Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Music hidden in Rosslyn Chapel
Monday, April 20, 2009
Some years ago, on a hot summer day, a little boy
decided to go for a swim in the old swimming hole that was behind his
house. In a hurry to dive into the cool water, he ran out the back
door, leaving behind shoes, socks, and shirt as he went.
He flew into the water, not realising that as he swam toward the
middle of the lake, an crocodile was swimming toward the shore.
In the house, his mother was looking out the window. She saw the two
as they got closer and closer together. In utter fear, she ran toward
the water, yelling to her son as loudly as she could.
Hearing her voice, the little boy became alarmed, and made a U-turn
to swim to his mother. It was too late. Just as he reached her, the
crocodile reached him. From the dock, the mother grabbed her little
boy by the arms, just as the crocodile snatched his legs. That began
a very incredible tug-of-war between the two.
The crocodile was much stronger than the mother, but the mother was
much too passionate to let go.
A farmer happened to drive by, heard her screams, raced from his
truck, took aim, and shot the crocodile. Remarkably, after weeks and
weeks in the hospital, the little boy Survived. His legs were
extremely scarred by the vicious attack of the animal. On his arms,
there were deep scratches where his mother's fingernails dug into his
flesh, in her effort to hang on to the son she loved.
The newspaper reporter, who interviewed the boy after the trauma,
asked the boy if he would show him his scars.
The boy lifted his pant legs. Then, with obvious pride, he said to
the reporter, 'But look at my arms. I have great scars on my arms,
too. I have them because my Mom wouldn't let go.'
You and I can identify with that little boy.
We have scars, too. No, not from an crocodile, but the scars of a
painful past. Some of those scars are unsightly, and have caused us
deep regret. But, some wounds, my friend, are because God has refused
to let go. In the midst of your struggle, S/He's been right there,
holding on to you.
Gurbani* teaches that God loves you.
You are a child of God. S/He wants to protect you, and provide for
you in every way. But, sometimes, we foolishly wade into dangerous
situations, not knowing what lies ahead. The swimming hole of life -
the terrifying world ocean - is filled with peril ~ and we forget
that anything can - and does - happen. That is when the tug-of-war
begins.
If you have the scars of His/Her love on your arms, be very, very
grateful. S/He will not ever let you go.
(A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the
bricks that others throw at him or her.)
*Gurbani is a Sikh compound word from Guru - the dispeller of darkness - and bani - word. These are the writings of our Gurus. You can read it as "sacred scriptures" of whatever religion you believe in. If you don't believe in any religion, that's OK, too. Just consider "God" as whatever positive, loving force - personal or impersonal - that you find in this universe. If you can't find a positive, loving force in this universe, I'm sorry. But, even then, please don't give up the search.
Chardi kala!
now
these ephemeral circumstances sting so much, as if pain and pleasure were everything,
this is the human curse"
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Alice in Talibland
Alice in Talibland-1
By Anwaar Hussain
Alice fell straight down the rabbit hole. Suddenly she landed on a heap of sticks and dry leaves and the fall was over. She saw a Talib running in front of her through a long labyrinthine passage. It looked like some underground cave system. Alice started to follow the Talib. He appeared to be in a great hurry.
She almost lost sight of him but caught up with him near a bend. Fearful that she would lose him again, she caught his shirt tail to make him stop. At this the Talib came to an abrupt stop pushing her hand away.
“You cannot do that,” said the Talib, “You are a female!”
“But I am only 12 years old!” replied Alice. “That’s old enough,” retorted the Talib in a gruff voice. Alice blinked, failing to understand the Talib’s meaning.
“Now here is the deal,” the Talib said in a commanding voice. “You follow me while I attend to a few urgent chores and stay quiet. When I am done, I will answer any questions that you have. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” said Alice meekly and started following the Talib a respectful distance behind.
Presently they entered a hall where they found a group of Taliban holding a miserable looking old man in shackles. In a corner, a Talib was sharpening a butcher’s knife. The smell of blood was every where. From his looks, he appeared to be a poor farmer.
“What is his crime?” asked the Talib with Alice. He behaved like the group’s leader.
“He saw us beheading a man and said something blasphemous,” said one from the Taliban group.
“What did he say?”
“He said that if we were doing what we were doing in the name of God then we could not be worshiping the same God. He said that his God was merciful, loving and forgiving.”
“Ah! That’s blasphemous indeed. But why was the man being beheaded?”
“He was being beheaded for saying exactly the same thing when he saw us digging a dead man’s grave.”
“And why were you digging a dead man’s grave?”
“Because he had escaped beheading for saying the exact same blasphemous words when he saw us beheading yet another man for a similar blasphemy but died a natural death before we could reach him. We wanted to dig him out and behead his dead body to correct the lapse.”
“That seems reasonable,” said the Talib with Alice. “Off with his head then!” said he and motioned to Alice to continue with him.
Soon they approached a dark cave from which heart rending shrieks of a girl were coming. Trembling slightly, Alice peeked from behind the Talib and saw a strange spectacle. Three men were holding a girl face down while a Talib was flogging the girl mercilessly. With each lash, the girl would beg for mercy at an even higher pitch. That in turn would urge the flogger to whip her with ever greater fervor.
Seeing the Talib and Alice, the group at once stopped the activity. “What is her fault?” the Talib asked.
“She loved,” said one from the group.
“What? Loved? How evil. Continue the punishment,” said the Talib. “But who are the men holding her down? She cannot be touched by every one.” He asked.
“Oh, the ones holding her arms are her brothers and the one holding her feet is her father. We took care that every thing is done according to the word of God.”
“God is great. That is good then. Carry on.”
With that, the Talib led Alice out of the caves to a dark, unlit opening. A pale moon was visible in the sky. Under the eerie light, the Talib turned towards Alice and said, “Now you may ask your questions.”
Gathering her nerve, Alice asked her first question, “Is it possible to have a religion that makes me happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled?”
The Talib thought for a while and then replied, “Well! I am afraid your very first question is a loaded one. You see religion is all about morals. Happiness is just an idea. Balance and intellect are twin-evils born out of lack of faith. Some far gone devils call it reason and rationality too. When one has faith, it doesn’t matter whether he has balance or intellect or any thing else. I hope I have made myself clear.”
“Quite clear, I guess,” said Alice. “My next question then is why a religious belief is necessary in order for us to have acceptable morals? And if that indeed is the case then why not cut out the middlemen and go straight for the moral choice without the religion?”
The Talib looked stumped for a while. He blinked a few times as if trying to comprehend the real import of the question. Then he shook his head and simply said, “Told you that religion is all about morals. And you cannot cut out the middlemen because that is US. And WE are ordained by God to carry out his will. So we are told and so I am telling you. That was really a stupid question.”
“I am sorry!” said Alice. “Well let me ask you this then. Why when a single person is superstitious, we call him sick, delusional, schizophrenic etc. but when millions suffer from a mass delusion we call it their religion and are asked to respect their religious beliefs?”
“Because there is not only safety but sanity in numbers too, that’s why.” the Talib replied tersely. He seemed to be increasingly getting angry with the turn the questions were taking.
“What is God?” asked Alice abruptly.
The Talib looked at her with glazed eyes.
“God is all around us. HE is in every thing. HE is nature. That is why my religion is the closest to nature….the truest and the best religion.” the Talib intoned with zealous fervor.
“Ok. Have you ever heard of Carl Sagan?” asked Alice.
At this apparently disconnected question, the Talib looked at her with a bemused look on his face and said, “No, but from the sound of his name he seems to be some infidel heathen.”
“Oh, well! Carl Sagan once said, ‘. . . if by “God” one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying . . . it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.’ What do you say to that?”
“Be careful girl. You cannot ask questions about God or how He does things. You are only to believe, to have faith. You are getting dangerously close to being blasphemous.” The Talib warned without answering the question.
“Oh ok! I am sorry. I thought that was an innocent query. But then you have to answer another question that is far more important.” said Alice
“I want to know why it is perfectly possible to question who made a watch and how he made it but not who made this universe and how he made it?”
“Be careful girl!” the Talib growled in a menacing way.
Alice continued without stopping, “I want to know how to answer people blaming your’s as a violent religion when in the protests in the wake of Danish cartoons demonstrators were photographed in Britain bearing banners saying, ‘Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion’.
“Be careful girl!” the Talib hissed.
“I want to know what to make of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quotation in which he says, “The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next”, can you?”
“Be careful!” the Talib growled. But Alice had lost all control of her emotions. She went on recklessly.
“I have seen your killings and your beheadings of fellow human beings in the name of God and I say we could not be worshiping the same God. My God is merciful, loving and forgiving. Your’s is not.”
“May you rot in hell!” shouted the Talib with foam flying from his mouth and his eyes narrowed down to mere slits.
“Off with her head!” he ordered a group of approaching Taliban.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
.creative certification..?
Socialized medicine is the only alternative (assurance) to costly victimizing reflexes...and banks represent trust stability? Questions ARE the best answers NOW..or tomorrow?
Have "They" known what 'They' (Might) be doing in the past?
Friday, April 17, 2009
The Tether Experiment
Watch this NASA video.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land
...are we supposed to do nothing about it?
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
A Brief, er, Short History Of Time
First, if I'm to talk about time, a definition might be helpful.
From an online dictionary:
TIME:
1. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.2. An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war; passed the time reading.
3. A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes.
4. A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 a.m.
5. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time.
Is that helpful?
I thought not.
When I was a kid, I used to lie awake at night speculating on what time was. Dad said that would drive me bonkers, no one understands time. He might have been right. I read H. G. Wells science fiction classic, The Time Machine. (As an aside, that opened a lifetime love of the science fiction genre) He called time a dimension
OK, definition time again.
DIMENSION:1. A measure of spatial extent, especially width, height, or length.
2. Mathematics The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.
3. The range of such a coordinate.
4. Physics A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time.
I think the one from physics is most operative here. Now I am in deep waters. You probably know much more about physics than I do, so please just humour me, dear friend.
After reading The Time Machine, I started picturing time as a line, a number line. Could it possibly gain another dimension and curve on itself, with the intersecting points making present and future, or present and past into a single point? Does it maker any sense at all to reference time in terms of spatial dimension. Or is this a gross misuse of the venerable number line?
Somewhere along the line, I came to think of time as having three dimensions, past, present and future. This set the stage for what I experienced in an altered state of consciousness, which I will refer to as a Spiritual Experience (SE) for lack of a better term
Now, back to the mundane. Look at some object that has three spatial dimensions, say your dominant hand. It occurs to me that I don't know if you are right-handed or left-handed, so I'll picture both below. When you look at, you see those dimension, length, width and depth, but you do not - cannot! - see them as three separate properties, you see them as one organic whole, the length, width and depth each distinct and yet inseparable. Are you following me so far? Of course you are, we haven't gotten to the difficult part.
Now we get to the difficult part.
You most likely see your hand in only one dimension of time, the present. Now you need to use your imagination. Imagine looking at your hand and seeing it as it was when you were a foetus, a baby, a child, a teenager. Now, return to the present and, in your imagination, travel in the opposite direction, see your hand in ten years, then as an old person. If you have the nerve, see it as dead and decaying.
If you are following me now, we can move on to the really hard part.
Imagine seeing those three dimensions of time as an organic whole, each distinct and yet inseparable, past, present and future all existing together, so when you look at your hand, you are not seeing our usual three dimensional hand, but rather you are seeing a six dimensional hand.
Now imagine seeing the entire spacetime continuum in that way. That is my view of maya - when I am aware of maya at all - during a SE.
I am aware that this must sound science fiction, and I suppose it is. It is also something I have experienced and continue to experience occasionally.
And that is my explanation of the three dimensions of time, as best I can give it right now.
My Amazon parrot is screeching now, telling me it's time to feed her, preferably pizza, the 'Zons' favourite food.
Before I go, as I don't want to disappoint, here are parts of my three favourite time
songs, with links to the complete songs.
A Hazy Shade of Winter: (edited)
Simon and Garfunkel
Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life
But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Look around, leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground...
TIME IS ON MY SIDE: (edited)The Rolling Stones (OMG! I remember buying this single - on vinyl, in the 1960s)
(Meade)
Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is
You're searching for good times
But just wait and see
You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)
You'll come running back (spend the rest of my life with you, baby)
You'll come running back to me
Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
I said, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side
Yeah, time, time, time is on my side
Time In A Bottle: (edited)
Jim Croce
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that Id like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
Id save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Reported comment
"There's a secret government,
inside the government...
and I don't control it."
...Bill Clinton...
Co-exist-ence
It doesn't matter to me
what you believe...
...as long as you give me the freedom
to believe what I want
Monday, April 13, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
They are here
Was Jesus an alien?
The Travis Walton experience is unequivocally
the best documented account of alien abduction yet recorded.
During his ordeal, Travis reported that he encountered
human beings aboard the alien craft.
Some people think they "know"....
....what if everything you "knew" was wrong?
I would rather say that "I don't know"....
....when you realize you "don't know" you begin to observe.
When you observe, you begin to see the truth.
I have seen the truth....
....they are here.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.
...Harry S. Truman...
(The Disclosure Project)
Friday, April 10, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Spy
I'm a spy in the house of love
I know the dream, that you're dreamin' of
I know the word that you long to hear
I know your deepest, secret fear
(The Doors)
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
War of the Gods
Religion must die.......so that reason may live.....Bill Maher-Religulous.
.....god is not religion.
.....i will not humanize god......i will not sexualize god......god is change.....god is a process......god is......not a giant old white guy with a long white beard sitting in the clouds.......god!
.....all religion is.....man made.
.....ignorance is the original sin.
.....our ignorance is the reason for.....faith.
.....all the major religions teach the golden rule......that works.
.....god made man in his image.....but then.....man made god in his image.
.....fear has perverted religion, turning the golden rule.....into the
war of the gods.
.....ignorance creates fear....fear creates intolerance....intolerance creates extremism....extremism creates hate....hate creates destruction.
.....intolerance is another word for.......extremism.
.....ignorance+fear+intolerance+extremism+hate=destruction.
.....faith is innocent....ignorance is not.
.....religion divides us, spirituality brings us together.
.....we cannot fault man for faith....we can however, hold man and religion, responsible for ignorance.
.....you must first define, "faith".
from the dictionary......faith 1: allegeance to duty or a person: LOYALTY 2: belief and trust in God 3: complete trust 4: a system of religious beliefs.
.....so the definition of "faith"...is what your trust is "in".....duty, a person, God, or a religion.
.....the word "trust" more deeply describes "the reliance on the truth of something"....or truth.
.....so you might say that faith boils down to what you "believe" is true......or "your belief."
.....and as i've said before.....
.....the "truth" has nothing to do......with what you "believe".
.....in other words......faith is not always founded on truth.
.....i have faith the sun will come up in the morning......i have no faith in war.
.....i'm not afraid of god....what reason could there be?
.....i don't believe in a god that needs to be worshiped.
.....i don't believe in a god that would doom me to burn in eternal pain.
......though god may be love, god is above all truth.......god is even the atheism of the atheists........mahatma gandhi.
Our Culture in the Blimp of an Eye
Feelings weep like eye lids beam in the morning sun
Beauty passes all ugly memories of the past
Truth never held from the public
Given to all to devour
Problems arise, but controlled within a touch of a magical spell
Magic happens in places never before thought of
Feelings connected through each individual living or dead
Pain is controlled through re-verse psychology
Words describe feelings, pleasure and love in ways never understood
Love encompasses all
Divine beauty stretch all of our imaginations
Politics is a game played by usually the Kings
Queens stands by the Kings
President is like a King
First Lady is like a Queen
Soul is something we are
Body is something we rent out
Mind is something we posses
Heart beats one moment then stops the next
Computers connect the knowledge of our past
Cars drive us from point A to point B
Books open up the imaginations
Lyrics flow through the stations
Poetry opens up the racist
Death is something to look forward to
Living is something of a different stroke of keys
Guitar played in the background
Movies tell a story written down in words
Music touches our souls
Communities are divided in some parts of the world
Poverty is on the rise
Rich are on top of the Pyramid
Conspiracy Theories tell a different story
Who knows who is right or wrong
Laws should be followed
If you cannot use your own common sense
Logic is important in this day and age
Young pregnant beauties ignored
So they fall
Throw away the kids
And run away
Hoping to get with their life some day
Never to forget what they have done
Cops using their power to kill the innocent ones
They never question and get any answers
Don’t they know they work for us
The people
Hidden Secrets are deep in the gutter
Search and you will find the ultimate truth to all that that is.
Monday, April 6, 2009
A Little Bit of Wisdom
The right time to show your good character is when you are pestered by somebody weaker than you.
-Buddha
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Bob Dobbs
The World Ends Tomorrow
And You May Die!
Become an Ordained Minister NOW...
Official Website of The Church of the SubGenius™
Friday, April 3, 2009
Excuse Me While I Wax Poetic
the problem with peace
elusive, enigmatic...Essential
impractical, imperfect...Imperative
inconceivable, inspiring...Indomitable
difficult, different...Dynamic
freaky, fearless...Fundamental
unattainable, unthinkable...Unstoppable
vain, valuable...Vital
painful
poetic...
Possible?
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Rocks are hard
How will I know the truth from the lies
you ask yourself...
all I can tell you is that
rocks are hard.......water is wet.