Saturday, December 31, 2011

Our origins




Here is an understanding.
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Humanity is just one of a myriad of evolutionary life cycles going through similar journeys to our own in myriads of Universes.
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We all come out of nature or the 'absolute' and through a long series of evolutionary steps and many, many lives come down into the state of self-reflective consciousness.
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We are also around this time living in an environment, which we call dense materialism.
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And this is where humanity is now.
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Over countless more lives, those who choose to make the effort and to evolve their consciousness are moving back up again into more spiritually aware lives.
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Till finally they merge with nature or the absolute.
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As mentioned above from around the half way point in this journey humanity attained self-reflective consciousness.
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At this point it became responsible for its actions, thereby creating karma for itself as individuals and also collectively as nations or as a species..
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As stated above we are just past the half way point in this journey and have another 2.2 billion years to go in our 4.2 billion year cycle.
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We have all had millions of incarnations and will have millions more before we reach the end.
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Put another way we have all been present through all the major steps in this evolutionary journey.
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All of us have been present in each major race and most of the sub races.
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Races totally forgotten today, we don't even know their names.
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Races long before our memory or belief that such races existed.
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Going back literally millions of years.
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And when we do dig something up that indicates intelligent life that long ago we deny and rationalise that it cannot be so.
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Be that as it may in each life we have one or two major lessons to learn.
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If we learn them we move on, if not then we repeat them until we do.
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Those who choose to be increasingly material and selfish in their lives divorce themselves from their souls and are then eventually destroyed, their atoms being recycled.
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Many choose this option or are too lazy to change.
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An individual's true journey for those that choose to grow moves from basic consciousness and selfishness to increased consciousness and altruism.
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From being separate units if you will to an individuality's forming part of a greater whole.
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Just as individual blood cells in our bodies form part of a greater whole, so humanity will again become a conscious part of a greater whole.
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This is where the idea that "we are all one" came from.
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Today this might be a mental stretch, but over time the idea will gain traction moving more and more humans to see others as themselves.
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To become more sharing and caring.
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This increased consciousness allows us to understand why we are here.
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What we must do each and every one of us becomes clearer.
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Our real lives are not about money or fame or power, although modern thinking, particularly in the West, might say that it is.
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Over time many lives from now the truth will prevail.
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That we are all here to serve each other.
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To help each other.

To help others to grow.
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Even now it can become clearer and once you find that clarity for yourself, and only you can find it, then your experience of life changes.
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It changes in as much as the inside fears are dispelled and a quieter peace of mind is more the norm.
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Thoughts and actions dedicated to living a life of contribution.
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A long long journey filled with many tests and hardships.
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And yet how could it be otherwise given the mess we make of things now that we are responsible for our own actions?
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Our origin was hard.
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Our present time is also.
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And the future?
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That is absolutely down to us.
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There is no free ride in the Universe.
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Our origins might not be clear today, however the outline is as stated above.
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It is called the ageless or perennial wisdom.
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Check it out

Friday, December 30, 2011

Quotes - some nice ones

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We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
- Sam Keen, from To Love and Be Loved
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We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love.
- Mother Teresa
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Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course. ~
-Kahlil Gibran
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Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
-Helen Keller
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For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. 
For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. 
For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.
-Ivan Panin
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Love has the power of making you believe what you would normally treat with the deepest suspicion.
-Mirabeau
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Peace
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A smile is the beginning of peace.
- Mother Teresa
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Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends.  
You talk to your enemies.
-Moshe Dayan
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If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
Mohandas Gandhi
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Success
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Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
-Wayne Gretzky
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It is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.
-Peter Marshall
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The most important single ingredient in the formula for success is knowing how to get along with people.
-Theodore Roosevelt
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We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
-Aristotle
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Moderation is a fatal thing. 
Nothing succeeds like excess.
-Oscar Wilde
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In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.
-Albert Einstein
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Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
-Winston Churchill
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I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
-Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Truth
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The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
- Adlai Stevenson
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A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
-Edgar J. Mohn
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Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
-Emily Dickinson
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The truth is more important than the facts.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
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Wisdom
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The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. 
The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. 
The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne
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A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
—Baltasar Gracian
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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Aristotle
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The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.”
-Mark Twain
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Other
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To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
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Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
—Erica Jong
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Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-Albert Einstein
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You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
-Abraham Lincoln

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Tripping lightly



Through life.
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Watching others embroiled in events that you would never indulge in.
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Keeping safe by following convention.
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Works pretty well for a while.
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Problem is times are changing and all  the old certainties are going.
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The old values are changing.
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Previously secure strategies are failing.
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What to do?
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Hang on and hope things don't change any more?
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Not such a good strategy really in these troubled times.
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Stress keeps building
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Stress is just another level of fear and for us to carry fear over time leads to bigger problems.
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Getting rid of fear is not easy.
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First step though is to acknowledge that we have a problem.
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Second is to understand that we have fear.
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For most a fear is something that we hide.
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Particularly from ourselves, so hunting it or them down can be challenging.
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Ask those who know you well what they think.
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Even better if you know a professional ask her to help you.
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Usually we have more than one fear.
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Often they date right back in our lives, sometimes to a very early age.
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Next step is to accept what we are frightened of.
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Then comes the hard part, which is to get rid of it.
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Start by talking it out loud, the fear that is say it out loud.
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Look at it and see if it is still true, that you are frightened of it.
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Share your fear with others, preferably those you trust.
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Examine the fear after discussing it and note how you feel about it now.
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Notice how much it has driven your life.
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Decide, choose to let it go.
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That means saying goodbye to it.
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That means deciding to no longer be frightened of it.
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Accepting that it did frighten you.
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Deciding deep down that you do not need to keep this fear.
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That it is no longer part of who you are or wish to be.
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It is no longer part of you.
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Decide to move on.
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Choose to find more love in your life.
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Choose more lightness.
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Let laughter find you more often.
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Learn about yourself.
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We are all in process, meaning that we have layer upon layer that we can learn about ourselves.
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Like an onion skin, layer after layer.
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Which if you think about it is not such a bad thing as it means that we are always learning.
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And one of the secrets of a successful life is to keep growing throughout your life.
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Keep growing please!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Maine lobsters


Lobster in Maine


While overfishing threatens fish stocks in many parts of the world, Maine's lobster population keeps on growing. 
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It's all thanks to a few simple measures that ensure adult males and females get plenty of opportunity to meet, and reproduce.
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Rush hour starts early in Boothbay Harbour.
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Newcomers to this little town in Maine are woken by diesel engines at half past four in the morning.
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It is not the roar of trucks but a low throb and thrum.
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After a while it is reassuring, restful - the sound of the lobster boats heading out.
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They are not large - about 35 feet long (around 10 metres), some crewed by their owner alone, most with one hired hand, the stern-man.
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They stream out in the morning and come home in the evening, like city commuters.
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But the lobsterman's commute is more impressive - past rocky islets, under ospreys nesting on marker poles, surprised by seals suddenly alongside, porpoises and sometimes mighty whales.
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Do not be deceived by the small boats. 
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The fishing effort here is immense.

From the shore out beyond the reefs and islands, the surface of the sea is dotted with brightly coloured cylinders 
Notching in Connecticut
1ft(30cm) tall, curving to a point at the bottom, each with a short pole sticking out of the top, like giant anglers' floats.
Attached to each of these thousands of buoys - boo-ees, they call them here - is a pair of lobster traps.
There are more than 200 boats in the area,Glenn Townsend, the assistant harbourmaster tells me, each licensed to set up to 600 traps, and they tend to fish to the limit.
I could not see how the lobster stock could withstand the onslaught.
But Finn Carroll, sternman on the Optical Illusion, says the lobster population is growing, because of - rather than in spite of - the fishing.
There are strict controls, Finn explains, over a Dogfish Head (that's a beer, not a seafood delicacy) in Robinson's Wharf.
If we catch a berried hen, a female carrying eggs, we cut a v-notch in the right flipper next to the middle of her tail.
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Then we put her back.
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You can't land a notched lobster
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It takes two moults for the notch to grow out, so the female has a chance to spawn for at least another two years.
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As well as hauling the traps, extracting the lobsters, re-baiting, and setting them again - it takes a couple of days to do them all.
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I spend my life measuring lobsters, Finn says, wearily.

Start

They have to be 3.25 inches (8cm) from the eye socket to where the tail begins.
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Any shorter, they go back.
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Many fisheries have minimum size limits.
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In Maine, there is also an upper limit.
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If a lobster is more than five inches (12.5 cm) from eye to tail, it goes back too.
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Many will be male so, as well as a high proportion of breeding females, this ensures there are lots of big, mature males scuttling about the seabed.
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Boothbay lobster traps are carefully designed - for the comfort and safety of crustaceans.
Lobster tail with v-notchT


The v-notch cut in an adult female's tail fin disappears over time


They will not damage their claws on the way in, and the bars are spaced so that the little ones can come and go.
To avoid "ghost fishing", one wall is biodegradable so, should a trap be parted from its boo-ee and lost, its inmates will be able, after a bit, to stroll free.
If it wasn't for us, there wouldn't be nearly as many lobsters.
They're usually solitary, fighting for scarce food, even eating each other.
.
What we're doing is more farming than fishing, really.
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He and Nick Hawke, who owns the Optical Illusion, have just unloaded their catch: 800 lobsters, weighing more 1,000lb (around 500 kilos).


At $2.75 (£1.75) per pound or $6 (£3.80) a kilo, that is a good day's work.
So it is no wonder that lobster fishing in Boothbay Harbour is not the easiest of industries to get into.
The number of permits is limited.
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Sons tend to take over from their fathers.
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But if you serve your time (at least two years) as a sternman, there is a chance you will get one.
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There is a lot to learn - the lore as well the law.
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Each lobsterman's buoys are painted differently.
.
I show Finn one that I found washed up.
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He knows whose it is immediately.
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As well as the chart in his boat, the lobster man carries another in his head.
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Theoretically, lobstermen can set their traps anywhere. 
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In reality, people have territories and, if one person intrudes on another's - as might have happened here - his gear will be cut.
.
Julian May

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Israel-Palestine map



It is becoming ever more difficult to feel supportive of Israel.
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The pictures above do not show the roads and barriers that separate Palestinians from their land and friends.
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Roads criss crossing the area forbidden to Palestinians, roads patrolled, guarded, off limits.
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Continued illegal Israeli settlement building continues to this day.
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Add in controls everywhere and one can understand that this situation will not have a happy ending.
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Fanatics on both sides will ensure this.
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There could still be time to resolve through compromise. 
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The majority of people on both sides have said they want peace and resolution of this issue.
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Sadly for all parties concerned the people are seldom listened to.
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One has to feel sorry for such intransigence in the face of objective reality.
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Add in the Arab spring and the changing face of Arab governments in the neighbourhood and voila!
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A disaster waiting to happen.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Mind games



When you take us apart,
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That special part of us we call self
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Myself
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Would that be your soul?
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Or would you prefer spirit?
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Not mind though because that is a part of self
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No matter consciousness is not there.
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It cannot be found.
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And if it cannot be found according to materialists then it does not exist.
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Silly because we all know we have consciousness.
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We all know we are conscious beings
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But you cannot prove it.
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Not by conventional scientific methods anyway.
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Yet we all accept this.
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But then if you turn to homeopathy many scientists will tell you it is rubbish.
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Not possible.
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Why?
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Because they cannot find one single gram of the original matter.
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Nor have they ever found one single gram of consciousness.
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Science is meant to be open minded.
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Joke. 
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It is anything but.
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Note how dissenters from orthodoxy are stripped of their jobs and titles.
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Rubbished and often humiliated.
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And the rest of us stand by and watch.
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So scientists in the main accept consciousness grudgingly maybe but homeopathy they will not.
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At some point someone needs to state the obvious.
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And that is because scientists or anyone else for that matter cannot understand something does not mean that it is not so.
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Or that it is not possible.
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It only means that we do not know how it can be.
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That we are not yet smart enough to understand.
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So next time you read "scientists say............"
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Consider whatever it is from your own perspective and if it does not resonate.
.
Hold you doubts.
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Do not rubbish something because a so called expert has said that it cannot be.
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Use your own intuition to guide you.
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Question though do you know how to do that?
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Use your intuition that is.
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Many have lost this skill or ability.
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Start practising, intuition can be a seriously accurate guide and support.
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The more you use it the better it gets.
.
For your knowledge.
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Intuition is a name we use to describe what we are doing when we bypass the brain and mind
and go straight to our higher self our spirit
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And if we can do this then the information we receive will be accurate and helpful.
.
Use your intuition it can be an important support.
.
Begin by considering an issue and then let it go.
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But hold in your mind that you want to know more
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Try doing this just before going to sleep with a clear question.
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Next morning look at and hold the first thought you have.
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Do not rubbish it because it seems unlikely.
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Begin your day and come back to it.
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Quite often it can be an answer.
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If it is such then trust it, and in the coming period you will see the wisdom in that  idea.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

The third Western objection




To reincarnation is the silliest being sentimental and too often made.
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It has no foundation at all except the world is in many ways governed by sentiment.
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People say I do not like it.
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I don't want to be born again.
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I do not wish to think of the idea that I won't see my child, my mother, my son, my daughter.
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My husband, my friends again.
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The mere sentimental thought I do not like it is no argument.
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Just think which daughter do you wish to see?
.
The one born a babe?
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The one as a young child.
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Or as an adult.
.
Grown old and senile perhaps.
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Which of these?
.
None
.
The real man is not subject to these changes.
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But is ever living ever reincarnating.
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Your soul does not die nor do those of the ones you love.
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It is your soul that matters life after life.
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And that soul experiences reincarnation that we may grow and learn.
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Life after life.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

From the Master KH



..................................but I was at several different times, elsewhere,tho neither in astral nor in any other tangible form, but simply in thought.

Believe me there comes a moment in the life of an adept, when the hardships he has passed thro' are a thousand fold rewarded. 


In order to acquire further knowledge he has no more to go thro a minute and slow process of investigation of various objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight into every first truth.

Having passed that stage of philosophy which maintains that all fundamental truths have sprung from a blind impulse.
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It is the philosophy of your sensationalists or positivists; and left far behind him that other class of 
thinkers.


The intellectualists or skeptics who hold that fundamental truths are derived from the intellect 
alone, and that we, ourselves are their only originating causes.


The adept sees and feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths.


The universal spiritual essence of nature, Shiva the Creator the destroyer, and the regenerator.

As spiritualists of today have degraded "spirit", so have the Hindus degraded nature by their anthropmorphistic conceptions of it. 


Nature alone can incarnate the spirit of limitless contemplation. 


Absorbed in the absolute self-unconsciousness of physical self.
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Plunged in the depths of true being, which is no being but eternal, universal life.


His whole form as impermeable and white as the eternal summits of snow in Kailasa where he sits
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Above care, above sorrow, above sin and worldliness, a mendicant, a sage, a healer, the King of Kings, the Yogir of Yogis, such is the ideal Shiva of Yuga Shastras the culmination of spiritual wisdom.

Oh ye ..................what have you done with our philosophy!

Friday, December 23, 2011

The second Western objection

.
It is unjust.
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The theory that man must remember a crime he has committed.
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Or the good that he has done.
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In order to be justly punished or rewarded is violated.
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As far as nature is concerned.
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Every moment of your day.
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You go to sleep at night, forgetting the window is open.
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And catch a violent cold while you are asleep.
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A few days later you reap the consequences and do not question natures justice.
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You eat something bad or that does not agree with you.  
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Will the fact that you did not know that it was poisonous allow you to escape the consequences?
.
Notice how some children are maimed or damaged for life.
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And that no one can tell how the accident occurred.
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Yet the consequences are born by that child for life.
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Is it unjust because it cannot remember it?
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Don't think so.
.
Karma dictates all
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Our actions have created the need to experience all that we experience.
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Reincarnation, the vehicle by which we experience.