Won't You Be My Neighbour?

Back in 1969, Nixon proposed cuts to Public Broadcasting, leading the Senate to hold a hearing that would decide the future of the station. And who do you think appeared before them and melted their hearts with words?
Mr. Rogers.

He wasn’t the CEO. He wasn’t a Washington insider. He wasn’t even well-known to the committee. Yet he showed up, spoke from the heart, and transformed some of the toughest, most hardened politicians in the country into raving fans.



Every day that you communicate from your heart, you have a chance to change the world.
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So, let's make the most of this beautiful day.
Since we're together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
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Albert Einstein on Mystery, Eternity and The Mind Of God

Einstein's quip that "God does not play dice with the universe" was about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did ponder the relationship between science and religion and his sense of "the order deeply hidden behind everything."
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Join Krista Tippett, Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies in an exploration of Einstein's wisdom on mystery, eternity, and the mind of God.
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From The World As I See It by Albert Einstein, published in 1956:

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. A snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery, even if mixed with fear, that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty. It is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude.

In this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. Enough for me, the mystery of the eternity of life and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

Einstein described his own inclination towards another kind of religious sensibility, which he called "a cosmic religious sense." And he discerned kindred glimpses of this feeling in such diverse figures as the prophets and psalmists of the Hebrew Bible, St. Francis of Assisi, and the Buddha.  He wrote in the New York Times in 1930:

"It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who does not experience it. … The individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence strikes him as a sort of prison, and he wants to experience the universe as a single, significant whole. … The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling. … In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."

Paul Davies:  "He did not believe in a personal God. He made that very clear. But he did believe in a rational world order, and he expressed what he sometimes called a "cosmic religious feeling," a sense of awe, a sense of admiration at the intellectual ingenuity of the universe. Not just its majesty, its grandness, its vast size, but its extraordinary subtlety and beauty and mathematical elegance."
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Though Einstein's theories of relativity, an expanding universe, black holes and the fluidity of time have contributed enormously to the fields of quantum physics and chaos theory, his ideas of an 'objective world of space and matter independent of human thought and observation' have been challenged by modern physicists.  To quote Davies again:

"If we go back to the sort of universe that Newton had and the one that Einstein supported, the notion of a deterministic universe, a clockwork universe, then this becomes a real problem, because if God is to change anything, then God has to overrule God's own laws, and that doesn't look a very edifying prospect theologically or scientifically. It's horrible on both accounts.  But when one gets to an indeterministic universe, if you allow quantum physics, then there is some sort of lassitude in the operation of these laws. There are interstices having to do with quantum uncertainty into which, if you want, you could insert the hand of God."
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This is an absolutely wonderful conversation.  Mathematics and Science have always held a deep fascination and attraction for me, and their interconnection with religion, a more recent interest, infuses each with a more profound vibrancy and truth, offering, as Einstein puts it, 'a single significant whole', a view far vaster than that of the individual realms.

The discussion is available at the Speaking Of Faith website in both audio and transcript form. I highly recommend it.

Here is a link to another interesting article entitled Albert Einstein: God, Religion and Theology, at a site called On Truth & Reality, where I found the following quote.
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I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
- Albert Einstein
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Choosing The High Road

On Tuesday 23-year-old Dutch speedskater Sven Kramer won an Olympic Gold Medal in the 10,000 meter speedskating event, breaking the previous Olympic record in that event by a whopping 4 seconds.

But it seems that at the half-way point in the race he executed an inappropriate lane switch, was subsequently disqualified, and the gold medal was awarded to another skater.

That is a pretty interesting story in itself, albeit a rather sad one.  What really caught my attention, however, was Kramer's reaction to this unfortunate turn of events, as reported yesterday by Trey Kerby in the Yahoo Sports Blog:
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Sven Kramer is ready to 'go forward' after coach's mistake

It seems we were a little hasty in giving Sven Kramer a gold medal in "oops." A little later we learned that the Dutch speedskater's silly disqualification wasn't all his fault, as his coach, Gerard Kemkers, had told him to switch to the wrong lane halfway through the 10,000 meter race.

While Kemkers has accepted full blame for the gaffe, Kramer isn't throwing his coach under the bus. He told the Associated Press that "at the end of the day, it is my responsibility. I am the skater on the ice, I have to do it."

To his credit, it seems like Kramer is already ready to put the whole situation behind him. According to the New York Times:

"I'm not a person that is really mad for a long time," he said. "It doesn't help me, it doesn't help the team. I said to him we have to go forward. We have to go for more victories. That's important for me and for him."

Of course, the speedskating-crazy Dutch are taking things a little harder. Just days after their prime minister left office, that story was booted from front pages in honor of Kramer's folly. Journalists are speculating that Kemkers could lose his job.

But hey, if every coach who made a mistake got fired, we wouldn't have any coaches. Sven Kramer has the right idea.

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I had never heard of Sven Kramer before reading this article, but was touched that in a situation where it would be so easy to fall into anger and blame, he chose instead to take responsibility, forgive and move on.

I think Sven just got himself another fan.
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Thought For A Little Later - Confidence

If you read the last post, you may be thinking that it's all well and good to try new things, but what if I have no confidence?  What if I'm not brave like some people?

Listen up.  Those people you see who seem to radiate confidence? - they probably aren't as confident as you imagine.  They probably have doubts, hesitations and yes, fears, but they have learned, by trial and terror, to go forward through those obstacles.  Sometimes it's a matter of just fake it till you make it. A friend of mine who found herself speaking to groups of people once said to me that she wasn't confident or brave at all, that she was terrified every time and was just pretending to be brave.  I said to her that pretending to be brave when you're scared shitless is actually a pretty good definition of bravery.

I'm reminded of reading some years ago about The Imposter Syndrome.  It's about women who were considered successful, and how despite their achievements and their confident outer appearance, underneath there was always this nagging feeling that at some point they would be found out, that people would discover that the woman was not as smart or talented as everyone thought, that she had somehow managed to fool everyone, and her whole facade would come crashing down.  I remember feeling almost sick to my stomach at reading that because it rang true so viscerally.  On the other hand it was a relief to learn that I was not the only one, that this feeling was indeed rampant.

Sadly I think this syndrome still exists, though perhaps not as all-pervasively as in the era when the book was written, and I no longer think it is confined to women.  It still pops up for me, often unexpectedly - someone will tell me I did really well at something and I just don't believe them, thinking rather that I was simply lucky or that they're just being nice.  I guess recognizing that tendency is a good first step.

But we still move forward, stepping out on the thin ice of uncertainty - fear and doubt our constant companions.  And that's what makes life interesting and it's how we grow, how we can become a little more confident, a little less fearful.  Just try saying yes instead of no next time the world extends an invitation, and those two sidekicks will lose a lot of their power just through that.
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this feeling of fakin' it
I still haven't shaken it
- Simon & Garfunkel
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Thought For Right Now - Success and Failure

Say you want to do something new - start a new project, change jobs, meet new people, learn a new skill - have you ever found yourself stuck in wishful thinking but seemingly unable to take the first step forward?  Have you ever rationalized that inaction with, oh well, it wasn't meant to happen... or have you ever talked yourself out of doing something you really want because of negative self-talk like, oh, I probably wouldn't be any good at it anyway, or oh, it was really a stupid idea in the first place.

If that's your experience, you're stuck in the concept of success (and by implication failure).  What if I fail?  What if I succeed?  Either way something is going to change, which is frightening.

What if you drop the whole idea of success or failure?  What if you just try new things for the pleasure of seeing what happens?  If seeing what happens is your goal, there is no possibility of failure.  There is only more learning.  And that's a wonderful thing.
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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do... Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain
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Why Spirituality is Needed in Politics

An interesting and timely article by Dave Beldon, published in AlterNet

By treating our spiritual lives as private, we liberals have not kept religion out of politics. We have just ensured that the only spiritual appeal in the public square is made by the Religious Right.

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Dave Belden is Managing Editor of Tikkun magazine and joint creator of Tikkun Daily, where this post first appeared.
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Why Atheists Choose Religion

"The idea “to be religious is to be a theist” as Christopher Hitchens stated in his debate with Lorenzo Albacete is a quite ethnocentric claim. It is true that in the West we have often associated a theistic God with religion, but this neglects Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Jainism and numerous religious traditions which have adopted a deistic, pantheistic, panentheistic or other understanding of God. And as I pointed out in my critique of Hitchens last week, Unitarian Universalism contains 19% of people who identify as atheist/agnostic."
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The author, Be Scofield, an atheist seminarian at Starr King School for the Ministry (Unitarian Universalist), apparently received a flood of comments following the above mentioned critique.  In this article in Tikkun Daily Blog, also published in AlterNet, he again counters the argument that religion and atheism are incompatible.

One quote, from Ricky, a fellow seminarian, particularly resonated with me:

I am an atheist not because I hate God, but because I cannot abide an understanding of God who merely lurks in the shadows waiting for science or another form of reason to cast light; a light which almost without fail shows greater beauty and complexity than we could ever imagine.

I am a religious humanist because I believe in miracles even if I believe they obey all the laws of physics. You see, just because I understand everything that happens biologically to make a baby, it doesn’t mean that there’s not still a place for a miracle there. There was not life, and now there is: that is a miracle however you slice it.

And perhaps most of all, I do not need a concept of God to be in awe of the world - if one opens one’s eyes, one can hardly help it.

Well said Ricky.

Here's the full article, with comments - well worth a click.
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The universe seems wondrous to me, with or without God. It has powerful lines and uncompromising ways. Patience and time sit like sages on the planets, strong and impersonal. There is a stark beauty to all of this.
- Real Live Preacher
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Thought For Right Now

Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
– Stephen King
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Kundalini Meditation for the Earth

 An excerpt from Kundalini Meditation: Guided chakra practices to activate the energy of awakening. 

A SoundsTrue audio program taught by Harijiwan Khalsa

The navel point (3rd chakra), when it is strong, gathers and organizes the energy of the lower three chakras and allows us to enter into the infinite space of the heart centre, the 4th chakra.  The heart centre is the beginning of consciousness.

What we are doing as a planet right now as we move from a Piscean to an Aquarian age is we are moving from a navel-oriented past which was about power, control and manipulation (3rd chakra) into a 4th chakra which is about interconnectedness, acceptance, understanding and compassion.  This is the octave that the planet's frequency is changing to and that is why now, even more than ever, we need to know how the gears of energy work within our own bodies because, like it or not, the energy is being shifted on the planet and you have got to be able to stay inside that new frequency because the old ways simply won't work any more.

The heart chakra is the gateway to the full realm of feelings, the full realm of understanding all the interconnectedness of humanity and creation and the ability to see that in a very accepting manner.  This is where compassion and love start to flow.

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got this thing in my heart
got to give it today
it only lives when you give it away
- Bruce Cockburn
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Is Perfectionism A Problem Or A Plus?

From Dan Pink's blog:

Call someone a “liar,” and it’s clearly an insult. Call someone a “genius,” and it’s almost always praise. But how about calling someone a “perfectionist”?  Is that a diss or a kiss?

The answer, it turns out, depends on what kind of perfectionist the person is. And that depends, in turn, on the person’s motivation.

According to research reported in this Miller-McCune article, perfectionism comes in two varieties: adaptive and maladaptive. And one of the key determinants of the type of perfectionism someone displays is whether the quest for perfection is “motivated from an inner urge or an outside push.”  If you’re driving hard because of your own desire for excellence, that can actually lead to greater satisfaction and psychological health. But if you’re pursuing perfection because of pressure from others — parents, bosses, peers — that’s likely to take you down the path of dissatisfaction and reduced well-being.

“Adaptive perfectionism is an internal standard for achievement,” researcher Robert Hill tells Miller-McCune. “Maladaptive perfectionism is an external concern – wondering what other people are going to think. It’s kind of a thinking habit: ‘I made a mistake there.’ ‘Someone will notice I didn’t do that right.’”

So go ahead and be a perfectionist. Just do it for yourself — and forget what others think.
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There is no real perfection
There'll be no perfect day
Just love is our connection
The truth in what we say
- Badfinger
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Did Bill Gates Just Give The Most Important Climate Speech of the Year?

When we talk zero climate emissions, we sound crazy. When Bill Gates does it, he sounds visionary.  Gates, whatever else he did last Friday, just made the most important idea on the planet mainstream credible.  That's a big, big deal.


An interesting article by Alex Steffen, executive editor of Worldchanging, posted on February 15, 2010.
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On Friday, the world's most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.
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So what did Mr.Gates say that was so important?  You'll have to read the article to get the full impact of his ideas, but here are some highlights:

Gates believes that climate change is now the planet's most important challenge, and that the only sensible goal is development of 100% carbon-neutral energy by the year 2050.  To do this we need "an energy miracle ... we need energy solutions that don't yet exist" - urging ambitious entrepreneurs to unleash "1,000 promising ideas".  The author adds that the real breakthrough was not Gates' answer to the problem, but his definition of success: zero.

While Steffen is enthusiastic about this vision, he does acknowledge some gaps in Gates' articulation, and advocates:
~  restoring natural systems at the same time we're working towards clean energy
~  redefining what prosperity means and how it works instead of simply trying to improve efficiency.

The answer to the problem of cars and automotive emissions, for instance, isn't designing a better car, it's designing a better city.  The answer to the problem of over-consumption isn't recycling cans or green shopping, it's changing our relationship to stuff, so that everything we use and live with is designed for zero waste, and either meant to last or to be shared or both.

The best living we've ever had is waiting beyond zero.  What looks like a wall to many people from this side of zero looks like a trellis from the other side, a foundation on which new thinking can flourish.
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Click here to read the full article on the Worldchanging website.
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meantime don't eat anything that grows
and don't breathe when the cars go by
- Bruce Cockburn
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The Inconvenience Of Change

Here is a wonderful video from Life Without Pants:

The Inconvenience of Change from Matt Cheuvront on Vimeo.

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drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where you book begins
the rest is still unwritten
- Natasha Bedingfield
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Instant Enlightenment: Fast, Deep & Sexy

How's a girl to resist a title like that?

Just got this new book by David Deida earlier today and already know I'm going to love it. Here's a blurb by Ken Wilber on the back cover:

"Instant Enlightenment - sound ridiculous? It would be, if enlightenment existed in time. But it exists in the present, before time even moves. Instant Enlightenment is a series of pointers to who you are in the timeless now. In other words, David Deida points directly to the present moment in which 'you' and 'God' are simply two names for the same openness in which the entire universe arises, an openness you can feel right now, if you know where to look. And Instant Enlightenment is the place to start."

Here are a couple of samples from the book; first from the chapter entitled 'Bug':

Enlightenment is the capacity to be open and be lived by the love that is already, miraculously, living your life, despite all your current torment and refusal. Instant enlightenment is to offer love now - whatever the circumstance - without waiting for things to get better.

A guided fantasy from the chapter on 'Romance':

Modern physics explains that matter is energy. Even flesh and bones are mostly space, with widely separated particles vibrating as probabilities. So, imagine your favorite fantasy, feeling your body and your lover's as mostly space vibrating: space making love with space, energy dancing with energy, in a meadow of flowers or on a fluffy blanket that is also space vibrating as energy.

More to come...
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A Tale Of Two Brains

Finally - the male/female thing explained ... both men AND women might wanna pay attention to this guy...


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women are from venus
men are idiots
..ooops, just kidding
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Only From A Farm Boy

When you're from the country you look at things a little differently...

A Montana rancher knocked at the door of a neighboring ranch. A young boy, about 9, opened the door. "Is your Dad home?", the rancher asked.

"No sir, he isn't" the boy replied. "He went into town."

"Well, is your mother home?" asked the rancher.

"No sir, she went into town with Dad."

"How about your brother, Howard? Is he here?"

"No sir. He went with Mom and Dad." The rancher stood there for a few minutes, shifting uneasily and mumbling to himself.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" the boy asked politely. "I know where all the tools are, if you need to borrow one. Or maybe I could take a message for Dad."

"Well," said the rancher uncomfortably, "I really wanted to talk to your Dad. It's about your brother Howard getting my daughter, Suzie, pregnant."'

The boy considered for a moment. "You really would have to talk to Pa about that," he finally conceded. If it helps you any, I know that Pa charges $500 for the bull and $50 for the hog, but I really don't know how much he gets for Howard."
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Thought For Right Now

Was going to call this Thought For The Day but that seemed somehow limiting - just so you know there could be a quote, a poem, some spontaneous insight or bits of song lyrics. I make no promises about frequency or quality but I do hope you enjoy it.

And as most of you know already, the posts on this blog are not reflective of any achievement or realization on my part, but do sincerely represent what I aspire to, what I think is possible, and what I hope will benefit others as we dream together the world that we yearn for. And sometimes they don't really represent anything at all but I think they're funny or interesting. That's the fun of a blog; there are really no rules.

Thought For Right Now:

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

End of discussion.
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The Persona, The Shadow and The Soul

From Jung and the Four Masks, by Paulo Coelho,
at Warrior of the Light

Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founders of modern psychoanalysis, used to say that we all drink from the same source. To explain this concept, he developed a theory whose origin can be found in the work of the ancient alchemists, who named this source the “soul of the world” (anima mundi).

According to this theory, we always try to be independent individuals, but one part of our memory is the same. Whatever our creed or culture may be, we all seek the ideal of beauty, dancing, divinity, music.

Society, however, takes care of defining how these ideals are to manifest themselves on the level of reality. For example, nowadays the ideal of beauty is to be thin, whereas thousands of years ago the images of the gods were fat. The same goes for happiness: there is a set of rules that, if not followed, will not allow your consciousness to accept the idea that you are happy. These are not absolute rules, and they change from one generation to another.

Jung used to classify individual progress according to four stages: the first was the Persona – the mask that we wear every day, pretending to be who we are. We believe that the world depends on us, that we are wonderful parents and that our children understand us, that our bosses are fair, that the dream of human beings is never to work and spend our entire life traveling. Some people try to understand what is wrong, and end up finding the Shadow.

The Shadow is our black side, which dictates how we should act and behave. When we try to get rid of the Persona, we turn on a light inside us and see spider’s webs, cowardice, petty-mindedness. The Shadow is there to hamper our progress – and it usually succeeds, so we race back to who we were before we started doubting. Nevertheless, some survive this struggle with their spider’s webs by saying: “Yes, I have a whole bunch of defects, but I’m dignified and I want to get ahead.”

At that moment the Shadow disappears and we come into contact with the Soul.

By Soul, Jung is not defining something religious; he speaks of a return to the Soul of the World, the source of knowledge. Our instincts begin to grow sharper, our emotions more radical, the signs of life are of greater importance than logic, our perception of reality is no longer so rigid. We begin to deal with things we are not used to, and to react in ways that not even we ourselves would expect.

Then we discover that if we can only manage to channel all this surge of energy, we can organize it in a very solid center, which Jung calls the Wise Old Man for men, or the Great Mother for women.  It’s quite dangerous to allow this to manifest itself. Generally speaking, whoever reaches that point tends to consider himself holy, a tamer of spirits, a prophet.

Not only people, but societies too use these four masks. Western civilization has a Persona, ideas that guide us and that seem to be absolute truths.

But things change. In the attempt to adapt to the changes, we see the great mass demonstrations where collective energy can be manipulated either for good or evil (the Shadow). All of a sudden, for some reason, the Persona or the Shadow are no longer satisfactory – the moment has come for a leap forward, new values begin to appear (the dive into the Soul).

And at the end of this process, in order for these new values to become installed, the entire race begins to make contact again with the language of signs (the Wise Old Man).

This is precisely what we are experiencing now. It may last one or two hundred years, but things are changing – for the better.

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the mirror on my wall casts an image dark and small
but I'm not sure at all it's my reflection.
I am blinded by the light of God and truth and right
and I wander in the night without direction.
- Simon & Garfunkel
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From: http://www.musicbabylon.com

Who Says You Have To Finish What You Start?

The little voice in your head shrilling that you must finish what you start may sound like your own by now, but I bet it didn't start out that way. I bet it started out sounding like your mother, your teachers, your boss ....

But good news - Pace and Kyeli of Freak Revolution, with the whole-hearted endorsement of yours truly, hereby give all my loyal readers, and all their loyal readers, all our friends, and everyone everywhere, permission to just stop. Yeah, you heard it, just stop. I'll let Kyeli explain:

Ever felt like you have to finish something, simply because you started it? Food, a journey, a book, a movie? That's called "sunk cost", and it's bullshit.

Once, Pace and I were going to Dallas for the weekend. (I can't remember why, anymore.) We were about 1/3rd of the way there when it came up that neither of us were really looking forward to the weekend. We mused about going home, but we'd already driven about an hour and gone about 75 miles. We might as well keep going - even though it'd take another 2.5 hours to get there!

Hold on a minute. I said, "Why would we do that? It seems dumb to go that far for that long when neither of us want to do it anymore."

Pace looked at me and said, "You're totally right. I was attached to going because we've already started, but that's dumb."

And we turned the car around and went home.

There's no need to finish something just because you're already part-way through. If you're unhappy, bored, or no longer looking forward to it, stop. Just stop. Go do something else with your precious time and energy - something you'll enjoy!

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I say let's ban the word "should" from our inner dictionary! Let's use "want to" instead! Anyone with me?
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Are You Ready For A New World?

The ideas and institutions that define our culture are breaking down - and that's a good thing.

Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman, authors of Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There from Here, write that today's crises are part of a natural process - clearing out what no longer serves us to make room for a new way of being. Are they cockeyed optimists or do they see things others miss?

For this article in AlterNet, Terrence McNally asked each of the authors what led them to the work they are doing now.

Bruce Lipton: While doing research on muscular dystrophy and cloning stem cells in 1967, Lipton discovered something he describes as mind-boggling: that genetically identical stem cells, when placed in different environments, will form widely different types of body cells. "I was teaching medical students that genes control life, yet my research said that the genes were actually controlled by the organism's response to the environment."

Steve Bhaerman: After an idealistic teaching career in the 60s & 70s, many years of spiritual seeking had left Bhaerman still longing to close the gap between ideas and practice. "I thought it would be interesting to write a book about healing the body politic, applying a biological or medical metaphor to the wider world. When I read The Biology of Belief and met Bruce, I realized that he was the guy I was meant to do this book with."

The authors say that although the three questions that any belief system needs to ask (Why are we here? How did we get here? How do we make the best of the situation?) remain constant over time, the answers must change - that humanity must embrace a worldview based not on survival and competition, but on cooperation and community.

This article is both painful and inspiring to read, and impossible to summarize without leaving out something important. Here's a particularly poignant segment:

Once we recognize how much of our reality is programmed, we can begin to forgive ourselves and forgive others. We can begin to recognize that one thing we have in common is that we're all programmed. That recognition is a first step outside the matrix of controlled beliefs.

The reality we have in common is not in our heads, it's in our hearts ...When you create situations where people can communicate and listen in a respectful way, an interesting thing happens. We begin to focus on what we have in common as humanity. We begin thinking like a species instead of like individuals.

The interview concludes:

In your body, no particular cells go hungry. Every cell must be fed for the body to be in harmony. When we begin to treat all humans as cells in one body, and make sure that they all get the basics in life, we create the foundation on which to build an exciting future.

Every cell counts. Every human counts.

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love is but a song we sing
fear's the way we die
you can make the mountains ring
or make the angels cry
- Youngbloods
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Sex Addiction: B.S. Excuse for Not Thinking?

Now that I've gotten your attention, here's an interesting and provocative (check the comments section!) article by Michael Bader* in AlterNet:

Whether applied earnestly or as a PR gloss for bad behavior, sex addiction is an increasingly common diagnosis. In my view, it's a problematic one. It's ambiguous, hard to define, blurry around the edges, and an excuse for not thinking. If a married man has a lot of extramarital sex, is he necessarily a sex addict? If a seemingly straight man frequents restrooms for casual sex, is he an addict? How much pornography does someone have to look at, how many hours spent in chat rooms, hookers hired, to go from "hound dog" to "sex addict"?

Bader goes on to distinguish addictions from compulsions - addictions usually involve tolerance and withdrawal which are not present with compulsions - citing the example that anxiety around frustrated sexual compulsions is quite different from DTs experienced during alcohol withdrawal.

He adds that treatment modalities like the 12-step program which focus on behaviour modification alone, in the absence of any real inquiry into its underlying meaning, most often completely miss the mark.

Unlike alcohol, sex is a natural and normal part of human life. So is sexual fantasy. Unlike heroin, sex naturally engages issues of intimacy, power, autonomy, and love. Sexual arousal always has meaning. In fact, sexual excitement of any kind is impossible unless its mental and social context is specifically conducive to it. While the desire for sexual pleasure is natural, the how, where and why are not. Sexual desire actually begins in the mind and travels down. The "problem" of sexual addiction always involves the mind and the social world, never the desire itself.

Examples from his clinical practice illustrate how insights gained through examination of the underlying psychological dynamics enable clients to face their anxieties and empower them to make better choices.

The actual psychological reality is that the so-called addicts' desires and fantasies are perfectly understandable attempts to deal with anxiety and depression given the context of their personal histories, their painful and irrational views about themselves and about men and women, and their inability to imagine a healthier way of living. Once they’re helped to become aware of these meanings, they actually increase their self-compassion and are freer to exercise self-control.

He concludes:

Everywhere that sex enters the public arena, whether it be in education, gay marriage, Internet sex, or the hypocrisy of self-righteous politicians getting busted for their indiscretions, we see a worrisome refusal or inability to think about psychological meaning, and to instead reduce the conversation to either a morality play or a voyeuristic parade of gossip and speculation. Replacing the psychologically complex and intensely human drama of sexual behavior with two-dimensional labels like addiction is but one example of this trend.

Click Here for full article and comments.
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*Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco. He is the author of "Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies" and "Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It -- and Men Don't Either." He has written extensively about psychology and politics.
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I've got you like a habit and I'll never get enough
there ain't no cure, there ain't no cure
there ain't no cure for love
- Leonard Cohen
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If I Knew Where The Good Songs Came From...

...I'd Go There More Often

Leonard Cohen:

"I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune."


In this PBS NewsHour Poetry Series interview, singer and poet Leonard Cohen discusses the difference between writing a song and a poem and explains why "out of the thousands who are known or want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes."

With characteristic directness and humility, Cohen shares his insights on fame, poetry and growing older. A short but revealing read.

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Well my friends are gone and my hair is gray
I ache in the places where I used to play
and I'm crazy for love, but I'm not comin' on
I'm just paying my rent every day...



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The Inner Landscape of Beauty

The Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue was beloved for his book Anam Ċara, Gaelic for "soul friend," and for his insistence on beauty as a human calling and a defining aspect of God. In this, one of the last interviews he gave before his death in 2008, he articulated a Celtic imagination about how the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible worlds intertwine in human experience.

John O'Donohue: Your identity is not equivalent to your biography. There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you, and I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.

Click here to enjoy this dialogue between Krista Tippett and John O'Donohue on the Speaking Of Faith website (podcast or transcript).

A moving exploration of beauty, God, time and friendship.
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The Inner History of a Day
by John O'Donohue

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
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We All Shine On

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A rare treat (and a must-read) for Lennon fans and other awakened dreamers...
~~~
excerpted from The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon, by Gary Tillery (Quest Books, December 2009)

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What if a significant number of us were to agree that, starting next Monday, we would treat everyone we encountered with respect, compassion and love?

John Lennon realized, then propounded, that since as humans we have the ability to change our own habits and convictions, the only barrier to our living in a better world is agreement that we are committed to it. He implied the concept in "All You Need Is Love", "Instant Karma (We All Shine On)", and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". However, he crystallized his point of view in his masterpiece, "Imagine". In simple but resonating lyrics he sketched the framework of a harmonious world he and other dreamers had in mind, concluding with an invitation to the listener to join them.

Then he read a book called Mind Games....
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This fascinating review in Reality Sandwich chronicles Lennon's ongoing quest for expanded consciousness and a peaceful society. Following the de-legalization of LSD in the 1960s, Mind Games authors Robert Masters and Jean Houston developed alternative approaches to mind expansion based on meditation, assisted trance and guided imagery. This work caught fire in Lennon's imagination.

To those who were beginning to believe that the spirit of the 60s had died, he was advising, don't give up, keep on, keep chanting the mantra of peace and love. Let's work together as an invisible army. We'll use the power of visualization - some call it magic - to project our image of peace in space and time. We'll create an "absolute elsewhere" in our middle, an ideal so detailed and realistic that our intentions will make it manifest.

This absolute elsewhere, given the name Nutopia by Lennon and Yoko Ono, was revealed at a press conference in 1973.

Nutopia was a proposed emotional, intellectual and spiritual union of people. It would be an imaginary union, but certainly no more imaginary than the artificial boundaries that separated people in the "real" world.

Those perceptive listeners who understood and embraced the absolute elsewhere of Nutopia would constitute the invisible army Lennon described in "Mind Games". Acting individually but in concert, they would bring about a more harmonious world through communal visualization.

I don't want to give the whole story away in this post - it's well worth a click to read the whole review. John Lennon's vision and his message have now become a global movement, a universal wakeup call for humanity. It is a great sadness that he will not see it blossom.

Consistent with his own insight, Lennon had already used the principle of collective visualization to plant a positive image in the public psyche. He had already written a song that offered his solution, his alternative to the nightmarish futures on which the people of his era were focused - the endless quagmire of Vietnam, world famine, Orwell's 1984, nuclear winter, apocalypse in the Middle East - as well as his prescription to end the perennial strife of our species.

He recorded and released it in 1971, a song that would become his most famous anthem:

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keep playing those mind games forever
raising the spirit of peace and love
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Time Is All We've Got

Andrew Cohen Quote of the Week:

From the perspective of evolution, time is all we’ve got. Evolution only happens in and through time, so we can only affect change in the cosmos in and through time. Therefore, if we care about making a difference, we need to have the courage to look directly at our own lives in relationship to time.

Why? Because time runs out! And too many of us are still putting off what is most important, postponing and hesitating, because we feel that we’re not quite ready yet. We’re not quite ready to live a life that bold, that intentional, that immediate. But time keeps passing.

So to me, one of the most important steps in an individual’s spiritual evolution is when they embrace what I call an absolute relationship to time. That means they are no longer waiting for anything. They are seeing the whole process of their own life-experience with a sense of great urgency and immediacy because there is so much that they need to accomplish and they need to do it now.

If we are to truly make a difference in the short time we each have on this earth, more and more of us need to awaken to this Great Intention, this great urgency, and this great will to evolve. That alone is what makes this life meaningful.

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people, you're going to die - what are you waiting for?
- Lodro Zangpo, Gampo Abbey 1993
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Why Are We So Blind To The True Horrors Of War?

News items like "...four Canadian soldiers were killed today when their tank was blown up by a roadside bomb" have become so commonplace we scarcely notice, barely pause in what we're doing. Have you ever stopped to think what those soldiers felt as that happened? What it's like to be inside a tank when it explodes - the noise, the power, the searing heat - how your body feels as it is torn apart?

From Chris Hedges, originally published in Truthdig:

"If we really saw what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myths propagated by our warmongering government."

In this article Hedges reviews two haunting books of war photographs: Peter van Agtmael’s "2nd Tour Hope I don’t Die" and Lori Grinker’s "Afterwar: Veterans From a World in Conflict." He does not mince words, and the mental images that arise on reading the article are sharp and penetrating. But as powerful as they are, they only hint at the effect of the photographs. Even so, he describes the photographs as "...shadows, for only those who go to and suffer from war can fully confront the visceral horror of it, but they are at least an attempt to unmask war’s savagery."

An excerpt from the article:

Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief elements of combat, into an artful war narrative. They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies like "Platoon," movies meant to denounce war, and as they do so revel in the despicable power of the weapons shown. The reality of violence is different. Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief and destruction.

For the full article on AlterNet, click here.

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I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
but when I talk to the survivors of things too sickening to relate
if I had a rocket launcher, I would retaliate
- Bruce Cockburn
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Is Creativity Divinely Inspired?

Fresh from TED2009, Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from writers and other creatives - and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
(Recorded February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 19:29.)



To enjoy an analysis and discussion by Mark McGuinness of LateralAction, click here.

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most vagabonds I knowed don't ever want to find the culprit
that remains the object of their long relentless quest
the obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending
the pursuit, you see, but never the arrest
- Tom Waits
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10 Reasons the US Military Should Use Pot

An eloquent and compassionate argument for the use of marijuana to relieve post-combat pain and stress issues - by Penny Coleman in AlterNet.

"It is just possible that Tim Leary was right when he said that psychedelic drugs cause paranoia, confusion and total loss of reality in politicians who have never taken them."

On top of a 100 percent disability rating with PTSD, "Charlie" - who asked that his real name not be used - came home from Afghanistan with a traumatic brain injury, a back injury and gastrointestinal problems. The VA pulled every magic trick out of its bag to treat him. But nothing worked.

What did work was marijuana.
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This article is at once hopeful and disturbing. As evidence mounts and more and more scientists, health providers and even the AMA allow that marijuana is an effective and safe treatment for pain and PTSD, marijuana continues to be classed as a Schedule I drug, deemed to be more dangerous than cocaine, oxycodone and methamphetamines, all of which are Schedule II.

Most unsettling is the section on Suicide Prevention, where Coleman cites The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry report that 89 percent of veterans with PTSD are prescribed antidepressants and 34 percent antipsychotics by the VA. Of the specific medications identified as potentially useful, all but two come with warnings of suicide or increased risk of death. Add to that a comment by VA Secretary Eric Shinseki that more vets have committed suicide since 2001 than were killed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and one cannot help but wonder how this situation is allowed to continue...

Can we say Big Pharma? In my opinion Coleman skips over this one a little lightly, pointing out that it is easy enough to grow your own - maybe she's never known anyone who's run afoul of the law for engaging in this most natural of pastimes, this most victimless of crimes - oh, get me going. Even here in Canada where the law is supposedly somewhat relaxed, getting busted for growing pot is not a joke and will interfere with your personal freedom in ways you cannot imagine and over which you have no control.

All in all, a very well written and provocative piece.
Click here for full article.

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Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.

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don't Bogart that joint, my friend
pass it over to me...
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Awakened Doing

We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness, but they won't be talking about it in the news tonight.

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from A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
by Eckhart Tolle
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Awakened Doing is the alignment of your outer purpose - action - with your inner purpose - awakening and staying awake. Joining these two, we align our lives with the creative power of the universe. Our state of consciousness thus becomes the primary factor - the situation and what we do become secondary. Actions no longer arise from the reactive force of ego but from the alert attention of the awakened consciousness.

Three Modalities of Awakened Doing:

Acceptance

“For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and I do so willingly.”

Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it, and that you have chosen to take responsibility for your state of consciousness.

Enjoyment

“The peace that comes with surrendered action turns to aliveness when you actually enjoy what you are doing.”

Joy is the dynamic aspect of Being - it blossoms when we decide to make the present moment, not the past or future, the focal point of our life. As we awaken to our life’s purpose, enjoyment replaces ego-driven wanting as the motivation behind our actions.

Enthusiasm

“Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus an added element of a goal or vision that you work toward.”

When a sense of goal is added to enjoyment, a creative tension is generated which adds enormous intensity and energy to what you do. Enthusiasm knows where it is going while remaining deeply at one with the present moment, the source of its aliveness, joy and power.

Enthusiasm is the power through which our creative energy expresses itself in the physical dimension. That is the creative use of mind, and it involves no wanting or grasping. You cannot manifest what you want - you can only manifest what you already have.

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Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it,
and it will be yours - Jesus Christ

We are both the Cosmic Force and the Vehicle - Genpo Roshi
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Leave The Door Open...

...for that which is new.

Genpo Roshi tells of how his dog knows that in order to be able to pick up a new treat, she has to drop the bone that is already in her mouth. Why is it, then, that humans don't seem to understand this simple logic - that in order to be open to new realms of possibility, we have to let go of what we think we already know.

Andrew Cohen has some thoughts on that:

Without being aware of it, many of us tend to base our sense of what's possible now, in the present moment, upon what has or has not happened in the past. But if we want to be spiritually liberated, indeed if we want to be an expression of evolution-in-action, we have to dare to look beyond everything we already know. We have to leave the door open for the unimaginable. We have to stop weighing and measuring what's possible now by what has already happened. We have to let go of all the conscious and unconscious cynicism that has become habitual in our way of thinking.

That miraculous creative potential is the very essence of the evolutionary process when it's flourishing. Fourteen billion years ago with the Big Bang, the entire Universe emerged from nothing. Every step in the evolutionary process begins with an event that is defined by the emergence of something that has not existed before. In evolution there always exists the unmanifest potential of that which is new. That's what's so extraordinary about it. So in order to align yourself with that dynamic and creative process, you must let go of the inherent limitation of the past. You must strive to cultivate a relationship to your own experience in the present moment that makes the unimaginable emergence of that which is new possible right now.

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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.
- Carl Jung
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Greenwashing So Absurd...

it's almost funny.....

When companies like Exxon-Mobil and McDonald's think "green", they're thinking of cash, not the earth. And after all, what matters to unscrupulous marketeers isn't so much the reality of their brand or product, but how the public perceives it - which often results in greenwashing so absurd, it's almost funny. These 15 examples of extreme greenwashing range from woefully ignorant to downright malicious.
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Why Men Shouldn't Write Advice Columns

Dear John:
I hope you can help me. The other day I set off for work, leaving my husband at home watching TV. My car stalled, and then it broke down about a mile down the road, and I had to walk back to get my husband's help. When I got home, I couldn't believe my eyes. He was in our bed with the neighbour's daughter!
I am 32, my husband is 34 and the neighbour's daughter is 19. We have been married for 10 years. When I confronted him, he broke down and admitted that they had been having an affair for the past six months. I want to save our marriage but he won't go to couples counselling. I'm a wreck and I need advice urgently. Can you help?
Sincerely,
Sheila.
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Dear Sheila:
A car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Start by checking that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it is clear, check the vacuum pipes and hoses on the intake manifold and also check all grounding wires. If none of these approaches solves the problem, it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the injectors.
I hope this helps.
John
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God's Playing A New Game

Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen on
The Myth Of The Given

In this remarkable dialogue, Wilber and Cohen challenge the tendency towards fundamentalism inherent in all major religions - Eastern, Western and everything in between.

About God, they argue that when seen in an evolutionary context, who and what God is can no longer be taken as fixed - that from a developmental perspective, God is also evolving, just as we are.

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Wilber: Albert Einstein is said to have performed the following thought experiment when he was contemplating relativity. He asked himself a question: if you were literally riding on the edge of a light beam and you held a mirror in front of you, could you see yourself? The answer is no. If nothing travels faster than light, light can't get to the mirror to reflect your reflection, so you would see nothing.

That's another good image for the edge of evolution. There's nothing in the future to see. We're creating it as we go out there. And it's pretty scary to look in the mirror and not see anything.

Cohen: The Authentic Self is the expression of the evolutionary imperative itself, within the human heart and mind. It is a perpetual, unending and always ecstatic impulse in consciousness that strives only to create the future. But in order for the authentic self to function uninhibitedly, the individual has to be willing to continually let go and embrace ever more of the world of form in every moment. For the individual, emotionally, psychologically and philosophically, this is what is so ultimately challenging about a truly evolutionary context at the level of consciousness - the relentless demand to continue to let go at these very deep and subtle levels.

I think it's only a rare individual who actually is going to have the courage, the authenticity of interest, the fearlessness, the liberated awareness to be able and willing to continually let go in that way and at the same time have his or her own deepest sense of confidence in the nature of being and in life remain absolutely unthreatened.

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Towards the end of the interview they discuss The Shadow - what they call the disowned self. They explain how, starting at a very early age, aspects of ourselves which are seen as unacceptable are denied, repressed and projected, creating myriad forms of dis-ease as the repressed aspects fail to develop past the stage at which they were split off.
~~~~

Wilber: Now if we could get rid of these impulses just like that and they stayed out there, there would be no problem. But the trouble is that they are actually parts of our own self, and every time we push something to the other side of the self-boundary, we diminish our own consciousness; we make ourselves smaller. And that keeps us out of the present moment.

Cohen: In order to free up our consciousness, we have to own these repressed parts of ourselves - we have to embrace all of them, we have to bring light into all the dark and hidden corners of our self, we have to claim ownership of the entirety of our I - before we can authentically transcend our ego in the spiritual sense.

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They go on to explore the shortcomings of either meditation or psychotherapy alone to unblock and liberate these repressed aspects. As Ken Wilber puts it, "The meditative context is all about letting go, but we can only do that if we deal with our dissociated impulses first ... What we want to do is basically heal the vehicles through which we will manifest our enlightened awareness."

Andrew Cohen sums up: "...it is only those who awaken to a larger purpose, a purpose bigger than their own wholeness, salvation or even enlightenment, who will actually find the energy and the resources to begin to own these darker and more unconscious parts of themselves and really change in ways that make all the difference in the world."

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To enjoy the full EnlightenNext article, Click Here or on title
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Thinking is Overrated

Imagine you have no head.

I'm serious.

Imagine you have no head.

Right this instant.


Has Mark McGuinness finally lost his head? Best read on...

You can feel your arms, legs, hands, feet, stomach, chest and back. But your bodily sensations stop at the neck. There’s nothing there.

At this moment, you can feel, touch, see and hear – but you can’t think.

(Don’t worry about how you can see or hear without eyes and ears – worrying requires a head, and right now you haven’t got one.)

Allow your centre of consciousness to sink from where your head used to be, down into your chest or stomach. Notice what it’s like to have your awareness located at your centre of gravity.

Stay in this state for at least a minute, before reading the rest of this article from LateralAction.

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Homo Sapiens Sapiens

The Self-Guiding Evolution of Civilizations
by Duane Elgin

In the history of the collective, as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness - Carl Jung

The universe is creating self-organizing and self-referencing systems at every scale. In accord with this dynamic, the human family is working to become consciously self-organizing at progressively larger scales. We have evolved from awakening hunter-gatherers to a species that has created a wired world whose actions are changing the face of the planet. Because the impact of humanity is now global, that is the scale at which we are challenged to become reflective if we are to be choiceful about our common future. We are challenged to no longer "run on automatic" but to pay attention to how we pay attention as entire civilizations.

The vehicle of collective attention at a civilizational scale is the mass media - particularly broadcast television. If civilizations are to realize their potential for full reflective consciousness and become self-guiding in their evolution, then it is vital for the public to mobilize the public airwaves on behalf of the public interest.

How we use our tools of mass communication is not just another issue; it is the basis for understanding and responding to all issues. With mass communication we can achieve the level of mass social reflection and cooperation needed to adapt our manner of living to the new global realities.

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Our scientific name as a species is homo sapiens sapiens, or doubly wise humans. Where animals have the capacity to know, we humans have the capacity to know that we know and the ability to bring a reflective consciousness into our lives. If we use our scientific name as a guide, then our core purpose as a species is to realize - both individually and collectively - our potential for double wisdom.

Developing our capacity for reflective consciousness, both personally and socially, is a paramount evolutionary challenge. How, then, are we to begin thinking about the qualities of consciousness of entire civilizations?

For some ideas on that, click here or on title

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Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized speaker, author and social visionary who looks beneath the surface turbulence of our times to explore the deeper trends that are transforming our world.
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Buddy System

The Infectious Power of Social Networks

A fascinating article from Jonah Lehrer in Wired Magazine.
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A revolution in the science of social networks began with a stash of old papers found in a storeroom in Framingham, Massachusetts. They were the personal records of 5,124 male and female subjects from the Framingham Heart Study. Started in 1948, the ongoing project has revealed many of the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, including smoking and hypertension.

In 2003, Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and internist at Harvard, and James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego, began searching through the Framingham data. But they didn't care about LDL cholesterol or enlarged left ventricles. Rather, they were drawn to a clerical quirk: the original Framingham researchers had decided to note each participant's close friends, colleagues and family members.

But what, you might wonder, does this have to do with modern social networking vehicles like Facebook? Actually quite a lot, as the authors discovered to their amazement. And although these two scientists are fascinated by the online world, their central research tool remains those handwritten papers salvaged from the Framingham Heart Study.

By studying Framingham as an interconnected network rather than a mass of individuals, Christakis and Fowler made some remarkable discoveries about the power of social networks to influence individual behavior.

More recently Christakis and Fowler have begun to study the variables, such as genetics, that determine a person's place within a social network - whether in the centre or on the fringe - but they emphasize that there's no ideal social location. During a flu epidemic, the periphery is the safest place since people with fewer connections are less exposed to the virus. But being on the fringe also reduces access to resources, which radiate from the centre. Networks transmit the stuff of life - from happiness to HIV - so evolution has generated a diversity of personality traits, which take advantage of different positions within the group. According to Christakis and Fowler, there is no single solution to the problem of other people. Individual variation is a crucial element of every stable community, from the Aboriginal people of Australia to the avatars of Second Life.

And because we're social primates, such communities are essential. When we're cut off from our network, we slip into a spiral of loneliness and despair, which severely affects our health. "Your friends might make you sick and cause you to gain weight," Christakis says, "but they're also a source of tremendous happiness. When it comes to social networks, the positives outweigh the negatives. That's why networks are everywhere."

People, in other words, need people: we are the glue holding ourselves together.

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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor to US Wired.
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I'm Not A Zen Monk...

...I'm doing my expenses.

A compelling argument FOR Distraction, by Russell M. Davies, for Wired.co.uk Magazine

"The Internet has it in for multitasking. Every ... oooh, hang on a minute, just replying to Twitter. Every blog seems to be focused on concentration or concentrated on focus. The goal is Getting Things Done; the enemy is Distraction. But I'd like to suggest that multitasking and distraction aren't the enemy - they're what make us human and creative - and that we should be building software tools that distract us more, not help us to concentrate.

"Hang on a second. I'm getting an email from Facebook telling me that someone I don't really know has updated their location via Twitter.

"Anyway, my first bit of evidence is...."

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The Confidence Guy

aka Steve Errey - Wired into Truly Confident Living

This is why I don't get anything "done" when I'm home. Okay, it's exactly why I like to be home.

Steve Errey writes with humor and heart on topics like Fear & Doubt, Leadership and Confidence Building. The titles of his blogposts are sheer genius, and the content more than lives up to the promise. How about these:

** I Want To Be A Kid When I Grow Up
** Forgive My Fluffiness, Please
** Broke As A Piano In A Burning Barn
** Does Believing in God Mean You Don't Believe in Yourself?
** Scared to Change? Embrace Your Inner Wimp

My favorite so far is this one called The Power Of The Unexpected

Steve Errey on Change: Change is scary. I get it. I feel it too. But sometimes you gotta suck it up, walk right into it. Confidence is what makes it okay to admit that you're scared, and for the whole being scared thing to be okay. The alternative is living in a world where you're always safe and always right, but never happy.

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The Power Of Less

or, How To Do Less And Get More
by Brian Clark, for Copyblogger

Brian passes on this advice from Leo Babauta's book, The Power Of Less:

~~ Do less to achieve more
~~ Enjoy the stillness
~~ Don't do things that don't matter

Right decisions require the right mindset, and a clear path to achieving the goal.

How clear is your mind right now?

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About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress.
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