Virtual March

I encourage you all to visit www.Globalwarming.org . So far we have almost 400,000 people

making a virtual march on Washington DC in an effort to prevent the destruction of our

planet.

Depersonalization

Has anyone else noticed that the media has now changed the way of reporting

men and women in the military? They used to call them men or men and women.

Now they call them Troops.   A troop is a man or a woman, it seems by the way its

used. i.e.  1000 troops desert, or 400 troops sent home etc.  That's how to make

distance so you don't feel it.......dehumanizing.  Same effect as not showing the

body bags when they come home or the funerals. In Santa Barbara, California they

have a memorial on the beach with crosses. Each week, the Veterans for Peace re-install

all the crosses of those who have died in Iraq, or is it just California deaths? 

Awakening

"Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness

behind it....Awareness takes over from thinking.  In stead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes

the servant of awareness...another word for it is presense: consciousnes without thought.

 

The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace.  You cannot make it happen nor can you prepare

yourself for it or accumulate credits toward it.  There isn't a tidy sequence of logical steps that leads toward it, 

although the mind would love that.  You don't have to become worthy first.  It may come to the sinner before it

comes to the saint, but not necessarily.  That's why Jesus associated with all kinds of people, not just the 

respectable ones.  There is nothing you can do about awakening.  Whatever you do will be the ego trying to add

awakening or enlightenment to itself as its most prized possession and thereby making itself more important

and bigger.  Instead of awakening, you add the concept of awakening to your mind, or the mental image of what an

awakened or enlightened person is like, and then try to live up to that image. 

 

Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living---another

unconscious role the ego plays."

                                                  Eckart Tolle

 

We are all one and part of the whole like a cell is to the human body. Is one cell more important than the other?

 

Vote for Women

Today I am thinking we would be well off to vote across the board for
women. In fact, I think no men should be allowed to participate in our
governance for two decades...from the President of the U.S. on down.
We would not get 100% changes in our violent , war mongering, but I
do believe we could get rid of the violence 85%. Most men seem to think
that killing and torture are cute or fun while a few think killing and torture
are necessary evils, but show me a man in public office that believes in
sacrifice of himself.

Sugar News

From a very long article in the current New Yorker by Burkhard Bilger, called The Search for Sweet...very worth reading:

" When Columbus introduced cane to the New World, sugar was an exotic luxury. Most Europeans had never eaten sugar.

By 1700, the Americas had become a vast sugar mill and the English were eating 4 lbs per person per year. By 1800,

they were eating 18 lbs; by 1900, 90 lbs. Last year , the average American consumed about 140 lbs per person per year....

50 % more than the Germans, or the French and 9 times as much as the Chinese."

 

Now special companies are finding blends with taste potentiators or chemicals. Stevia is the only natural sweetener that gives us fewer calories. All the rest are chemicals and potentiators,such as Saccharin, Sucralose (Splenda), Aspartame, Neotame, cyclamate and one I see frequently in combination, Acesulfame-K (K for potassium). If the quantities of the chemicals are small, they don't have to put it on the label. It will join the other "natural and artificial flavors." 

 

Do read the article if you are interested in the details of sugar and taste buds...sugar receptors. By the way, I thought it

interesting that receptors for salty and sour have not been found yet.

 

"Artificial sweeteners, far from diminishing our appetite for sugar, often seem to reinforce it."  I suppose we could go for

spicey, salty, tangy, or sour. I tend to crave sour more then sweet.

 

 

Addictions & Boiled Frogs

Looks like addictions to things like food, alcohol, drugs & tabacco are another example of the Boiled

Frog Syndrome.(see Aug.Archive) Gradually heating up the water is like gradually injuring your body

where the minute differences don't make a difference until  suddenly there is a turning point and you're

boiled frog .  One bite doesn't make obesity and eating daily doesn't make obesity, but there is a turning

point ,when you are hopelessly obese.  One drink doesn't kill your organs from alcohol, but the point

comes, after gradual increases, that you are boiled frog and cannot reverse the damage to your body. 

 

We humans have such a hard time.....just like the frogs....noticing , being conscious enough to see harm

when it comes in small doses over time.

 

Our real hope is to be who we really are....conscious, loving , caring, members of the human family.