From Plunder to Wonder

Production Versus Plunder
By Paul Rosenberg



Paul Rosenberg has been publishing his book Production and Plunder in instalments on the Daily Bell. Historical perspectives can be revised in the light of seeing them in terms of unfolding idea rather than 'kings and wars. I haven't written below in direct relation to the article - but to some of the presumptions inherent in his current perspective - that are part of the framework of seeing production and plunder as different rather than polarised aspects of a framework of  thought.

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A common cause creates a focal point. Any focal point becomes an identification. Identification can become egocentric - such as to define its own existence in terms of surviving or prevailing for its own sake - rather than as an expression of living cause. This is identity in power for its own sake - which is not actually power - or it would not have to struggle by force and deceit to attain or maintain itself as 'power' to all that it then interprets as threat to itself and likewise driven by force and deceit.
See power outside in external terms, usurps the power innate in serving and aligning true cause - which includes the power to relax, release and move on - rather than mutate the idea of 'Klingons'.
Fear of death is part and parcel of fear of Life and one cannot be and align and share from an identification within fear, and so perception and communication is distorted and devalued to serve and reinforce fixed identities amidst the flux of Life - as if that is defacto true, rather than a self-conditioned point along a learning curve.
Organic life reveals itself to us as always more complex yet integrated as a system of a unified stability through or as  its diversity - for everything plays a part in everything else on some level and in some degree. That is, there are infinite focal points of consciousness embracing what seem to be discrete and different forms. The mentality of science has a very strong but disguised component of mapping in order to command and control - which is the worship of power for its own sake - but via the deceit of serving humanity - for the very nature of a manipulative intent, is to operate within and as part of the vibrational nature of such intent and thus become a target for subversion and usurpation by whatever elements of negative agenda are attracted to neutralize it if threat and gain influence over it as extension of leverage.
Human life, shares an intersection with organic life - as well as with the vibrational communication of an energetic nature that informs and manifests all forms of correspondence - of attractions and alignments and synchronicities. But it also operates within or through a virtual reality or model of its own conditioned experience which is in a sense the world as is mutually defined and agreed to exist, and this model is on the one hand arrogantly presuming to prevail over and manually control organic life - whilst being completely ignorant of vibrational life - for want of a better term.
There is a phrase in Buddhism called "entering the stream" that relates to awakening - and I use this term to indicate the shift from fixed mental constructs of a polarized and defended sense of self, to a flowing and always changing movement of being in which a discernment of what is actually present in any current moment - which of course is always this one - or one's presence - as the consciousness that embraces and includes all that arises within it - in all its apparent diversity and perhaps seeming chaos - so as to recognize and align in what is truly resonant and relevant to who you - as an integral facet of that expression - know and accept and in that sense believe or decide yourself to be. It is called "entering the stream" because it is not stabilized or consciously integrated within the Flow or Movement of being, which cannot occur while trying to push the river and finding oneself drowning or bouncing off rocks, and so one recognizes the call to release the fixed and rigid sense of control - which is to yield up the self-will that would otherwise persist after the focus of attention has fulfilled itself. For true will is not coercive upon, but creatively revealed or uncovered within the flow or communication of event.
Each of us and all of all together are in the classroom of Humanity in which a curriculum have been generated that unfolds both an individual and collective experience of far greater richness than what the virtual self in its 'matrix reality' can conceive or imagine as the embodiment of a fixed and exclusive identity within power struggle that exclusion and rigidity generate as if in opposition to being subsumed by a Life that is now seen as 'other' or threat - for it is the idea of a private unshared or withheld 'mind'.
Production is in truth the activity of Life - whether in growing food, or the growing and crafting of needs met. But it is not conceived as 'production', because one is part of and not apart from Life. The Giver of Life is evident in all that sustains and serves our individual and collective need - and I mean our need in the sense of serving our true Humanity and not an intellectual analysis of material needs.
'Plunder' is the mentality that wishes and presumes to lord it over Life as a power unto itself - and this focusses through the divisive analytical substitution of a model of Life or an image of Life for the Intimacy and richness of the Felt Connection. The Mother/Child wholeness is overridden by a 'changed and divorced nature' that inherently fears and despises Nature and 'sees' it and therefore others - as plunder. As assets to be attained or stripped and used and evaporated.
A focal point of negatively operating identity operates as an abundance of lack - because the nature of Consciousness is to magnify and embody whatever is given focus. re-awakening Consciousness responsibility is the release of a negative or self defeating identification to what seems a void of 'not knowing' - but that is exactly the condition in which a spontaneous appreciation of a direct awareness rises within us as the living focus of our attention and desire. A transitional shift from plunder to wonder is not a persistence of wilfulness so much as a willingness to give up what doesn't work in willingness to be uncovered in what is working. One cannot change what one has not first owned. The 'plunder' mentality needs to be observed to be released but the blame and shame of secrecy and deceit in fear and manipulative guilt forbids such clear awareness. It is never to late to be on time.

By Paul Rosenberg

Crazy Man

I enjoyed reading and interview with: George Burdeau on the Magna Carta, Subsistence Culture and the Future of Western Civilization - at the Daily Bell.



With regard to a phrase used in the commentary on the interview:
"How societies should be organized" is symptomatic of the lack or problem based consciousness. I would say that how societies choose to organize themselves is free of the idea of an external coercion working upon a defined lack.

With regard to the roots of the craziness in the 'white man' that has spread across the earth:

The sense of disconnection from Life (with a big L) is a foundational aspect of the 'white man's sickness'. Even though he might try to devise or imagine systems of asserted or imposed unity upon his psyche, and his world, they express the same root fear.

Unconscious fear belies our conscious waking experience, as which we imagine ourselves to be a segregated, private, separate organism or power unto our self - amidst a perceived conflicting competition of powers and adversities. That is we identify ourselves over and against our experience and seek to prevail and have dominion over our world such that it witnesses to our glory/achievement/importance.

This capacity of psychic disconnection from Life was developed over millennia - as a tool of exploration of experience. It can be seen in terms of many layered multifaceted psychological defence mechanisms. In this sense human consciousness/society is insane.

But the disconnection from Life is not actual, regardless the intensity of the experience of disconnection. There is a reintegration to true alignment and is exemplified by  George's willingness in acting on and following his excitement, passion and joy in life. This is the key to resonance. If one does not act from felt-connection one reinforces the disconnect.


#2
I feel the phrase "White man" had a particular currency for the Native peoples with regard to predominantly European settlers - but is  more applicable to a cultural mentality than colour. To a mentality that is a stranger to itself, its world and its true relations and that seeks to redefine all things unto its own (self) image. This mental sickness was noted as distinct from simply operating racism in return.

I feel that mental sickness is the true nature of the problem and that attempts to coerce life arise from such fear and confusion. The concept of personhood itself has been disconnected from its functionality - as if the self-concept itself redefines its function. As if the mind redefines what mind actually is and operates as if such asserted beliefs are true and defends them with (and as) its 'life'.

Corporations are ego writ large upon the world.

Laws held some degree of order and limited behaviours acting against the interest of others or the whole but themselves became a vehicle of controlling others and disregarding wholeness.

Systems intending a fair and practical lawful transaction become corrupted to enact the power that pretends to legitimacy but is hateful in secret.

If everyone and everything is essentially here for you to get from, then there is no relationship, only strategy. Instead of sharing a blessing by extending the value of Life in the communications of meeting, there is 'gathering data'. Such a mind is fearfully programmed in a way that could be called 'mind control'.

Note that the mind is a channel of communication and experience, and the term mind-control is an oxymoron.

Yet in the currency of meanings and definitions that program our perception-experience, control not only feels real, it feels our most treasured possession - that is unless we re-integrate consciousness to Itself and relinquish the illusion of power in order to creatively engage the power of illusion.

If we choose to operate from a sense of self that makes us the enemy of Life, then that is the experience we have chosen to have. We may not set it in such terms, but if our personal or cultural self-specialness is worshipped above all else UPON the rejection of the other, then that is the idea we invest in - no matter how much obfuscating justifiction is summoned to its aid.

(I'm writing into the consideration of ideas raised here and not specifically addressing you. Your links all merely reopened this page).

George Burdeau on the Magna Carta, Subsistence Culture and the Future of Western Civilization - See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/35094/Anthony-Wile-George-Burdeau-on-the-Magna-Carta-Subsistence-Culture-and-the-Future-of-Western-Civilization/#sthash.HxmY0aXz.dpuf

George Burdeau on the Magna Carta, Subsistence Culture and the Future of Western Civilization - See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/35094/Anthony-Wile-George-Burdeau-on-the-Magna-Carta-Subsistence-Culture-and-the-Future-of-Western-Civilization/#sthash.HxmY0aXz.dpuf

George Burdeau on the Magna Carta, Subsistence Culture and the Future of Western Civilization - See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/35094/Anthony-Wile-George-Burdeau-on-the-Magna-Carta-Subsistence-Culture-and-the-Future-of-Western-Civilization/#sthash.HxmY0aXz.dpuf

Negative cooperations of disconnecting minds

For the context to which I respond here's the article and comment page in the Daily Bell

On the cooperations that reinforce a negatively defined self:

Likewise ideas of "moral codes" can be subverted to social definitions of accepted behaviours, and guilt employed to coerce deviation to get into line or suffer penalty.

I feel this as a 'reverse engineering' of Life, that usurps or subverts the pure spontaneity of life with self-consciousness, self-doubt, as the development of the divided self that seems to be able to pause life or step outside it in order to experience all kinds of facets within what is actually instant forever - or timeless Infinitude that embraces both specific AND universal polarity within itself.

This self we humanly identify is not both, and... but tends to focus exclusively in the specific and be unconscious of the communion with the Infinite.

Insofar as that quality of connection/communication is held culturally and individually, it has tended to create rules to check and limit and correct the mentality that actively disconnects and yet keep it as it were hidden in the background, because it is associated with power.

This love/hate alloy is the nature of the human consciousness in its separation beliefs and definitions. The structures that we create in consciousness - that model our reality, express this 'house divided' against itself, so much so that the 'human condition' is accepted reality instead of recognizing it as the human conditioning!

The principle aspect of disconnection is a loss - and subsequent fear, of intimacy of being. For disconnection is the seeming power to have private thoughts and hidden mind, and from this seeming power a world arises that is no longer Recognizable in Consciousness - but chaotically conflicted through the filters and distortions of a split mind.

What arises from this is the joining in tacit mutual agreement NOT to join as an intimate connectedness, but to develop the FORMS of joining WITHOUT the actual meeting. The mind is thus structured to keep out that which threatens the order that it dictates and asserts via any available workable strategy that works to defend it. The cooperation of such minds can achieve all kinds of control over the forms and behaviours but none over the underlying reality. Eventually it runs out of ways to present and package itself - and so disintegrates. In the microcycles, this occurs all the time but in the larger periodic cycle of an epoch, it comes to an 'end' that reveals what Is beneath the beginning and Is after the end. This might be seen as a repeat class in the responsibility for self creation or a shift to a new perspective from which to share and appreciate life.

If we are not already invested in being the shift, we will not even see the bus... let alone catch it. However, what you want will determine your outcome, so there is no coercion involved - although it may seem so to the mentality that values coercion as hidden or private leverage over life and self and others.

The impermanence of all things can be used to justify asset stripping as much as you can before you die, as it can be used for an ever new opportunity to extend and share the core value that is our joy to be living. The 'selfishness' of fear rises from a false investment. If that is owned, one can use fear as the messenger that reveals it as something out of true - which can then be seen and undone, rather than blindly suffered.
Because we have such investments we fear to lose, yet no one really lives their joy in the shadow or undercurrent of fear. It is wise to honour our existing belief systems, for while they operate as our support  it is foolish to abandon them. But a process of curiosity and discovery uncovers alternate pathways and experiences, and of course this is already going on, naturally.


On condemning selfishness or doing for others:

To reveal selfishness as a deceptive reaction that acts against ones true interests is to join with the sanity hiding beneath the limited presentation. Sometimes a pause invites a greater perspective and we choose from a more connected place.

On the other hand, in the conspiracy of selfishness, anyone who stands in their natural authority will tend to be perceived as 'selfish' because the society redefines its own version of reality and enforces it.

Natural authority doesn't 'lord it' over anyone, nor does it give power to deceits and dead concepts, or stone gods.

I sort of agree with your last sentence - but I express value to hold and have that value by expressing it. So in that sense it is selfish of me and simply offered with no strings for others to resonate with... or not.

if everyone were to grow a culture of being who they enjoy being - and doing and allowing relationships to align and reflect that, then no organising and controlling externality is called upon or required.  In practice we cannot stray from our true desire without feeling the loss of joy - and forcing through doesn't force it back. Pretending there is no such thing only covers a hollow place. When we've tried everything that doesn't work... we have got ourselves in place for what does.

Systems failure awakens responsibility

At the Daily Bell, there are articles and conversations that challenge many aspects of the apparently dominant economic and political orthodoxy.

As always, I feel it impossible to constructively comment within the frameworks that are accepted 'reality', yet the convergence of the global changes occurring with a rewakening Consciousness is my appreciation, and so I an commenting a witness to such perspective into the attention there.

The attempts to control, answer or indeed manage the world, are part of the problem. What is called for is a re-wakening Consciousness - as the basis from which to live. What I am calling 'Consciousness responsibility'.

What Scientology tells us about religion?

Beliefs and identities. Who is free of them?
Human thinking, deceptions, self illusions, who is free of it?
Arriving at truth results not in a definition so much as an honesty of communication.
The mind at war within itself is compulsive in its thinking and believes its experience is real.
The mind of a private self-interest seeks to gain a manipulative power over others (outsiders) via shaping their thinking, and application of positive and negative incentives. It can use whatever is in your mind to shape you and its finesse is when it can do so and leave you feeling free. It can use even the highest truths in such a way as to validate Itself - over and against the others or outsiders.

Now am I describing the devil?, Religious organisations? Corporations? Politicians? Local communities? Families? Your own mind?

Fear manipulates. It may be 'unconscious' by virtue of its self justification system - whether that calls on religious or any other set of beliefs, shared definitions and accepted values.
It can manipulate by living a mask and masks can interact and enter contracts of relationship to make a cult of two - and keep the outsider our and the presentation intact. But in the process, masks disintegrate.

The disintegration of identity is not something one can get a handle on and manipulate (for that is merely rebranding or shifting 'toxic elements' into a new wrapping. We might label it as a breakdown, it may have mental, emotional and physical symptoms. But it is an experiential learning - not of mere ideas or techniques - but of an integrative process of wholeness. If anyone who is no longer able to keep up with maintaining their mask  to the world - or even to themself, then they are in need of a new basis and direction of self - because the old one was a very ingenious mask by which to evade a true intimacy yet appear to connect and relate in limited - and limiting ways.
Until there is some awakening beneath and beyond the mask, defence is fully active almost all the time. Coping in a lovelessness is not our natural being, it has to be coped with by making a self - a mask. And in times when the mask is weak, we are eager to strengthen it - and so are open to suggestion as well as to inspiration.

Religion can offer a framework that reflects the pattern and the process of our mind, which is not what we think - though we use our thought to defend our will against all comers. A will to prevail. But there is also within us a desire to know and be known; a desire to feel and share love.

The belief in the mind as an independent authoritative power reflects in attitudes of control, manipulation and deception. One might smile to disarm and actually believe one was being kind rather than fearful.

So what is the basis of real relationship? Of an integrity of thought word and deed, and an honouring of the other as oneself?
What is the nature of awareness itself - that feels like a field in which all that is felt or thought, sensed or experienced arises and passes away. I am 56 and it has never changed one jot - though the dramas of the world have often covered it so as to 'live' in a virtual life that never touches the ground of simply here and now.

What is the term religion originally signified might be 'reconnect', what tends to happen is making identity of external association, in which true connection is replaced by forms (or ritual or belief or observance etc).
This is as much a reflection of human consciousness as anything to do with religion as such.

As with many things in the world, there are tares among the wheat - and to pull out the tares will damage the crop. But in a life lived consciously, there is a natural sorting out of what is undermining of our fulfilment and what is truly fulfilling.

A relationship in which trust can be grown and sharing life in ways that are love rather than attempts to 'do' love is a gift to our children. For it is not what we say that teaches, but what we demonstrate or embody.

If the world mask (mind) is disintegrating as I feel it is - then the Soil is changing and the old plants (ideas and beliefs) will wither. To discern the new means paying attention in trust and willingness - why? because fear distorts vision and wilfulness reacts instead of listening first.

Listening in its deeper sense, is passing by reaction and discerning truth in ourself in relation to whatever situation we are in. That doesn't mean we can define what we find - but it does mean we can move from a sense that resonates as truly helpful, and willing to stay listening while we relate or act.

Whatever transpires for the couple and their child, I trust they find a better - more honouring communication in their separation and that their child feels listened to and valued by them both.
In war, truth is the first casualty. A true innocence of being is not in the mask - but the spontaneity of an unselfconscious awareness.

You cant buy or sell this or attain it by will - but it can be made welcome - by any name or no name. It isn't for using in the world of the mask - but you can let it use that to grow and communicate itself in a shared welcome - such as is freely willing.

Everything is up for change and what draws me is the opportunity for a wholly integrated culture of heart and mind; something that comes from being honest with ourselves in a deeper way than we yet imagine - and the bonds of love and trust that are found in such a commitment (across seeming differences of culture and background).

A manipulative intent doesn't work - whatever the system that hosts it.

Happiness Is?

True happiness is allowed by not letting the activity of thinking block the flow of a shared sense of life.

Happiness is innate to a direct experience of Being - a present directly felt living appreciation.

Humanly we associate external conditions with a conditional sense of our self - a learned sense of self - and this becomes a set of demands that traps the mind until it awakens to the 'currently running program' and reevaluates its own premise from a fresh perspective. This can never arise from manipulating data based on the old program, though of course such rebranding or reshuffle of the same old basis - can seem to buy a management solution - such as attempting to be rationally 'happy' within a fundamental unhappiness. But unhappiness is a hurt or pain of dissonant life and leaks out into every area of our lives. It becomes the WHITE ELEPHANT LIE that (almost) everyone normalises to invisibility. True happiness then becomes anathema to the mind that is intent on managing its unhappiness successfully.(Which associates happiness with a its control and security rather than as a direct emanation of being).

The learned sense of self can be temporarily happy if its conditions are met - except it will then shift to new expectations. So it is easily provable as to where happiness is not really found to anyone willing and honest enough to test out their own life.
Abiding happiness is an expression of a deeper honesty and acceptance. This doesn't come about without some process of recognising and releasing what 'does not work - and can not work'. And such process is necessarily conscious - not something that can be applied or achieved through any kind of manipulation.

But, we can learn to promote the conditions that serve such learning and awareness - and to unsubscribe or withdraw support from the conditions that undermine true happiness.

In terms of governmental considerations of happiness, we would do well to reevaluate the true economy - not in order to please economists - but one that accounts for our shared commonwealth of resources and abilities and talents - and the time available to appreciate and enjoy our way of life and work.

Of all the steps that I could summarize simply, there needs to be a valuing and honouring of the micro economy. And the seemingly unstoppable or ungovernable demands of the macro economy need to be checked. Corporate dominance asset strips everything and kills its own host if not held in check by law.

The personal scale economy - the actual community of interrelatedness that has been increasing undermined and controlled as mere consumers or workers - is the seedbed of our lives and the nets of regulation and interference need to have wide enough mesh so as not to deny people the opportunity to live out of their own inspiration and shared worth.

It isn't big society - but a community based approach - where communities are actual relationships of individual and collective trust embodied and not mere database-able subsets of information to be mouthed about or manipulated as if they were 'things'.

It must be painfully apparent to governors, that when the happy candy is withdrawn and the stick is used to keep the governed from making too much trouble, that they can do so legitimately only on the basis of serving the greater trust of the governed.

To be willing to happily pass through pain, we need to trust the purpose and the process by which we allow a deeper happiness to share from a true basis. That process is in us as individual members of a larger community - and cannot come from Government - but those in Government needs to nurture and discern the will for true happiness as their own support.

Manipulating minds has become a sophisticated art - but its practice arises only from a mind that is already attempting to manipulate itself. That is essentially fearful, and driven by an unhappiness of dissonance which it seeks to overcome EXTERNALLY. True Happiness is not living out from such a mind because it has felt the dissonance and resolved it where it actually is - and sees the world as the field of relations in which to express a fundamental harmony of life rather than as a resource to plunder for-getting its self.

Focussing on the difficult makes fear the master, but to share the experience of the easy, grows the courage to move through fear. But only they can share or inspire who are inspired to share life rather than manipulate it.

Governors or leasers can learn to provide role modes of willingness that do not use tricks to hide or score but risk allowing their true presence of intent to communicate itself - while in office - and become known for better or worse for what they demonstrate.
The ego liability of a false self sense is in all of us. The blame game is manipulative nonsense. We learn through making mistakes but not by gorging on blame ridden analysis - which but perpetuates the underlying mindset that gives rise to mistaken self interest.

Honesty is the extension of trust and without trust - we are nothing.

Thankyou for inviting comment and for your attention.

Moving to culture of rehabilitation?

 Rehabilitation cannot be applied like band aid - nor can it effectively coexist with a culture of vengeance and punishment.

To wake up to - and find alignment with - our true home - our true environment and our 'true family' or culture of relationship, cannot be mere continuance of the mind of a passively aggressive but generally sublimated reaction, that inevitably arises from lack of any genuinely consciously shared sense of life or identity.

Our most fundamental metaphysical or philosophical self and world beliefs are involved and expressed in all that we do  - but are generally invisible unless we compare and contrast cultures and epochs.

We have 'wanted' to explore the belief and indulge the experience of being 'self determining authoritative powers in our own right - and have an unconsciously communicated societal bedrock of presumption of a 'God given' free will which has then become 'self and other destructive' and has disqualified us of true love-worthiness.

We have then attempted to live in fear and to attempt to become successful - yet without a real basis of shared worthiness - all our self-becomings are vain illusion.

Such lack of any real substance is accompanied by more and more concern with image and presentation and coercive pressures to conform to increasingly meaningless criteria.

That this breaks down is a sign of a deeper sanity - But the symptoms are alarms to wake up to having strayed and thus accept a process of 'adjustment' to become currently connected anew..

Unless we live and grow such a culture, we continue in a madness of ever shifting and conflicting 'self-interests' - that serve apparent short term interests of the mood or power of the day without ever engaging or addressing reality.

I write into such a forum in the faith that a deeper awakening of heart is called for - and not a continuance of tricky thinking and self serving opinion.

We have become prisoners of our own mind. The mechanism of 'the scapegoat - the dumping of our personal hate and sin onto others so as to then exclude them - is a childish magic that not only doesn't heal - but perpetuates guilt, fear and distrust and division.

Economic catastrophe brings with it the intelligence of energy use - of what in truth we can afford. Not as a financial consideration - but at a much deeper level of alignment with true priority.

If we want something that truly works - we can not afford to indulge in and manipulate the mythology and mechanism of guilt for personal gain.
This means we have to become willing again to honestly feel again - yet NOT react out of the interpretations that first arise, but instead grow a culture of support to move through pain, fear and hate, in order to regain a greater sanity.

Practical outcomes will never arise from imposed or applied thinking - no matter how ingenious the thinking - or indeed how inspired it is - unless the context of its working out is a cooperative willingness.

If our behaviour is truly undermining of and threatening to ourselves or each other - it is altogether appropriate that we meet with proportionate restraint and a process of education appropriate to the nature of the situation.

True citizenship is being usurped by a mindless manipulative madness that is its own sin and punishment both. Life lived truly arises from the law of love - and it is this that must be our compass: love.

It is seemingly impossible to reach those who are prisoners of their own thought - for they create an exclusion zone and will not listen. Yet it is impossible to suffer such exclusion of one's own heart and know peace, joy or true fulfilment.

We are all in this - life - together - but not in the way our thinking sets up. A change of heart is a change of the basis of all our thought.

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.

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.

Underneath the blame game

My (very slightly edited) comment to the page: Did the over-45s ruin life for the rest of us?



I find it much more enlightening to see the history of ideas in  - as it were - a collective mind. The recycling of the same old mentalities in rebranded forms is hidden by the personalisation of the blame game and the drama of a conflict of wills that that always fuels.

We (over 45s) thought we'd broken free and then we found we'd played the same old game in a new set of clothes - or else we believe our own self illusions and share the subtler chains of a more isidious imprisonment. The 'system' has thus evolved a most sophisticated capacity to assimilate and marketize and monopolize - even though it does so under the banner of free markets and democracy - and for the benefit of the very few who seek and wield power in worldly terms.

Human life IS experienced AS limitation - but there is a dimension of transcendence that is not part of the game of controlling reality. As long as we play the blame game, we put responsibility for life outside our own heart's domain and are cut off from our truth.

Whoever the status quo is upheld by - IS always resistant to change. But change is the NATURE of manifest life. Truth cannot change - and attempts to maintain self-illusion play out the same old story in any age. Cultural renewal is a result of a current alignment with truth.

Market collapse brings a period of 'adjustment'. This one is in a managed slow motion spin - where the perceptions of reality are being consciously managed as if they were reality itself. The 'me' generation wasn't entirely narcissistic and self deluded. Life does leak through in all sorts of ways - but Life is always the spirit embodied, and not the form mimicked.

Blessings on the young - for their journeys of discovery by which they wake up from accepting the version of reality that their society is addicted to - and protects accordingly. Let the dead bury the dead - attend the call of the living!

The materialism of the scientific mind does not care for even the material world - except where Life leaks through. But to objectify and market manage reality for private gain undermines our very means of support and subsistence.

Fear is the last guide we need to use if we are to act from true wisdom. As a movement for change of heart grows - then I feel it will find acceptance in all ages, one step at a time.