8.30.17
August 30, 2017
Spiritual check-in.
August 29, 2017
‘Having a spiritual meltdown without realizing it? The author of Eat, Pray, Love reveals the critical, overlooked red flags.’
1. You’re Bored.
I feel like boredom is the first and quietest signal of spiritual despondency. I don’t just mean that you’re bored with your religious path; I mean that you’re bored with everything—bored with yourself, bored with human beings, bored with your work, bored with life. Some people accept boredom as normal, but I see it as a sign that you have completely lost touch with the real wonder that is exploding all around you in every moment. Because let’s be honest—this world is many things, but it ain’t boring. This world is beautiful, violent, extreme, dangerous, magnificent and mysterious. This world is also filled with millions of varied and incredible life forms, including human beings (the most creative, bizarre, unpredictable species that ever lived). If all that bores you, then your soul has really gone to sleep at the wheel. Start reviving your curiosity, and your spirit will have a chance to wake up again.
2. You’re Scared.
You’re scared of everything and everyone. Fear is the opposite of faith, and your fear is a signal that your faith has left you. Fear is also the murderer of creativity, innovation, hope, risk and joy. Fear always makes the most boring, soul-killing choices, because fear only ever speaks one word, and that word is: “STOP!” When you only listen to your voice of fear, all you do is remain paralyzed. And fear breeds fear, so you get more and more frozen by the day. But your soul doesn’t want to stop. Your soul was born on a spinning planet, in an evolving world, in an expanding universe. Your soul is all about motion. Your soul wants to GO—wants to try things, wants to jump, wants to soar, wants to sail, wants to create, wants to fall, wants to fail, wants to try again. Sit down and have a calm discussion with your fear. Respectfully inform your fear that it doesn’t get to make decisions anymore. Let your creativity and your curiosity start making decisions, instead. Watch and see what happens in your life next, as your soul grows into the giant space of possibility that your fear had been blocking forever.
3. You’re Angry
Anger is OK, actually. Anger, we can work with. At least anger (unlike boredom and fear) has fire in it. At least anger is alive with a kind of passion. The ancients said that there are three different kinds of prayer: You can pray in gratitude, you can pray in beseechment or you can pray in anger. You are allowed, in other words, to vent your rage to God. You are allowed to say, “I am furious at you for what you have allowed to occur!” Do it. Get it off your chest. (God can take it.) But make a commitment that you will not remain in that state of rage for your entire life, or else it will burn a hole right through your soul. Start asking the universe more interesting questions than, “Why am I so cursed?” Start asking, “How can I learn to see this perceived curse as a blessing? How can I grow from here? What is life trying to teach me? What does my soul want the rest of its journey to look like? How am I being invited to transform?” By asking these questions, you can turn the fire of your anger into a different kind of fire—a fire for expansion, a fire for greatness, a fire for dignity, a fire for grace. Trust me, your soul will love those questions far more than it loves the hot and simple rage.
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/elizabeth-gilbert-spiritual-and-emotional-meltdown#ixzz4rBEWemJn
His dream.
August 28, 2017
Asha. ✿
A post from Taliesin’s mom, Asha Deliverance, about this Eclipse from her astrologer friend, Julia Bondi.
☆☆¸.•*¨*•☆☆•*¨*•.¸¸☆☆
‘A total Solar Eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun temporarily blocking the Sun’s rays/light. It is a rare celestial event presaging significant shifts in our personal and collective worlds. Our Sun is the life and vitality of our Solar System making our lives possible. Solar energy affects the the earth’s electromagnetic field, our DNA, and our pineal gland. As the Moon hides the Sun during the eclipse, our past represented by the Moon is reintegrating with our essential Sun energy, our vital core self, an alchemical evolutionary process offering an evolutionary leap into a more awakened identity, self awareness. It’s a powerful refresh of who we are and can be, enhancing the magnetic quality of our being to create, to attract, to choose, to act consciously rather than to fear, to fight, to retreat into despair and hopelessness.
The August 21st Solar Eclipse is a marriage or conjunction of the Sun and Moon in the Astrological sign of Leo joined by the fixed star Regulus and the planet Mars with support from the planet Uranus, an extraordinary gathering of dynamic change. The last total Solar Eclipse that crossed the United States from coast to coast was on June 8th, 1918 which followed a similar path to the current path of totality. In 1918 the 1st World War was ending, President Wilson was envisioning a League of Nations to join the nations of the world together for peaceful resolution of conflicts, to make the world safe for democracy. WW 1 was to be the war to end all war. Screening The Birth of A Nation (originally called The Clansman) in the White House, Wilson’s racist views contributed to a rising of the KKK, lynching and approval of Jim Crow segregation. Today we are again focused on racism, war, and peace. It is time to make a new choice, a positive choice to see each of us as divine expressions of God not others defined by race, religion or ethnicity.
The Sun and Moon meeting in Leo are offering Americans and the world an invitation to a heart initiation, an awakening of our capacity to live vital, joyous lives, to love fully, to move beyond separative fear based behavior to Leo’s partner, its opposite sign, Aquarius who holds the gift of group/world conscious belonging and service. From separative personal desire to an inclusive desire to become a world server; from conflict to cooperation, from fear/hate to love, from a closed heart to an awakened heart, from intense individualization to a great modern movement guided by “the better angels of our nature”. This is the moment to blend the urge to synthesis with a heart expansion into loving inclusion of all, a recognition that love is the inherent binding force of our solar system.
From the mothers of slain young black men and women to the families of the slain parishioners at Mother Emmanuel Church to the mother of a slain young man in Portland to the mother of the slain young woman in Charlottesville, mothers are choosing Love, standing for compassion, progress, and a better world. The center point of this Solar Eclipse pathway is right over the Grand Tetons, the grandmother mountains. Let the mother’s be our guides to a better world, a world awakening to Love and Wisdom at this Solar Eclipse.’
Votes & Virtual Views
AXIOS
8.28.17
As an effort to curb misleading information and hoaxes on its platform, Facebook announced Monday it will no longer allow pages that repeatedly share false news to advertise on Facebook.
The move is the latest in a series of steps to punish spammy publishers trying to game the system in order to spread false information or gain false traffic to sell ads. Two weeks ago, Facebook announced it will down-rank publishers that post fake videos.
Why it matters: Fake news perpetrators often took to Pages to spread misinformation during the election. With Pages, groups were able to amass huge audiences and loyal fan bases that would opt-in to receive news and information from them. Pages often represent news organizations, but also groups that exist exclusively on Facebook to drum up emotional support around political issues. Buzzfeed conducted an analysis of how Pages specifically helped drive false news and misinformation during the election.
Look up.
August 26, 2017
Patience. And acceptance.
AXIOS
[posted 8.25.17]
Video: Mattis tells troops, “hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other”
https://www.axios.com/mattis-to-troops-hold-the-line-until-u-s-is-less-divided-2477420259.html
☾
August 23, 2017
Here we are, controlled by fear, in a universe that evolves through love.
-Jennifer Rose
Save our Public Lands
Patagonia has purchased $700,000 in radio and television airtime in Secretary Zinke’s home state of Montana, as well as Utah, and Nevada, to run ads imploring the public and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to do the right thing and “keep public lands in public hands.
In Patagonia’s almost 45 years of doing business, they’ve never run a television advertisement,” said the company in a press release. “But with America’s public lands under unprecedented threat, Patagonia continues its legacy of advocating for the planet by bringing its voice to the airwaves.
‘Grassroots movements are all we have.’
August 17, 2017
“You are part of our community, and you must be part of our fight against hate.”
Use whatever skills and means you have.
Offer your print shop to make fliers. Share your musical talents at a rally. Give your employees the afternoon off to attend.
Be creative. Take action. Do your part to fight hate.
[SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER]
Full PDF:
https://www.splcenter.org/20170814/ten-ways-fight-hate-community-response-guide
“The good news is, all over the country people are fighting hate, standing up to promote tolerance and inclusion. More often than not, when hate flares up, good people rise up against it — often in greater numbers and with stronger voices.”
•••
[photo: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts]
-Heather Heyer’s mom. [Heather was murdered while protesting against hate and bigotry in Charlottesville, VA.]
•••
Author and national correspondent for The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates gives his first full interview since the inauguration of the current US president. He talks with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman about his forthcoming book, “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.” At first glance, the title suggests the focus will be on President Barak Obama’s presidency, the first African American president. However, it begins post civil, during Reconstruction.
“The book takes its title from a gentleman who stood up in 1895, one of the black congressmen appointed during—or who won during Reconstruction, immediately after slavery. And as South Carolina was basically cementing the disenfranchisement of African Americans, he said, you know, “Listen, we were eight years in power.” And he listed all the great things that the African Americans, really, the multiracial government, you know, a tremendous experiment in democracy that followed the Civil War, had accomplished—you know, reforming—really, forming the first public school system, you know, reforming the penal system—just a list of governmental accomplishments that they had done. And he struggled to understand why folks would then perpetrate this act of disenfranchisement, given how much South Carolina had advanced during this period.
And the great W.E.B. Du Bois pointed out that the one thing white South Carolinians feared more than bad Negro government was good Negro government. It was precisely the fact of having made all of these accomplishments, because they ran counter to the ideas of white supremacy, that gave the disenfranchisement movement and the redeemers their fuel.
And I don’t think it was very different under President Barack Obama. I think it was, in fact, you know, his modesty. It was the lack of radicalism. It was the fact that he wasn’t out, you know, firebombing or, you know, throwing up the Black Power sign or doing such that made him so scary, because I think what folks ultimately fear is Africans—is kind of the ease with which African Americans could be integrated into the system, because it assaults the very ideas of white supremacy in the first place.”
Transcript excerpt from the interview:
AMY GOODMAN: Do these grassroots movements give you hope—
TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —right now across the country?
TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes, they’re all we have. They’re all we have. They’re all we have. I smile when I see them. I’m happy to see them. They’re all we have right now.
Full Interview: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/15/full_interview_ta_nehisi_coates_on
•••
An explosive and raw capture into the minds of white supremacists by VICE NEWS//8.16.17
“On Saturday, August 12th, hundreds of white nationalists, alt-righters, and neo-Nazis traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, to participate in the “Unite the Right” rally. By Saturday evening three people were dead – one protester and two police officers – and many more injured.
“VICE News Tonight” correspondent Elle Reeve went behind the scenes with white nationalist leaders, including Christopher Cantwell, Robert Ray, David Duke, and Matthew Heimbach — as well as counterprotesters. VICE News Tonight also spoke with residents of Charlottesville, members of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Charlottesville Police.
From the neo-Nazi protests at Emancipation Park to Cantwell’s hideaway outside Virginia, “VICE News Tonight” provides viewers with exclusive, up-close and personal access inside the unrest.
Full episode:
https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news-tonight-full-episode-charlottesville-race-and-terror
•••
Late Show Host Seth Meyers:
“You can stand for a nation, or you can stand for a hateful movement; you cannot do both.”
“And for those of us who study the history of hatred, bigotry, and the evils of Nazi Germany, the prospect of such relevance is most uncomfortable. If my work has taught me anything, it’s the importance of keeping the boundaries of one’s moral universe as wide as possible.”
-Jon Meacham
✿
August 16, 2017
Showing up; giving our all.
August 14, 2017
I began to discover that human maturity comes as we begin to bring out heads and hearts together.
-Humanitarian Jean Vanier
A new day.
August 13, 2017
“God doesn’t close one door without opening another, but it can be hell in the hallway.”
Rev. Bill Shillady
The paradox of nonexistence and living.
August 10, 2017
“Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.”
Maria Popova: We continue to grapple with the paradox of our mortality. But arguably our most formidable and intense confrontation with nonexistence comes when we lose loved ones. In ‘The Year of Magical Thinking”, her harrowing record of the year following the death of her husband of four decades, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion, born on December 5, 1934, offers a soul-stirring meditation on grief in all its unimaginable dimensions.
Joan Didion:
“Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of “waves.”
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. […] In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail.
The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day?
We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”
brainpickings.org
Musings of the random.
Random is the instant a horse at full speed has all four hooves off the ground.
It refers to the mystery of unbridled passion, to the lift that results from total immersion and surrender. In our age, however, random means without design, method, or purpose. It refers to utter chance. It helps us dismiss whatever appears to be beyond the control of our will. If we didn’t author it, it must be accidental.
Yet our lives are full of unexpected surges of kindness that seem to come from nowhere. Just when you’re thirsty, a cup is gathered and passed around. Just when you are lonely to the point of snapping that bone way inside that you show no one, someone offers you a ride or steadies the grocery bag about to drop from your grip. Just when you feel nothing can raise your sad head from the lonely road, the deer strutter across the road in exact rhythm with Handel.
For us, the moment at random is the moment of holding nothing back, of giving our all to whatever situation is before us. In that charged moment, we come as close to flying as human beings can – – we soar briefly with a passion for life that brings everything within us to meet our daily world.
We flow to each other’s aid, often without knowing where we are headed. Mysteriously, the life force heals itself this way. And what we call ‘chance’ or ‘luck’ or coincidence’ is the circulation of life healing itself through us and in us.
-Mark Nepo/’The Book of Awakening’ pp. 626-263
- Do one thing at random today.
- Hold nothing back. Allow what touches you to change your path.
The planet’s acceleration phase.
August 9, 2017
AXIOS 8.9.17
It’s the big idea of Tom Friedman’s book last year about the “age of accelerations”: that Moore’s Law, about the rate of doubling in computer power, now applies to basically everything.
[…]
One afternoon in the fall of 2015, while I was writing this book, I was driving in my car and listening to SiriusXM Radio. On the folk music station the Coffee House, a song came on with a verse that directly spoke to me—so much so that I pulled off the road as soon as I could and wrote down the lyrics and the singer’s name. The song was called “The Eye,” and it’s written by the country-folk singer Brandi Carlile and her bandmate Tim Hanseroth and sung by Carlile. I wish it could play every time you open these pages, like a Hallmark birthday card, because it’s become the theme song of this book. The main refrain is: I wrapped your love around me like a chain But I never was afraid that it would die You can dance in a hurricane But only if you’re standing in the eye. I hope that it is clear by now that every day going forward we’re going to be asked to dance in a hurricane, set off by the accelerations in the Market, Mother Nature, and Moore’s law. Some politicians propose to build a wall against this hurricane. That is a fool’s errand. There is only one way to thrive now, and it’s by finding and creating your own eye. The eye of a hurricane moves, along with the storm. It draws energy from it, while creating a sanctuary of stability inside it. It is both dynamic and stable—and so must we be. We can’t escape these accelerations. We have to dive into them, take advantage of their energy and flows where possible, move with them, use them to learn faster, design smarter, and collaborate deeper—all so we can build our own eyes to anchor and propel ourselves and our families confidently forward.
Life’s mosaic.
I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity
Patience
Compassion
These three are your greatest treasures.
Lao Tzu
Typewriters, Tom Hanks, & Speaking Freely
August 7, 2017
[Sam Shepard]
C A L I F O R N I A T Y P E W R I T E R
“The revolution will typewritten.”
“The typewriter doesn’t judge you. It just goes, ‘Right away sir,'” singer, songwriter John Mayer.
[Rolling Stone]
In select theaters on Aug. 18th – – iTunes release in October.
“In the process, the film delivers a thought-provoking meditation on the changing dynamic between humans and machines, and encourages us to consider our own relationship with technology, old and new, as the digital age’s emphasis on speed and convenience redefines who’s serving whom, human or machine?”
Updated 11.13.17
STUIDO 1A
