Materialism isn't stuff - it is what matters.

Guardian article: Materialism: a system that eats us from the inside out
Buying more stuff is associated with depression, anxiety and broken relationships. It is socially destructive and self-destructive






What 'matters' to you?
If your answer is living for the approval and acceptance of 'others', then this materializes for you.
If sharing the honest joy in your very existence with others who share it with you matters - then you materialize this.

For many, the substitution of our self for a mask occurs in childhood and becomes fixed in adolescence. With grace we outgrow that enough to regain a true sense of value in our relationships - rather than reactively defining ourselves externally.

The mask is a deception and entrances us to a world of deceptions. Its a kind of dark magic that can on the one hand make you invisible when you don't want to be 'exposed', or can so corrupt the mind as to make it a slave to the lust for power over one's life, over others, over Life.

Doing what you want is what the mask aspires to - but it doesn't want YOU to take it off! Doing what you truly want is a deep self-honesty.

Presence is lost to pretence. Why keep up the charade? Because the mind of the mask was made to escape a lovelessness it could not cope with - and reopening those fears is unthinkable. This is where a little love goes a long way.

How to get off the rat race? Presence not pretence. What really matters is what we choose to value. Regardless of the past this is a new moment because we have the power to choose what we value anew.

The Prism on the dark side of the Net?

News of the US surveillance has set off a hubbub, and not surprisingly, because the issues of privacy and control, are so linked with that of honesty and trust.
I read the article and some comments, and then also commented not so much to the specific issue as to what it represents in the issues of consciousness and culture that give rise to the symptoms.

- - -

People are enjoying this it seems.  A wonderful opportunity to vent opinions and exercise imaginations. Never mind the actual issues lets vilify someone or spout doom - and above all, feel righteous!

Perhaps this attitude of making entertainment for personal gratification out of real social and political issues is why the 'mob' aspect seems to inspire those who feel to be in some expectation or responsibility for governance to resort to the advertising methods of mind control. However, the admen and the media and the Gov, are all so busy trying to manage perceptions that no one is attending to what is really going on.

Ideas that are accepted into our minds as to what we are and what life is for, will automatically go forth and multiply as policy and action and consequence. Trying to deal with things at the symptom level tends to obscure and dislocate problems into more convoluted proliferation that are not recognized as aspects of the original issue.

Honesty is linked with privacy in two ways. Honesty gives privacy to that which is peaceful and harmonious and doesn't interfere in what is not one's own business. It blesses such with gratitude.

Dishonesty demands privacy in which to operate. Hiding the lie is the 'mask' or false presentation in which one's true presence is usurped. This is now so ubiquitous that it is considered normal, natural and genetically dictated.

The mask goes hand in hand with 'getting something' at another's expense. This is now considered the normal and natural relationship between us - as if life was simply an opportunity for private personal gratifications that use and use up the resources of our spirit and our cultures and our world.

Writ large, the ego mentality - as I tend to call it - is played out by nations or rather governments - who are puppets to the financial and corporate forces of our times - for we are dependent on the kind of economy that... keeps us dependent and processes existences as if they were to be programmed - a description which to a large degree we conform to.

True presence is not programmed reaction, does not assert or demand control, but opens and extends communication - and invites the growing of trust and creative relationship in true educative collaboration.

Now the expression of creative relationship will not fit into the controller's range of vision and so along with the extremists, will be marked those who do not support the modality of control in passive conformity (which includes the styles and fashions of the presentation of non conformity).

Waking up is not becoming Chicken Licken, but is bring curiosity and enquiry to the very foundations of our consciousness so as to regain a grounded perspective of true presence from which we live and communicate and relate. There are such riches that we deny ourself in the mentality of guilt, fear and coercive manipulation!

Cutting the support for the arts to only those that make money!

A forest fire allows new shoots to grow.

Art is part of being but has been separated off as if an 'add-on'. A meaningless existence then makes its meaning as acquisition of things including wealth and power or materialism, which curiously doesn't -value the material, but only what can be got out of it for private or personal gain.

To reconnect with our wholeness - with our Soul - might be served in part by the arts, but if they are themselves subverted by the economy stupid, then they become tools of medication for the suppression and control of symptoms, like a kind of lubricant to allows what shouldnt be tolerated, to be tolerable.

Economy needs radical change in its foundations - which are the ideas we have set in stone and yet are ideas none the less.

Art needs also to get in touch with its roots - so as to communicate something of a wholeness of being rather than merely reflect the disease of our times.

I hold that art is of the verb 'to be'. Thou art Creativity in Heaven - but in artifice you are indebted to the deceiver!

I don't see a shift coming that will restore the pockets of a Prodigal Wastrel - but in the turning towards truth and wholeness of being, we will find we are fulfilled and share in that fulfilment. This is the art of living; a shared sense of what it is to be truly alive - and it expresses in infinite ways that are organically alive and not as an engineered society.

Does it need money to tell a story, to share a poem, to sing a song, to paint a picture or create a sculpture? Yes, sometimes. But mostly it needs inspiration, and the willingness to hang in there with it to its fulfilment.

We live in a rather monocultured society where we are increasingly managed and conformed to the mentality of control. Even rebellion has been commoditized. Is it any wonder it is bankrupt?

Our Father,

Who ART in Heaven,

Holy and Whole is your Nature.

Let it come into our own for we would remember

what we always forget,

when we make a different mind our own.

As if to use a Living Inheritance

to line our personal pockets,

until the bubble bursts.

Let forgiveness replace grievance

Your creative freedom rises

in works that speak of Life

to Life.

Let us not worship a forged copy of a life

that promises much yet only robs our Soul,

but let rip - so to speak

the cat of curiosity from the bag

of 'Thou Shalt Not!'

For what love would have us be

needs not authority of dead gods,

but the wellspring of Life ever anew.

The investment needs to be in the truly Life-affirming, whether in the arts or in economic activity.

Because you love, are impassioned, are moved, and transformed in the giving - not for pieces of silver.

But because shared value is uncovering of what we are in a world that tends to cover it over or squelch it.


(Written into Culture secretary Maria Miller to make 'economic case' to stave off further arts cuts)

Ideas worth 'spreading'

I just noticed the TED branding and felt to also note that Mind shares or extends what it accepts, and thus gives as it receives. What you accept into you mind is validated in you by sharing it.
There is a deep level of this that cant easily be talked of - but all our actions and words are expressing or extending the ideas that we have accepted as our self and indeed our reality - and so we teach what we are... to ourselves - and each other. But what we learn is not forced upon us for we are free to accept what is in our minds, as it is - or as it is presented.
That is to say a conditioning can be observed and disregarded such as to accept a fresh appreciation of reality - and live out from there.
The undiscerning acceptance into our minds of thoughts and intentions and stories that undermine our integrity and our peace - perhaps for some short moment of personal thrill or satisfaction, or to maintain an imaginary facade we wish was true - leads to the undermining of true communication and culture.

Ideas worth sharing are not only the articulation of thinking that inspires or awakens a sense of life's value in wonder and appreciation - but the ideas that we live out from as our current sense of value.

The seeking of control over communication is part of the mentality of the wish to be special. We all can readily observe this in our own consciousness. Yet the valuing of the conditions in which true communication can occur is the willingness to enter into communication open-minded, listening attentive and in an extension of trust and shared value.

The egoic mind is reactive and obfuscates such as to disconnect or introduce distraction or noise - yet a persistence in listening will uncover our own resonances to such and enable us to move free of them in ourself - and thus be more aware and discerning and less easily baited or provoked.

Ideas worthy of sharing are those that share value rather than seek to own or control it; giving as we would ourselves receive.

The attempt to make the unknown known

I watched a very short TED on 'why x is the unknown?' and then read or skimmed most of 262 comments. Because I felt prompted to do so in a way I have learned to trust.

You may not want to watch the talk or read the comments but the gist relates to Arabic culture and its translation to European culture. The comments bring in a wide swathe of corrections, rebuttals, counter claims and a plethora of tangents that - in itself - offers a thumbnail example of human communication - of the human mentality or mind.

- - -

A short video talk, he believes he knows what he shares and is enjoying himself in humorous and relaxed ways. This seems to mean something and then I read 262 comments...
Where to find a ground in the flux of asserted facts and personal assertiveness?
Intelligence has agencies of expression, but these have their own agenda. Somewhere in the static is a signal?
How does the mind access intelligence? So many levels; so many branches and tangents. Is the purpose of the static, the intent to enjoy the personal sense? Pride. As if a competition to have the glory or to have the glory of being the one who knows or tells.

Intelligence itself is the glory! And the personal sense is a sport that can never come to rest because asserted action implicitly brings reaction. Yet despite or perhaps because of this dance of polarities in apparent conflict - intelligence grows channels of revelation; uncovering of its nature to Itself through its agencies - and this is Good - insofar as it is the moment of unalloyed appreciation free of conflicting self adulterations. The pride of man may take such inspiration as his own work and there you have the fuel for another game of war, under whatever names and forms.
In its curiosity, the mind is guided. This may be the filtering program of beliefs and conditioning - or it may be the discernment of an unfolding joy.
Following the mind that already thinks it knows, must limit and colour the result for what is sought is in effect already defined. To notice that one does not know, allows a shift from the existing definitions to an appreciation of a fresh perspective, in which one could say, one sees in a new light.
One may not have a capacity to communicate this conceptually, for there is an element of 'living God' that refers to the undefinable presence of Intelligence - of which one cannot separate out from in order to objectify or compare.
The attempt to make the unknown known is the attempt to define a reality Whose Nature is Self-Revealing

Computer interface, cultural values and conditioning?

I responded to Wired.com's article:
Why Apple (and You) Might Miss Scott Forstall
I see it as an opportunity to talk about the almost invisible layer of architecture and conditioning that communicates and inculcates cultural values - or indeed the lack thereof! So this isn't just about Mac - but a perspective on the extension of our mind - into virtual digital realities.


~ ~ ~


Without making this a personality thing, I feel this article is missing the trend in computing that has largely abandoned an educated responsible user interface and opted for a dumber, entertaining, utility front end. There are all sorts of issues in this that are very worthy of discussion and acknowledgement but 'news' itself has also succumbed to the same template approach of dumbed and entertaining fodder.

Issues of control and communication are fundamental to a user interface.
There is a lot more at stake and involved than consumer edification in all of this for it is symptomatic of the prevailing culture or mentality of our times.
Computing has in a very short time, become a layer of both environment and an enabler and a lens of communication and function.
There are lots of things about the mind that are 'invisible' to those who simply 'use' or identify at the front end or surface. This is also true of the digital network - which is an extension of our lower mind.
I say lower because, the conscious qualities of a living presence - such as insight, discernment, recognition, honour and gratitude,  transcend and precede the programmed and programming mind.

We collectively have drifted into identifying ever more deeply with 'control mind' - and are losing the call and the culture of our truly Conscious being.
That which identifies control as safety, order and a self justified specialness of self, is blind to the truly Conscious and only sees it insofar as it can exploit it.
Meeting in shared purpose is very different from forcing outcomes. The quality of trust is extended and embodied.

Our architecture reflects our values - as does all that we embody. But it also inculcates those values as a subliminal conditioning.

Billions of us are spending a lot of time in this new 'environment' (regardless of the particular brand). I call for a conscious discernment as to the choices that collectively we are each and all making - because what we make tends to make us in its own image.

To sell a virtual world as a distraction for a desecration of our living relationship, (the Life), may provide meds against despair and chaos - but it takes another step away and ultimately only delays addressing and correcting the core issues that set up the experience of conflict, distrust, dissonance and dis-ease.

I was drawn to the Mac in the 90s in part because I felt a machine being fitted to Man rather than man being fitted to the machine. And in a way that made the machine more 'human-friendly' and creatively fun and less clunky, ugly and conformed to corporate business edicts. But that core principle was abandoned with Mac OSX - or at least adulterated and compromised to a marketing mentality. (And there are historical reasons which account for why).

The blindness leading up to the financial collapse is as nothing to the blindness of our passive acceptance of the cultural developments of our time. It is not as a conspiracy theorist or doomsdayer that I write - but simply in witness for a Conscious appreciation of the Life that we share (whether we like it or know it or not), and in a desire to wake up (from a dead end) to a life more abundant.

Its not just a product, its not just an operating system. It is mind expressing itself - consciously or unconsciously; wisely or chaotically.
Much that seems wise for the short term reaps a bitter harvest. We have to do more than think-react. (Or should I say less? Yes we have to calm down a bit, connect with our being and feel more).

Sir Jonathan Ive: Interview

There are a lot of important points here that transcend the particulars of Jony or Apple.

To uncover or discern an inspirational movement - no matter how fragile it may seem 'in the world', and to hold faith and focus with it  - is to allow ourselves to be guided from what otherwise could be summarized as a faithlessness or blind template approach to life.

I also had a really strong sense of the makers of the Mac when I first used it - as a tangible relationship. This 'should' be the natural or normal 'sharing' of culture, for we are in what we make and do. But when we make without any real relationship, our making and doing is devoid of 'soul' - even if it still functions on the level of base utility.

What we need is to re awaken to the need to GIVE of ourselves truly in what we make and do. This is the key to an innate happiness and harmony of being because it is in an expression of Value - that we share value - whereas in the attempt to GET something without Giving our all, is the cheapening of ourselves to fall asleep in disconnected appetites.

There is nothing sacrificial about doing what you love and loving what you do - but there is everything sacrificial in following and identifying with an old thinking that effectively disqualifies bringing full attention present now - and living out from a sense of shared worth in shared life.

To uncover true worth is to remember the true basis for culture. Value cannot be defined and then have definitions substitute for the actual passion and presence of living.

A bankruptcy of culture is simply a collective willingness to be stuck in definition. The guidance and inspiration that is Life, has to be discerned and nurtured. We each have individualised paths - but the principle is Universal - and when that is given embodiment, it speaks at a level below the radar of the mind-in-definition. One could say that Life knows itself through embodiment - and we can feel it as qualities of an integrity or harmony of form and function.

Implicate design is uncoverable as an expression of  essence in relational wholeness. The reduction of essence to defined forms of design elements is the blindness of the wish to make all things validate our own image; a prodigal waste.

But what gets covered over or discarded remains un-coverable to an honesty of desire. Apple operates within a market based on manipulation of fear and lust. There is always room for improvement - for going out beyond the definitions that make hidden but inherent contradictions which result in dis-integration of purpose and value-stripping in place of value-sharing.

Thank you for your attention.

On Top of the World: Why the West’s present dominance is both recent and temporary

An Economist article on a new book:
Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. By Ian Morris. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 750 pages; $35. To be published in Britain by Profile in November; £25.


This isn't my attempt to convince or assert - but an essay of response from the way I have come to see human experience and history.

Human consciousness has many facets that are yet of one mind - acted out as is they are separate.
Where are they acted out? In the world.
Where are they one mind - in the non-local or universal consciousness.
How does this relate to the topic?
Because the mentality of dominance and control is itself a play of action and reaction in which force, and reaction make density in which identities are forged, that then play out as if they themselves are the real or true active principle; the agent of change; the free will.
This is so at a collective level as on an individual level.

The notion of dominance is supported by a set of values that must be shared by all players. It is so that core values such as equating true Identity exclusively with the physical - and its presentation - are almost completely unquestioned in the world - because the focus of attention and identification of human consciousness is almost totally engaged and active within 'the world'.

But the 'war' of man upon his brother is the same 'war' he wages on Reality. Upon his Greater Environment. These 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse' are the inevitable result of a misidentification and willfulness that seeks to triumph over, rather than dance or flow or cooperate with.

The Prodigal Son's Inheritance was wasted in a world that ground him down and left him homeless and destitute - but Its Source is an unseparated Consciousness.

The play of a seemingly independent will, in a reality seemingly different or other to it's mind - and largely threatening or hostile to it, sets up a patterns of self-protection and self-serving that can be observed as an identity - that then expresses as a culture. Observed not via the partiality of thinking that merely expresses such a presumption - but observed directly in oneself - for the nature of our awareness itself is a local experience of a Universal Mind - of which we in truth can not separate ourselves - but only forget - and experience as if separated.

So I seek to sketch here some ideas that posit the Greater Mind - if you will - as the primary or native Environment of all human experience and endeavor. History is a working out of idea and experience - but the level on which such a self-educative process actualizes itself is upstream of man's thinking - though when belief and experience change, new insight arises with it.

The idea of dominance - of triumph, is destructive in that it separates from and uses 'the other' as a testimony to the validity of one's own self-made identity or self-will. Written globally, this is out-picturing an insanity.

The opportunity of such times is an awakening to the true nature of our experience - as the effect of the values, thoughts, beliefs and intentions that are currently accepted true - in the greater mind that we all share, knowingly or unknowingly.

Whatever 'life' is - we are in it together. As I give to you - I set up the value that I will myself be done by. Having tried to dominate - I find myself subjected to. Eventually it becomes obvious; I hurt but myself and teach hurt to others who would learn it. What kind of culture arises from the realisation that this is not my will - and allowing a fresh appreciation to rise and become active instead?
Thanks for your attention.

Your Country needs you!

It is so that politicians refer to truths.
Your society - your larger culture - your country DOES need you.
Because without your sense of value manifested among your fellowman - there is a vacuum that is filled by whatever happens to take its place.
This remains true always - because a society where everyone drifts into automatic tramlines of habitual reaction is not creative, nor inspirational or even wisely practical.
Crisis are opportunities to wake up and rededicate or realign ourselves with a current sense of value.
Even though there is a long history of difference, distrust and even enmity between many strands of society, there is a need or a call to not indulge ouselves of our personal reactions and pause and look for willingness to find ways together.
Regaining trust is not about placing trust in others - so much as finding it in our own hearts and extending it to others in a way that is an ongoing communication.

If this coalition fails to answer the need of our times then it will fail altogether - but the need remains to be addressed. It is much deeper and bigger than the slavery that the deficit debt MUST entail.
The ideas of the last century belong there. The new ideas are not going to arise from the old mind. What is a new mind? One that comes from a shift or change of heart.
There are seeds of truth in all sorts of things we reject because we are so attached to being right - and then 'loving to hate' that which we see as enemy or use as scapegoat.
Blame is the shit everyone tries to put on someone else - but only when they stand in the same shit. We ALL were party to the near bankruptcy of our culture in some measure. Rather than try to deal in blame - which always recycles itself when given attention - lets shift to response - ability.
What if no one else does? - Then so what!  A world in which your presence is felt and known is one in which we can meet and share appreciation for who and what we are.
But my sense of becoming active is not from an ideological mask - but from the heart. Take walks in nature. Get out of the routine headspace. Let stillness and wonder into your life. Find new eyes to meet the moment. Its a wake up call.

A fresh perspective is called for

Posted by me to How far should the NHS support homeopathy? 

 

No more or less than any other health care service if it is found to be effective in practice.

A great deal of scientifically provable medical intervention is provably dangerous - often to society as a whole and not just the patient. It is also based on a model of invasive interventions to deal with the removal or suppression of symptoms and does not have a true or positive regard for health. Within such a culture the use of homeopathy is less effective because it is not the same order of intervention as a manually applied chemical force. It idealy promotes a response of the life energetic of the 'patient' such that the movement of health restores the psycho-physical organism to be aligned with life-expression rather than with siege of complex layers of psycho-emotional logjam.
It is my sense that the 'complex layers of psycho-emotional logjam' is of a wilful ignorance - an ego defence mechanism.
We (generally) do not accept responsibility for our thought and instead seek to indulge and exploit our self, world, each other - as if that were sane. This has a real cost as it undermines health of mind, body, culture and environment - and the ingenuity of man is set on finding ways to mask, mitigate and lubricate the continued suffering arising from living against the grain of our essential nature.
The NHS could be renamed the NSS - because it increasingly focuses on managing sickness. I write here to suggest that fresh approaches must begin with a discovery and appreciation of health - as a positive tangible spirit - with similarly tangible fruits. Perhaps one of the most beautiful of which is restored trust. You cant tell this to a thief and be believed. But breakdown of trust is the breakdown of the integrity of communication. This applies at all levels. The arrogance that would make of life a mechanism to require manual control by man - for his own selfish agendas - is delusional. How far this goes before the bubble bursts is anyone's guess.
Suppressing life force is not a long term proposition - no matter how well it is presented as protection and rationality. The NHS needs a framework of thought that allows a practical love - to be given its rightful authority.

Love is not a lab rat. Therefore it either doesn't exist or - is illusion. (sic)
Consumers are lab rats, and are just as manipulatable in terms of the 'industry' of sickness as of any other 'service'. We are in relationship - and need to live from and within relationship. This is not a contract or pre targeted - it is a dance in which life reveals itself whole.

Meanwhile, use whatever common sense works. until something better replaces it. The idiocy of 'new ideas' ignorantly applied is as wasteful as old ideas kept past their sell by date.

Before acting, pause and feel a sense of sanity in which wisdom can arise

Before acting, pause and feel a sense of sanity in which wisdom can arise

A comment I posted on Independent website article : China 'set to produce more legal highs'

When are we going to become honest about the nature of our human consciousness - and educate ourselves past the knee jerk attempts to self righteously make evils that we can then present ourselves in opposition to?
If there are evils, they need to be understood at their root and not scapegoated and thus only superficially remedied while deeper ills grow in the dark.
Where are those who can speak with authority about the nature of the human beliefs and motives that are involved in using externally applied chemistry of any kind to enhance or prop up or lubricate an otherwise grey or lacklustre life? We are generally addicted to technology in communications and transport and tools of one kind or another but taboo the exploring and experiencing of perception and experience using externals.
If it is true that millions take these 'recreational' drugs and generally feel ok to use them or decide to stop using them if they find it becomes a negative - then their sense of a Government that is at all in touch with their world is undermined. Underneath all of our societal ills is that we tend to hypocrisy. The young may still have a sense that there is a lot more to life than is 'allowed' - but the general media and advertising propaganda promotes selfish-getting or becoming self-agrandized. The insecurities that politicians, corporations, marketeers and our own self illusion seeks to manipulate could be equated with a sense of a hole in our lives that we have to fill or cover over. Its a deeply charged and difficult arena to navigate through, but the alternative to conscious living is a life driven by external forces that have their counterpart in a sense of lack kept hidden within.
Meanwhile we expect our young to play the roles we assign them in a culture we have co-created. Drug use in a 'subculture' of reaction is not an answer, though it can be a stepping stone for some. But it is a symptom.
The scientific mind is often blinkered in specialisms - along with a dehumanized mental perspective - but one doesn't have to look to far to see that this isn't about young or old ravers or drugtakers. It is about us.