Statement (or question?) of Values Intro Two and a half years ago, flustered by a seemingly inescapable claustrophobia, I ran away from Westchester, New York….and ran…and swam… until I washed ashore in India. I did not know what I was looking for, but it HAD to relate to me. Right? This self that I had embarked on a search for soon became incredibly apparent. Everywhere I went, I was surrounded by geographical, personal, spiritual beauty so great, so transcendent, that…
Dying Into Life “Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.” -Eckhart Tolle I have been spooked by death since my first initiation into the nature of life. While I like to pretend that I have made progress in my relationship with death, all it normally takes is the latest near-death experience to remind me how much work I…
faceYOURSELF “…and I realized that the nature of the game was not about getting high but about getting free….If we are to be free, there is nothing we can push away.” -Ram Dass, Grist For the Mill: Awakening to Oneness I believe that “human nature” is a myth — a cop out from facing the true depths of our potential. Stripped clean of all of this socialization and identification, time, space and causation, we are completely free. We…
Resource-Based Economy “Our entire survival is based upon resources.” -Jaque Fresco, Founder – The Venus Project The monetary system, which relies on exponential growth and profit due to scarcity, is, by nature and design, not sustainable. The preservation of Earth’s resources, sufficient living standards for people, and technological innovation are all either opposed or hindered by this system, as they do not correlate to the maximization of profit. Likewise, the monetary system clashes, fundamentally, with morality. There is no room in…
faceNOW “Be here now. Be here now. Be here now. Be here now. Be here now. Be here now. Be here now. Be here now.” -Inspired by Ram Dass I believe in the power of the moment. I believe in its transcendent nature, its ineffability. I believe that everything is accessible through this vessel; the moment is the vehicle to the divine essence of all that we know. But I also believe that we don’t give ourselves enough credit. We don’t…
faceINSTITUTIONS “What if good institutions were in fact the product of good intentions? What if the cynicism that is supposed to be rigor and the acquisitiveness that is supposed to be realism are making us forget the origins of the greatness we lay claim to – power and wealth as secondary consequences of the progress of freedom, or, as Whitman would prefer, Democracy?” ― Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books An Institution is defined as…
Zoom In – Zoom Out “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother…
Lines “All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is truth, and this will never change. Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together.” –Morihei Ueshiba, Founder of Aikido I think about human consciousness in terms of vertical and horizontal lines. We are multifaceted, unique for sure, but we also all share a common set of planes of existence. In other words, we are all playing the same basic…