Sunday, November 30, 2008

Feeling safe



Are you?

What does that mean exactly feeling safe?

When life seems fine

No trouble in your life

Enough money to get by

No relationship problems

Work is going OK

That probably leads us to feeling safe

Or does the state of the world economy

Global warming intrude?

Or do you push that aside as you cannot do anything about it?

Probably the later

Trouble is though that we are all wired in to what is going on around us

We might block it out, push it away

Not so easy when more and more people are out of work

Your own company or organisation is thinking about what it can do to survive

Downsizing is the rumour

Sales are falling

Production cutbacks are coming

And so it goes on

If you keep listening to the news and gossip around you it can get pretty discouraging

Take responsibility for yourself and what you listen to

No more or less, cut out the bad, focus on the good

If you have your health then this is worth more than anything else in life so appreciate this

Consciously enjoy it by feeding yourself with appreciation for what you have

Not what you don't

Make the best contribution you can at work

Then learn to leave work problems at work

Learn to let them go after doing the best you can and enjoy life
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Feeling safe is not about having things or money

Feeling safe is about how we feel about life

Sure having this 'n that can help but it does not answer that feeling inside

That feeling changes as we let go of our fears and only then do we see life as an amazing process

How we experience every day starting with when we wake up

Choose to smile with the thought of the day in front

Choose to enjoy thoughts of going to work, a time alone to be enjoyed whether in car, bus or train

Not as a drudge not as a negative experience

It is how we choose to experience life that makes it safe or not

Fears and worries prevent us from feeling safe

Safety is not in armed guards

Safety is about not taking ourselves so seriously

Feeling safe is free the only cost is letting go of fears

Recognising that life will turn out as it will

Not being fatalistic but recognising how we feel about it makes the difference

Feeling safe is in part about letting go, choosing to feel good about life

The other part is about contributing doing things for others

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Why am I here?


You are here because you are on a journey

You and everyone else here on Planet Earth

Humanity is half way through its 4.3 billion year journey from the absolute down into dense matter and then back up into the absolute again

You are here to learn, to experience

You are here to grow

In each life we have one or two major lessons to learn

If we learn them we move on

If we do not learn them we do them over again and again until we do

Nature has plenty of time

We have plenty of lives

You create your own karma by the choices you make

By the thoughts you think

Secondarily by the actions you take

Yes thoughts are primary and actions secondary

And all your thoughts and actions literally create the life you are experiencing now and those you will experience in the future

No one else but you creates what you experience

You might want to blame the life you are experiencing on this and that, but the truth is that karma is accurate and it is you that creates what you experience

So just be the best you can every day in whatever comes your way

That's all

And if you do that then life by life you become more conscious

Until one life you see why you are here in great clarity

You realize that life is about growing from me to we

That it is all about moving from being selfish, self centered, thoughtless greedy consumers

To beings who care for each other as they would hope to be cared for themselves

Finally realizing that the Masters had been right all along and that we are truly all one

In a way that suddenly makes sense

And that serving others is what you want to spend your lives doing

Helping others to grow so that they can find this truth for themselves

That is why you are here

That is why we are here

Friday, November 28, 2008

Dr Hansen plays games again




Many ski resorts have already opened owing to unseasonably early and heavy snows in both Europe and North America, the best in the last forty years to be precise
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In Tibet China reported the worst snow storm ever
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Meanwhile
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A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records .that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming.
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On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring .global .temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
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A sudden cold snap brought snow to London in October
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This was startling.
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Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand.
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China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
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So what explained the anomaly?
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GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal.
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But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery.
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The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all.
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Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
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The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures.
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This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
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A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with.
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This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
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If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore.
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Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change.
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Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
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Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade.
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In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.
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Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him.
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But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.


Telegraph

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Insects



It is a realisation that may be dawning at last: the importance of the little things that rule the world.

The great American biologist, E O Wilson, said insects were world-rulers, but although they play a central role in maintaining ecosystems and the whole web of life, most insects have long been viewed with distaste or even revulsion as creepie-crawlies (apart from butterflies, which have been viewed as something akin to honorary mini-birds).

But the recent alarms in Britain, Europe and America about the fate of the honey bee – colonies have been crashing in increasing numbers – have started to open people's eyes to insects' importance in a more general way, says Matt Shardlow, director of Buglife, the Invertebrate Conservation Trust.

But it is only the beginning of an understanding, he says, and much more is needed if we are to take the action necessary to preserve our populations of insects and other invertebrates, the creatures without backbones which make up the majority of animal life, including snails, worms and spiders (spiders being arachnids, not insects).

The population declines among invertebrates in general and insects in particular are now greater than among any other group of living things, greater than declines in mammals, birds and plants.
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Yet although people get excited about endangered pandas, or eagles, or orchids, endangered insects generally remain below the level of their perception, Mr Shardlow says.
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"There was a book published in the early 1990s called Insect Conservation, a Neglected Green Issue, and it remains the case that levels of awareness of what's happening with the small things, such as insects, are much lower than with what's happening with big things, such as trees, or birds, or whales," he says.
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"The bigger you are, the bigger the bit of wildlife, the greater the chance that people will be paying attention to what's happening to you.
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"There are more extinctions among invertebrates than in any other groups, and a greater proportion of the species are in decline, and the decline is steeper, than in plants, birds and mammals, wherever there is data."
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There is clear evidence of the sharp decline in Britain's insects, one being the disappearance of the "moth snowstorm".
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Anyone over 40 will probably remember that during a car journey at night in midsummer, the moths in the headlights were so numerous that they looked like snow, and the windscreen would become so coated with colliding moths that by the end of the journey it would have to be washed.
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Not any more.
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Moth snowstorms are today moth showers, if that: the phenomenon has all but disappeared, and this is robustly backed up by the figures.
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Two-thirds of Britain's individual moth species have declined in the past 40 years, some by enormous amounts, and moths as a whole have lost about a third of their abundance in that period.
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We know this because, since 1968 the agricultural research station at Rothamsted in Hertfordshire has maintained a substantial network of moth traps around the country (at about 80 sites) to which the insects are attracted at night by a light-bulb.
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Types and numbers caught are carefully noted, and with long-term records for no fewer than 337 species of larger moths over four decades, this is one of the biggest sets of animal population data in the world.
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Analysis in 2003 showed more than 200 species had declined, and nearly 70 by more than 50 per cent.
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Species once well-known and abundant were tumbling: the magpie moth had declined by 69 per cent, the cinnabar moth by 83 per cent and the strikingly handsome garden tiger moth by no less than 89 per cent.
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Yet it is the same story with butterflies.
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Thanks to another impeccably-kept set of long-term data, from the Butterfly Monitoring Scheme run by the charity Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, we know that seven out of 10 of Britain's 58 species have declined in the past 30 years, some by amounts so large they are on the road to extinction.
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Widespread and formerly common species such as the grayling and the wall brown have dropped in numbers by 40 per cent and more, vanishing from large areas, while others have suffered catastrophic losses.
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The duke of burgundy has fallen by 52 per cent, the pearl-bordered fritillary by 61 per cent, the wood white by 65 per cent and the high brown fritillary, Britain's most endangered butterly, by 79 per cent.
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Now there is another concern for an insect which a generation ago was the most familiar "pretty" butterfly, the small tortoiseshell.
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Hit hard by a parasitic fly which has come in from southern Europe, its population across Britain has dropped by 52 per cent since 1990, but in the South-east it has gone down by no less than 82 per cent over the period.
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These declines are parallelled in bumblebees. Of the 25 species traditionally native to Britain, three have gone extinct, the apple bumblebee, Cullum's bumblebee and most recently, the short-haired bumblebee, and four more are designated "UK Biodiversity Action Plan species" in recognition of their precarious situation, the great yellow bumblebee, the brown-banded carder bee, the shrill carder bee and the ruderal bumblebee.
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Several more species, such as the bilberry bumblebee and the moss carder bee, have undergone major population contractions.
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There is simply no accurate population trend data for many other groups of insects but there are ominous signs that they too are plunging.
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Mayflies, the river flies on which flyfishermen base their artificial imitations, appear to have dropped in abundance by about two-thirds in the past 50 years, a widespread survey of fishermen in 2000 showed.
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Britain's 46 species of ladybirds may now be widely at risk from an Asian invader, the harlequin ladybird, which arrived in Britain in 2004, and not only outcompetes other ladybirds for food, but eats them directly.
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As for beetles, there may be more than 4,000 species in Britain, but an indication of their decline is the fact that at least 250 of them have not been seen since 1970.
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Buglife revealed this two years ago, judging that some were merely hard to find, but others were rapidly heading for extinction.
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Four vividly-named species which are on the Government's Biodiversity Action Plan priority list have already disappeared: the Pashford pot beetle, the four-signed ground beetle, the Sussex diving beetle and the familiar sunshiner.
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"A very severe problem is that many invertebrates are highly specialised in what they require," Matt Shardlow says. "They can't just live anywhere, they need a specific habitat feature, and often these habitat features are now highly fragmented and isolated, such as fenlands, or ancient woodland.
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"Take dead wood; the decayed stumps and fallen trees which used to be seen throughout the countryside have now largely been tidied away, and we've lost all this connectivity in terms of dead wood.
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Some species may now be found only on two to three to four sites, which maybe hundreds of miles apart
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"The violet click beetle would be a classic one. It is an internationally protected species found only in Windsor Great Park and on Bredon Hill in Worcestershire. If it goes extinct in the one place, it won't be able to recolonise it from the other; the sites are just too far apart.
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That's an extreme example, but at a smaller level, that's happening with hundreds of species in the UK."
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Mr Shardlow does think that the recent scares about honey bees and the catastrophic damage their disappearance would do to the process of plant pollination have had an affect on people's awareness.
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"People are just starting to twig that insects are quite symbolic," he said.
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"They're twigging about pollinators, and noticing about honey bees.
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"But they haven't yet twigged that pollination needs more than just honeybees.
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There are a whole set of different species, including beetles and flies, which are also undertaking unique and different pollination roles.
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You can't fix pollination by saving one species.
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You have to save the full gamut of invertebrate diversity.
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Insects are fundamental to the fabric of life, and if we start to tear that fabric apart, the consequences for all of the services that are provided from ecosystems will be severe."
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Independent
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Amen
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Not an exciting read however it does remind us of the interrelationship of everything on this planet
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We cannot protect one species and ignore the damage being done to others
And if this is happening on the little island of Great Britain then for sure the situation is the same or worse elsewhere
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Will we wake up in time?

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Think you are having a bad day?


Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned-out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire.

The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and face mask.

A postmortem test revealed that the man died not from burns, but from massive internal injuries.

Dental records provided a positive identification.

Investigators then set about to determine how a fully clothed diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire.

It was revealed that on the day of the fire, the man went diving off the coast, some 20 miles from the forest.
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The fire fighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, had called in a fleet of helicopters with very large dip buckets.

Water was dipped from the ocean and emptied at the site of the forest fire.

You guessed it.

One minute our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next, he was doing the breast stroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the air.

And the chances of that happening?

Millions to one or more

Tough karma indeed

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

More and more


Evidence of abuse by chemicals

More and more evidence of damage to us and our children

Little or no political interest

We must act ourselves to raise the consciousness amongst the populations of the planet

These are not trivial problems

These chemicals are killing us

These chemicals are destroying our planet

Take five minutes to watch and listen to this clip

No matter you do not speak French there are sub-titles





Thank you

Now do what you should to help create consciousness of this situation
There is no them
Just us
So do what you can do each day to help raise consciousness

Monday, November 24, 2008

Keeping warm - 2


How comfortable we feel with the people around us, can also influence our perception of temperature.

Feel warm, be warmer

Feel warm and you'll be more generous and trusting, or so a recent study by researchers at Yale University suggests.

They gave volunteers a hot cup of coffee or a cold drink and asked them to rate how trustworthy a person looked.

Those holding the hot drink rated people as more trusting.

This shows that psychological warmth and physical warmth have close connections in our brain, says John Bargh, a professor of psychology, who conducted the study.

“It seems that the same part of the brain, the insular, which is the size of a walnut right in the middle of the brain, handles both sensations of physical temperature and trust in someone else,” he says.

Professor Bargh adds that giving a person a hot cup of coffee is a way of gaining their trust.

“What if someone gives me a cup of coffee when I'm buying a car?

Maybe it's best to have a cold drink when making a big decision.”

In addition to this study, researchers in Canada found recently that mood can influence how hot or cold we feel.

The study revealed that people who are lonely or socially excluded are more aware of the cold.

So if you're looking to warm up this year, get social, get active, and get enough sleep.

How to keep warm

Clothing, Ditch the big woolly jumper in favour of multiple thin layers.

Remember, the more skin on show, the colder you'll feel.

Keep warm at night by wearing pyjamas and bed socks.

Food, Eating regular meals makes a big difference if you're trying to keep warm, but be sure to include carbohydrates.

Amanda Ursell, the Times nutritionist, suggests dishing up stews and casseroles with meat, vegetables and potatoes.

Soup is a great winter warmer: try bean and vegetable, lentil and tomato or pea and ham.

Porridge makes a cheap, warming breakfast.

Thermostat 21C-24C is the optimum setting for central heating.

Alcohol and caffeine, Avoid drinking too much of either if you're trying to stay warm.

Both increase blood flow to the skin, and while you will feel warmer, your body is losing heat.

Visualise hot places

According to research at the University of Portsmouth, imagining a hot place can make you feel warm.

Move around even if it's just to make a hot drink, keeping mobile is essential to maintaining body heat.

A quick jig will not only warm you up but will also release endorphins, those feel-good chemicals in the brain.

Warm homes Insulation and double-glazing are key.

Times

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Keeping warm - 1


Regarding warmth we're only 25 per cent efficient, with 75 per cent of the energy we produce being released as heat.

Although we feel hot and cold throughout the day, our core body temperature - that of our vital organs - is always kept at about 37C.

Maintaining this temperature is vital to survival: a 2Cdrop can cause hypothermia, a 12C drop results in death.

Our extremities dictate how hot or cold we feel; the temperature in our hands and feet varies widely compared with that of our organs.

If our hands or feet are chilly, we'll feel cold.

Most of our biological temperature sensors are located in the skin, and we have four times as many cold sensors as hot sensors.

Our heightened sensitivity to cold makes a chilly draught invariably feel more uncomfortable than a warm breeze.

And women really do feel the cold more than men, but this is because they are better at conserving heat than men.

Mark Newton, a scientist at W.L. Gore, the company that makes Gore-Tex, and a researcher at the University of Portsmouth, explains:

“Women have a more evenly distributed fat layer and can pull all their blood back to their core organs.”

However, this female heating system means that less blood flows to their hands and feet, and as a result they feel cold.

So there is literal truth in the old saying cold hands, warm heart.

One theory as to why women have evolved this system, says Newton, is to enable them to survive freezing temperatures.

Women carry less fat and muscle mass than men, and so need a more efficient technique of protecting their core body temperature.

Research also indicates that women's perception of cold varies during their menstrual cycle, says Newton, with the core body temperature often changing by more than 1C.

A study in 2001 found that women's core temperature rises in the luteal phase (the post-ovulation phase) of the cycle.

The researchers also found that women on the Pill have a slightly elevated core body temperature.

But it's not only hormones that can muck around with our biological thermostats; sleep can also affect how chilly or hot we feel.

When we are tired we're more sensitive to changes in temperature, says Newton.

Our body temperature falls at night, with women reaching their minimum body temperature quicker than men.

But what else determines our temperatures, apart from gender?

Diet can make a difference, as can a host of other factors, says Professor Tipton.

“People who are fatter tend to have cooler extremities because their skin is insulated from their body heat by a layer of fat.

People who are physically active tend to have higher peripheral temperature because they have better blood flow to extremities.

Those people who smoke may have lower extremity temperatures, because they may have poor circulation.”

Moreover, how hot or cold we feel also depends on the temperature we're used to living in,

Professor Tipton adds. If you spend a lot of time in a cold house, going to a warm house will be a shock to the system, even if others insist that the temperature is normal.

Times

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Belief


Is something of importance to many people
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Most however have not thought about the basis or truth of their beliefs

We pick up our beliefs from our parents

Our society

Our culture

Some people accept information supporting narrow and specific beliefs.

Others invoke a more challenging and broad study of others or alternate beliefs across many cultures and traditions.

A small minority of people are able to live without drawing automatic conclusions.

The human mind has been shown to prefer certainty, over uncertainty, even if these assumptions are unverifiable.

This phenomena results when people are often forced to make either "for or against" choices. In a polarized world of so-called binary choices (either/or), this is more common in time of stress (war, panic, etc).

Proclaimed belief is often found to be mandatory for group affiliation and "official" membership with specific conversion rites.

In many cases, people bolster a personal belief, in which they are emotionally involved, attempting to resolve directly experienced contradictions.

Creative rationalizations are produced to reduce doubts.

Human imagination serves as the catalyst for the creation, modification and perpetuation of belief.

People often believe merely what they wish to be true and fortify this stance in their mind, no matter how much it stands in direct opposition to their experiential life.

We hold on to beliefs even when overwhelming evidence exists to challenge those beliefs

This might not be dangerous in stable comfortable times however in times of stress and fear this can be dangerous

Dangerous to our health and well being

Beliefs based on dubious evidence become more dangerous as the times get more insecure

Think about your beliefs and let go of those that no longer sit well with you

These times are meant for letting go of dodgy beliefs

For finding lightness in difficult times let go of dodgy beliefs

Friday, November 21, 2008

Modern morality



Is something that guides our behaviour throughout life

Something we seldom consciously think about

It does seem time that we did look at it again though as public behaviour is getting lost in lies, spin and downright immoral behaviour
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Maybe it was ever thus however with modern media it is more and more public and in our faces

Governments no less than individuals have often used the excuse of some immoral behaviour being OK because it is in the public interest

Spies, Jesuits and others often say that the end justifies the means

We take issue with this and state that Government behaviour influences personal behaviour
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And vica versa
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The example of lying government ministers denying their lies is not a very edifying sight
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Politicians seem to feel that lying is fine so long as they do not get caught
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We do not

We observe that the more a society conducts it's affairs in private the more it tends to lie

The more it lies the more it opens that society to abuse

The obverse is also true

The more open a society the better it is able to contain greed and the unwise use of power

Example is everything in public and personal life

Pubic life is demanding

We can observe that modern life is complex

That issues have many points of view

That special interest groups are often highly organised and have immense power

This power usually being conducted in private, away from the public gaze

And the media?
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In many countries supine

In others controlled

Yet others special interest groups bring their power to bear influencing what is written or shown

Indeed most of our media is controlled or influenced by different groups be they political or business

But then we have the Internet

Again in some countries like Saudi Arabia, Dubai, China and others it is controlled

Even where it is not controlled it is monitored

From Russia to the US and UK all communications are routinely monitored

Back to morality

Where bad or immoral behaviour is not challenged it continues

It grows because this is the natural dynamic of greed

So examine your own morality

Examine that of your culture and country

Take time to join Avaatz or other like organisations

We all need to spend a little of our energy defending and promoting good behaviour

Morality is worth defending

It will not survive greed without our all becoming involved

This is a fight worth joining

Not just for your society

But also for your own soul

Morality is not just a word

Morality is essential for individuals and societies alike

Thursday, November 20, 2008

What is morality?


Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong.

Morals are created by and define society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience.

In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, under specified conditions.

To deny 'morality' in this sense is a position known as moral skepticism

In its third usage, 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.

Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics) what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).

In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, abortion and wars of invasion.

In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified.

In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms "right" or "wrong".

Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers' sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (prescriptive); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory).

Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts.

This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims.

The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths is known as moral absolutism.

Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior.

Wikipedia

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Piracy


Is certainly not a modern phenomena
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But listen to this
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The IMO (International Maritime Organisation) is implementing an anti-piracy project, a long-term project which began in 1998.
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That's ten years ago
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Phase one consisted of a number of regional seminars and workshops attended by Government representatives from countries in piracy-infested areas of the world; while phase two consisted of a number of evaluation and assessment missions to different regions.
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In other words lots of talking
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The IMO's aim has been to foster the development of regional agreements on implementation of counter piracy measures
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However to date few shipping companies have seen fit to take even basic security measures to protect their ships.
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Navies of the world are still talking about what they can do
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The UN security Council has yet to meet to discuss proposals by various affected countries
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Meanwhile we have the Supertanker the Sirius Star hijacked and taken to Somalia where it will rest until a ransom is paid
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It will join ten other hijacked ships anchored at Haradhere off the Somali coast
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33 have been hijacked since January this year with 83 attacks also reported since January in the area around Somalia
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Apparently there were no lookouts or preventative measures taken by the Sirius Star, which was only taken into service in March of this year
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Nor were any preventative measures taken by the Hong Kong ship hijacked today
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And if pirates should sink such a ship full oil we have an environmental disaster of monumental proportions, and one day this will happen
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So now we all go shock horror something must be done
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And what have the IMO been doing for the last many years?
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And the ship owners?
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Talking and hoping it would be someone else and not them
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To be fair though four things have changed the odds in favour of the pirates
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1. Technology: The protection once afforded to merchant vessels by their modern size and speed is now offset by further technical advances which have reduced crew size, as well as a vessel's ability to defend itself.
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On the other side of the coin, there has been a bumper crop of technological advances which improve the pirate chief's weapons of speed, shock, surprise, fire power and rapid escape.
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2. Reduced Naval Presence: The trend is for smaller world Navies.
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Dramatically decreased international ocean patrols have left merchant vessels virtually unprotected on the sea frontier.
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3. Disrupted Governmental Administration: Decisions by former colonies not to maintain ties with their home countries, and the financial inability of some governments to afford effective Naval assets &endash; are factors which have simply encouraged pirate attacks.
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4. Lack of Regulation: In some quarters there has been erosion of the view that piracy is a serious international crime, or even a crime of which anyone should take notice.
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With most of the world's 64 million gross tonnage fleet under flags of convenience such as Panama, Honduras and Liberia, there is no political will to smash high seas piracy.
.
Flags of convenience nations have neither the interest nor the ability to mount an effective deterrent.
.
Indeed neither Honduras nor Panama are feared as major naval powers!
.
Officials of the International Maritime Bureau in London call the present involvement by world governments against piracy to be "in shambles."
.
So there we have it
.
And yet again we the consumer will be the ones who pay as ships divert by the longer route around Southern Africa and insurance premiums soar
.
Has it ever been thus.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

2008 - Ozone hole


The ozone hole does not persist year round. It forms every spring in the Southern Hemisphere (August and September), when sunlight begins to return to Antarctica after the months of polar darkness.

During the cold, dark winter, a vortex of winds encircles Antarctica.

This vortex isolates the air in the stratosphere from mixing with warmer air at higher latitudes.

In the extreme cold, unusual clouds, called polar stratospheric clouds, form, even though the air is very dry.

Within these clouds, chemically stable forms of chlorine and bromine (put into the atmosphere by people) are converted into less stable gases.

When the sunlight returns in the spring, ultraviolet light breaks the less-stable chlorine and bromine gases into free chlorine and bromine atoms that catalyze ozone destruction.

Ozone concentrations thin throughout August and into September or October.

As Southern Hemisphere spring progresses, temperatures climb, and the vortex of winds that isolated the Antarctic stratosphere weakens.

Ozone-destroying chlorine and bromine gases disperse into the rest of the atmosphere.

Ozone destruction ceases for the year, and ozone levels begin to rebuild throughout the summer.

Although the ozone hole is not the cause of global warming, the two man-made climate changes are related in other ways.

The destruction of ozone has caused the Antarctic stratosphere to be cooler than it would normally be in the summer and fall.

Models and observations indicate that the cooling intensifies the vortex of winds that isolate frigid Antarctic air from warmer air from higher latitudes.

Ozone-hole-related cooling may be the reason why interior Antarctica has not warmed up as fast as most of the rest of the planet due to global warming.

NASA scientists are using data from satellites like Aura along with computer simulations of atmospheric chemistry and global climate to predict how recovery of the ozone hole could accelerate Antartic warming

NASA

Monday, November 17, 2008

Barcodes


Soon tags might start replacing barcodes however for some time to come barcodes will be found on most things

Country of origin markings are sometimes hidden or hard to find

Barcodes are usually easy to find and give us a simple way to locate country of origin where this is hidden or hard to find

Below are some for your interest and files

If the first 3 digits are from 690-695 then it is Made in China .

00 ~ 13 USA & CANADA

30 ~ 37 FRANCE

40 ~ 44 GERMANY

49 ~ JAPAN

50 ~ UK

57 ~ Denmark

64 ~ Finland

76 ~ Switzerland and Lichtenstein

628 ~ Saudi-Arabia

629 ~ United Arab Emirates
.
740 ~ 745 - Central America

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Quote of the times



'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'

Thomas Jefferson 1802


Quite so and yet the game goes on with the banks intent on returning to the status quo asap

Can we not see that the present structure does not work?

Maybe we have to have total financial meltdown before serious change is considered

Greed as the only criteria has not served us well

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Young British minds


In important ways, the country’s children appear to be becoming dumber.

Michael Shayer of King’s College London has been testing children’s thinking skills since 1976, when he and colleagues started studying the development of reasoning abilities in young people.

In 2006 and 2007 he got 14-year-olds to take some of the same tests as 30 years earlier.

The findings, to be published early next year, are sobering.

More than a fifth of youngsters got high scores then, suggesting they were developing the ability to formulate and test hypotheses.

Now only a tenth do.

The tests did not change, so the decline was not caused by different content or marking.

And since they explored the ability to think deeply rather than to regurgitate information or whizz through tasks, the results matter deeply.

In the purest test of reasoning, pupils were shown a pendulum and asked how to find out what affects the rate at which it swings.

“Their answers indicated whether they had progressed from the descriptive thinking that gets us through most of our days, to the interpretative thinking needed to analyse complex information and formulate and test hypotheses,” Professor Shayer explains.

In 1976 more boys than girls did well, a fact the researchers put down to boys roaming further out of doors and playing more with tools and mechanical toys.

Both sexes now do worse than before, but boys’ scores have fallen more, suggesting that a decline in outdoor and hands-on play has slowed cognitive development in both sexes.

Britain’s unusually early start to formal education may make things worse, as infants are diverted from useful activities such as making sand-castles and playing with water into unhelpful ones, such as holding a pen and forming letters.

This interpretation is supported by another, more positive, finding from the research: that fewer children do very badly now than did 30 years ago.

When asked to speculate further on why fewer British teenagers now display mature reasoning,

Professor Shayer eschews local explanations and puts the blame squarely on television and computers.

They take children away from the physical experiences on which later inferential skills are based, he thinks, and teach them to value speed over depth, and passive entertainment over active.

That chimes with other researchers’ findings of cognitive gains on tasks that require speed rather than close reasoning—useful, perhaps, as the pace of life accelerates, but hardly a substitute for original thought.

So what of children elsewhere?

Britain’s are not the only ones kept inside for fear of traffic or paedophiles, or slumped in front of a screen for much of the day.

“There is no similar evidence from elsewhere,” says Professor Shayer. “No one has looked for it.”

Perhaps they should.


The Economist.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Valium


Or if you prefer diazepam as it is now called

Is still being prescribed by doctors

And we are still getting people coming to us who are troubled as a result

What happens is something like this

You go to your doctor and he prescribes diazepam

You take it and it makes you feel better

It gives you a numb feeling

Blanks out your emotions so everything becomes sort of dull

It can calm you down

But if you take it all through life you sleepwalk

Nothing touches you

Regular users take them three times a day, as prescribed

Life revolves around them
.
You have to have your tablets

Just to feel safe

And if you forget them hysterics and panic can follow

Even though you build up a tolerance for them you can keep right on taking three a day

Your body craves them

All sorts of symptoms arrive

Feeling unwell

With so many non specific things

Feeling strange and dizzy

Shaking

Sound is magnified

Lights are too bright

Feeling like a hypochondriac

And to come off it?

It can take years
.
Make you feel really ill

Speech slurred

Feeling Permanently tired

And if you stay with then yes you can get your life back
.
If you do then the feeling will be like a second chance at life
.
Quite amazing we are told
.
If you are on anything like diazepan then be careful
.
Think twice please

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Rubbish


Homeopathy

Acupuncture

Shiatsu

Clairvoyance

Clair audience

Psychic abilities

Effects at a distance

Just to show a few things that are held to be rubbish by some people

They are held to be rubbish according to many doctors and scientists

Though we need to remember that doctors and scientists come in all shapes and sizes

Some pretty stupid

Some very clever

Some very biased against things they cannot understand
.
Others open minded
.
We could argue in defense of the above list however this would take too long and this blog is just designed to provoke thought

So we choose homeopathy as it is so often derided because " why there is not even one molecule of the original substance left in the preparation so how can it possibly work"?
.
But work it does even though many dispute this
.
Indeed all on the list above work in the sense that they have been around and accepted by many for thousands of years, with countless examples of success
.
Thousands of years and yet they are still being argued about
.
How come?
.
Simply put anything that cannot be understood by western science must be nonsense
.
The fact that they work is inconvenient but no deterrent to spin and ridicule
Has it ever been so with western science
.
So back to Homeopathy
.
In the case of homeopathy, no we are not talking about any placebo effect because while this might be so in some instances, as it is with many mainstream treatments, the effects of homeopathy go way beyond the placebo
.
And so how does it work?
.
Why the preparation has memory and it is this that does the work
.
When preparing a homeopathic remedy the practitioner imparts an idea, an instruction to the preparation in the form of a substance that he is using for a particular treatment
.
This affects the chain of water molecule formatons changing their shape and informing them of the instruction
.
This instruction remains even when every single molecule of the preparation has been removed from the water
.
A Japanese scientist Dr Masaru Emoto has extensive photos of frozen water molecule formations before and after instruction showing these effects visually in photos
.
This is clearly and beautifully shown in one of his books "The hidden messages in water"
.
He is not alone in having researched how water behaves when so instructed but is one of the first to show this visually
.
Why have scientists not pursued this line of enquiry further?
.
No idea
.
Well actually it is clear that this offends ideas of linear logic and old ideas about healing
.
In addition the Medical Establishment is famous for it's conservative views and politics
.
It is also clear that vested interests have no desire that cheap alternative remedies be found for many of the areas where they currently sell expensive pills and treatments
.
So on the one hand is an area of great potential for mankind and on the other vested interests
.
For sure many complementary therapies do not help themselves by resisting calls for verification of their approaches
.
Those who want to move our understanding forward will keep trying and one day as always happens the majority will bow to overwhelming evidence and say that they always knew that they worked!
.
In the meantime
.
For all of us there are areas in life where we can choose what we think to be real
.
We can go further and have a look for ourselves
.
Why not do this?
.
Apart from anything else many of these areas are fascinating
.
Warning!!
.
There are many charlatans around today so ensure that if you do want to look at any of these areas you find a reputable practitioner or umbrella organisation

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Disappearing traces


The civilisation of Egypt, and especially its learning was quite as great as that of the later Atlanteans, and in one direction, at any rate, far superior to that of present Europeans

And yet, while its imperishable monuments in stone etc, monoliths, its Sphinx and statutes, and its pyramids with a number of Sarcophagi full of papyri and yielding evidences of a later civilisation already degenerating and on the wane, is being daily excavated,

where are the traces of its earlier and far more remote glory, where the records of that civilisation which made Baron Bunsen say

......................and yet the land of Egypt has never been carried down into the depths of the Ocean bed

Nor has it been covered, owing to the repeated earthquakes which have convulsed over and over again that sandy bed upon which the ill fated Poseidonis was plunged in its last physical sleep - until the soil was reduced for ages after into a slimy mud slowly sucking in the last remnants of that civilisation

Nevertheless, owing ever to the yearly increase, amounting but to a few inches in a century - of alluvium brought down by the Nile, the old Hapimu, the traces of the oldest Egyptian civilisation, one that was as superior to the latest or the one with which the Egyptologists claim acquaintance with, as your own is now superior to that of Tibet - is hidden for ever from the knowledge of your sub races

How many millenniums have rolled over pyramids surpassing the present ones, each millennium throwing its 50 to 60 inches of earth over entombed ruined cities, still older Sphinxes and palaces, it is for you - the latest conquerors to calculate

Dig deeper and deeper into the sand and slime of the ages and perchance you may find, and then cast and sum up your figures

No, it is not supposed but rather known to a certainty that your present European civilisation which has been Cyclopes, though it may have finer and more elaborate works to boast of, will be destroyed as well; for such is the invariable law of nature

And it is far easier for a conflagration to devour without leaving any trace behind telegraphic and
electric works, railways and theatre buildings, ephemeral newspapers and books, restaurants and gin palaces than it was for the flood or inundation to destroy any of the seven world wonders and labyrinths, Semiramidiean gardens and colossus of Rhodes as well as old indestructible papyri and parchments - nevertheless and time and the elements have performed the task to a perfection

The present arts are doomed to perish long before the final catastrophe to make room for more perfected arts, as the old harpsichord, the clavichord and clavecin disintegrated to make room for the modern piano, the old viola for the violin, and some of the arts and sciences of Egypt, Rome, and Chaldea far superior to the present, are now lost to be revived at future ages

As to languages, without entering upon a useless controversy with your philologists who can find no traces of the Sanskrit before a miserable couple of thousand years before your era, they are respectfully asked to surmise what was the language of the learned Atlanteans?

The Adepts say that the older Sanskrit and what is now called Tamil are the true old languages of humanity

We know so little of what came before two thousand years or so ago and when we do find something tend to deny that it is so
.Why do we have fear of the idea that there have many advanced civilisations before our own?
.
One day maybe we will think also about why when anything is discovered that is quite obviously and clearly older than we can explain we immediately invent reasons why this cannot be so
.
As we have said before the great pyramid is over 75,000 years old, however we cannot accept this because to do so calls everything else into question
.
Particularly our history which is not as we understand it to be today
.
Our history is much older and more fascinating than we can imagine

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Popular ideas



About how consciousness arises do not often engage our attention

Maybe they should because without consciousness we have zilch, nothing
Nothing at all

Materialists say that consciousness magically arises once the organisation of matter reaches a certain level of complexity

If this were really the case then this would make of consciousness a mere epiphenomenon

An abstract quality of property, having no reality in itself

And how we might wonder can a mere property of matter move and guide matter?

As it must do if we have any real free will

Which we clearly do

Subjectively, consciousness means awareness

Awareness of sensation

And it is utterly mysterious

It cannot be reduced to anything else

Or explained in terms of anything else

It is the ultimate reality

As such it is far more than awareness

It is the very awareness

The very substance of existence

Consciousness, life and substance are an inseparable trinity

Anyway you look at it consciousness is an amazing mystery at the heart of all for us

And yet we cannot even define it

Let alone know how it arises

So when you finish reading this a thought for you

Consciousness is nature's way of looking at nature

And we are part of nature

And where does that lead you?

Monday, November 10, 2008

Whatever it is


I am against it

If it is good then I am against it

I am looking for peace and this might create conflict

I do not wish to be challenged in my ideas

I am totally fixed in what I believe in

We all know some people like this

Totally utterly fixed in their ideas

Unwilling to listen to anything that disturbs their perceptions

Their beliefs fixed too

No flex at all

Often they make us angry

Frustrated

Time to grow beyond

Know that a higher consciousness can always understand a lower consciousness

A lower consciousness cannot understand a higher

Know this and you are free to feel compassion instead of anger or frustration

Free to see why this person is locked into limited beliefs
And as you grow this vision and understanding of others grows with you
.
After a while the opinions and beliefs of others will not affect you
.
In this way you become wiser and more tolerant
.
Way to go!

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Mmmmm - 60


No religion can prove by, practical scientific demonstration that there is a personal God

while the esoteric philosophy, or rather theosophy of Gautama Buddha and Sankarancharya prove and give means to every man to ascertain the undeniable presence of a living God in man himself

whether one believes in or calls his divine in dweller Avalokitewara, Buddha, Brahma, Krishna, Jehovah, Bhagawan, Ahura-mazda, Christ or by whatever name -

There is not such God outside of himself

The former - the one ideal outsider - can never be demonstrated - the latter, under whatever appellation, may always be found present if a man does not extinguish within himself the capacity to perceive this divine presence, and hear the voice of that only manifested deity, the murmurings of the eternal Vach called by the northern and Chinese Buddhist

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Old teachings


Have come down to us in a very distorted form

To the point where few make much sense

Or the sense they make has been created by the scholar or translator

And this is for the simple reason that modern scholars and commentators have never had the keys
.
What can any modern scholar know of the secret or esoteric canon of interpretations?

By the term canon is meant that key, which was only ever communicated orally from mouth to ear

from the Master to the disciple, or by the hierophant to the candidate for initiation

This from time immemorial throughout a long series of ages, during which the inner - not public - Mysteries were the most sacred institution of every land

Without such a key no correct interpretation of either the dialogue of Plato or of any Scripture, from the Vedas to Homer, from the Zend-Avesta to the Mosaic Books is possible

Hence we have no correct or true understanding of any of these or other great works

Pity really

However they are never lost, only hidden

The true meanings will be made open, if and when humanity deserves or qualifies itself for such knowledge

A further simple thought is that Orpheus, Confucius, Socrates, Ammonius, Porphyry and Jesus himself committed nothing to writing - ever

Instead he communicated his most important doctrines to persons duly instructed and disciplined,

imposing on them the obligations of secrecy as was done before him by Zoroaster and Pythagoras

Consequently we can see that when people say the Bible or other writing says x y or z they are merely quoting what someone, often unknown has written,

It cannot be the whole truth because the truth is never shared except orally from Master to pupil

The truth is never written except under hidden keys for the simple reason that great teachings are not for an undeserving public

So when commentators and scholars claim something to be the truth or an accurate understanding think twice before believing