wildfire across the globe. The Internet is, of course, a large player in this, being our first major step towards global consciousness, the technologically ethereal link between our brains, thus newly connecting cultures and dogmas and providing a means by which an entire global civilization can plan a yearly pagan gathering located within the remote Nevada desert.

New counterculture techniques are being employed that simply baffle the powers that be, rather than overtly agitate. It's a far more effective means of protest, and without any of the animosity. The reason these techniques are so effective is that the movement is not self-consciously a cultural movement. It simply is what it is -- a reconnection back to our shamanic roots, a worship of all that is earthly, so that we may transform our world and reach for the cosmic.

I think of the Sixties as an experimental foundation for the current movements. It taught us a lot and gives us a place to draw some real inspiration. We could not have the movements we have now if it weren't for that prior generation. So when I say the Sixties lacked heart, I mean to say that the heart it had was in a form that was, in large part, young and confused. Now it has matured a bit, and I think it's fantastic that many of the great minds from then are involved now to help guide us away from past mistakes.

Hi!

I've been away for a while, but I hope to start posting regularly again. If you're reading this, I hope that means you care.

Have you seen all the whining from Microsoft lately? Boy are they getting pummeled in the press. And for good reasons: OneCare, MS's new antivirus software, has come in dead last in tests comparing it with competitors, plus it has been deleting entire Outlook e-mailboxes arbitrarily. The US Dept. of Transportation has halted all Microsoft upgrades indefinitely. Microsoft "inadvertently" installed malware on potentially thousands of users' computers by serving up an infected ad on their web site. Vista is getting panned by tech reviewers. OEMs like Dell and HP are losing sales because of driver issues with Vista. MS is charging businesses $4000 for a patch to daylight savings. The EU is still after them. Google and Apple are trouncing Microsoft's consumer markets and Linux continues its increased adoption in the server market.

The list goes on. Microsoft is finally feeling the heat of decades of ruthless bullying while saturating the market with third rate mediocre software.

Software design by marketing committee simply cannot be sustained. Or as humanity's friend Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski puts it: "This aggression will not stand, man."

Looking at the latest fallout from the OneCare disaster, ZDNet reports on Microsoft's response to their problems with the AV software. MS effectively says: "Oh we're sorry for all the problems, but it's not our fault 'cuz we don't make our software, we just buy it from others."

And in other news, Steve Ballmer (MS CEO) acts like the big fat baby he is by calling Google "insane" and whining about how hard it is to recruit good programmers. Hey Steve, maybe programmers just don't wanna work for a company run by whiny, fat, overly-sweaty babies. Or perhaps that's why Google is hiring so much, and why they make their workplace incredibly attractive (gourmet chef on staff, free workout room, creative freedom, etc.), so the good programmers won't go to MS.

I like how Ballmer calls Google's software projects "cute". Some of the greatest innovations in software history, both technical and business, have come from Google -- and Google does build their software from scratch, they don't buy somebody else's garbage and re-brand it. Ain't that just cute?

Google has created a more or less recession-resistant business model that enables a software development model based entirely on the freedom of the programmers' creativity. What Ballmer is effectively saying is that an extremely robust company that gives the programmer the perfect environment in which to work, thereby allowing for highly innovative software development, is "cute" at best and "insane" at worst.

Then please, Steve, call me crazy.

Boredom is not a passive state. It takes a whole lot of energy to be bored. It's not at all like being relaxed, which feels good to your body because it can rest. Being bored is being restless, using up vast amounts of energy in not enjoying what you're doing and imagining what would you would enjoy so much more.

Maybe people have so little energy because of using so much of it in being bored. Perhaps there's a trick to storing the energy dissipated through boredom, a way to will yourself to relax instead of being bored.

Take this post, for example. Oh, whatever.

It is really quite true that one can find one's path of destiny, not just in the form of life goals, but in the nature of the way one lives. Becoming enlightened to one's true nature makes finding the path of destiny possible. To become so enlightened requires, among many other things, the realization of the self as wholly unique, of carrying within oneself a completely individualized form of spiritual power, a power that can be developed and utilized to make manifest one's true way. Doing so puts the individual squarely in their place in the Universe, to serve the Universal Power (call it God, Ultimate Divine Light, the Godforce, whatever you like) and to live in harmony with that power, for the betterment of all that lives and dies.

Finding this power can be tricky. We are conditioned to believe many many things that are not really true to us, and as a result we have lost our individual intuition, the inner knowledge that knows far more than what the human world has told us. To find truth, which is to say to find one's own inner truth, is to throw away the shackles of our conditioning, to know that our own personal way, not the ways of others, is the best way. This requires the stopping of looking at the world through a human focus, to realize the folly of actually believing what humans do is in any way important. If someone insults you, why get angry? It's not important enough to get angry about! Even if someone causes you physical harm, it matters not, except in the way you choose to deal with it (and the outcome of all situations are your choosing).

Being in touch with one's true power, one's path of destiny, requires also an absolute faith in both spirit and one's own abilities. This is extremely difficult to do, especially in this "rational" world we live in, but once you have been deeply touched by faith, you cannot again be swayed against it. Faith, in these terms, does not just mean a faith in a Christian God, or Jewish God, Muslim God, Hindu Brahman, Buddha, my neighbor's cat, or even George Bush's America. Faith on these pages is always meant as the Universal Faith in the Grand Mystery, the spirit's capacity for absolute marvel, all of the aforementioned Gods and none of them.

It is up to you to find your way, your power, your faith. No one can convince you that God exists or that you are anything other than physical (although I will say that the idea that we are nothing but physical organisms, when you get right down to it, is ludicrous). That requires hard work on your own, very likely a trial by fire that will test you to your limits. But once you push past the boundaries you have been conditioned to believe your whole life, you suddenly find yourself in a universe of splendor and marvel, and the powers that have lied dormant within you awaken, and you are now truly living your way, which is always living in God's way.

Do not ever believe you are not worthy. Do not ever think you do not deserve what you want. You are entitled to, and are only given, all of the joy, pain, and struggle that is every person's lot. No one owes you anything, and you are entitled to nothing from anyone. So make your life your way, discover the bounty of power that lies within you, and you will find yourself gloriously traversing the twists and turns of your path to Destiny.

Want peace for the holidays this year? What are you, a satanist?

The article pretty much speaks for itself. Once the collapse comes, what will America do with all the stupid rich people?

Recent studies of lizards and finches have shown that it is possible for us to directly observe the natural selection process inherent in biological evolution. Within two decades, finches were able to adapt their beaks to better compete for food resources, while lizards grew shorter legs to evade a newly introduced predator.

As the National Geographic article states: natural selection can shift like the wind. The question begged by this data is how can natural selection, a process assumed to be catalyzed by random genetic mutation, occur so quickly and precisely?

Cute finches, smart beaks

Looking at the bigger evolutionary picture, one could ask the same question about the evolution of life in general. Plants and animals have evolved into a vast multitude of symbiotic species, far more, it would seem, than could be attained via random mutation over the few millions of years life has had time to get there. Applying the anthropic principle, that we see the world as it is because if it were any other way we wouldn't be here to see it, can only go so far and may not be adequate to allow us to ignore the question of how life on this planet has evolved in the way it has.

Perhaps it is more accurate to think of evolution as an intelligent process, a constant learning and adaptation by the fundamental consciousness of every living being. How else can finches know to grow shorter beaks within a couple of generations? It seems unlikely that a finch or a lizard can, by sheer will of its own, change the genetic data of its offspring. However, perhaps deep in the animal's subconscious is an adaptive intelligence, a learning mechanism that operates at the lowest levels of consciousness -- DNA, our ubiquitous and fundamental connection to all life on Earth.

DNA may very well not only give us life, but intelligence as well, if, that is, we take the position that intelligence can be thought of as a gifted property. Digging into our own psyches, we find that within all of us are levels of consciousness that we are simply not aware of, a depth of knowledge beyond our cognizance, that is as adaptable as the simple changing of one's mind (vanilla -- no! make it chocolate). It can stand to reason, therefore, that the building blocks of life have some idea of what's going on, of how to change genetic information to make future offspring better adapted to the current environment.

Taken further, this might say something about our abilities to change ourselves, that we are not static organisms irrevocably designed. If our beliefs can travel down and cement themselves at lower levels of our consciousness (which is clearly the case), and if DNA is as intelligently adaptive as the above findings suggest, then maybe with prolonged concentration and mental discipline it is possible to recreate ourselves, using nothing more than the power of will we are all imbued with. Indeed, the very evolution of life may depend on it.

Mystics have proclaimed this power as far back as we can trace human history. Wholesale change, even to the level of physical realignment, may truly be possible via the power of the mind. In fact, it may be the only way. We are not, then, simply passive organisms living through a brief stint of awareness, we are in fact creating the future of life's evolution as we go, in our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. It would then be of some comfort to know that our inner knowledge is passed along across future generations, so that they may do a better job of creating a world suited to the pure symbiosis of all life; a state of living harmony that we have long forgotten.

UPDATE: As if affirming my thoughts on this subject, I just stumbled across Jeremey Narby's book Intelligence in Nature, which appears to posit related ideas about the inherent intelligence of life (and, by extension, evolution). You'll find Narby's earlier book The Cosmic Serpent in my Books list.

A common topic these days is the current row being stirred up by self described creationists against not just evolution, but science in general. They proclaim that the Bible is the definitive, final word on all things. It's all bullocks, of course, which is why it is both baffling and alarming that there is so much momentum behind it, as this week's WTF? observes.

Just over the Ohio border, in rural Kentucky, a new "Creation Museum" is being built to spread the word about the Bible's account of creation as fact, and to discount the theories put forth by Darwin and his ilk. Confusingly, even though the Bible makes no mention of dinosaurs, the museum is filled with 'em. I guess they can't discount all science, especially since dinosaurs make for great toys, Hollywood movies, and Disney attractions, something the well funded Christian right has a solid interest in keeping around.

Over 80% of the project has been privately funded. It's a project made by rich donors, not a scientific, peer-reviewed, community-scrutinized museum. In fact, all of the workers are required to sign a contract affirming their beliefs, and they voluntarily drink the creationist kool-aid together every morning. Any doubt, and you're outta there, because doubt in the rich people's ideas of how things are will send you straight to Hell.

We can talk about the ridiculousness of creationist theory as science and how disturbing it is that it is gaining so much traction, but let's not lose sight of what this is really about. Just like organized religion has been since the Romans, it is a means of populace control, having nothing at all to do with any real faith in the empyreal. By establishing an authority of faith, and duping people into believing in it, the self appointed authority can then dictate how the people behave. Anything they say is law, because God said so. It's the oldest form of human oppression in the book: you've put your faith in me, to the point of giving me arms and martial authority, so now you shut up and take the screwing I'm about to give you -- in the name of God and all that is holy.

Of course, such a system cannot work without people being so much in a fog that they completely fall for it. The American populace is primed for such a takeover of mindshare, having been distracted, confused, phyiscally and spiritually weakened, and made generally insecure by a culture of TV, fast food, celebrities, and manipulative, duplicitious politicians. With the rich running the country, we can only expect a fast decline, America's inevitable fall into darkness; a fall that can only be reversed by a true spiritual awakening.

Now here's a URL with some meat on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_
buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo.

Note the period at the end. This is a complete sentence, folks.

While a fun trivial grammatical oddity, what really pushes my buttons about that page is looking at the examples below of similar types of homophones from other languages. They seem to reflect the kinds of expressions you'd expect from their respective cultures. There's the subject of this post, for example, which has the ring of a classic sounding Latin phrase. These other phrases seem to fit their cultures pretty well:

In Finnish, "Kokko, kokoa kokoon koko kokko. Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko." means "Kokko, build up the whole bonfire. The whole bonfire? (Yes, ) The whole bonfire."

In Hebrew, אשה נעלה נעלה נעלה נעלה את הדלת בפני בעלה (Isha na'ala na'ala na'ala na'ala et hadelet bifnei ba'ala) means "A respectable woman put on her shoe, locked the door in front of her husband".

In Spanish, "¡Papá! Papa pa Papa, papá." means "Dad! This potato is for the Pope, father."

In Icelandic, Bóndinn á Á á á á beit means "The farmer has a sheep that is biting grass."

Here's a terrific life axiom:
In Serbian and Croation, the sentence "Gore gore gore gore", means "up there the hills are burning worse."

My personal favorite:
In Japanese, 東欧を覆おう (Tooooooooo) is pronounced as a continuous /o/ following the t. It means "Let's cover Eastern Europe."