[jsb1969]

A quick thought regarding concerns about our probable experience in the future. We humans have suffered so much in our evolution, completly beyond understanding. Our evolution within that daily terror has given us remarkable abilities to shine on the very edge of our mortality. Perhaps that is where we are most alive, most happy.
As I think I have said before regarding facing your own death or terrifing life, you have been given to by the experience of countless generations, the ability to flourish. In other words, don't worry so much.

[PenultimateManStanding]

yes, of course, radiance. humans think they are diamonds, but they're really just old chunks of coal. Say, what's the background of your avatar?

[Omnitir]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'y')es, of course, radiance. humans think they are diamonds, but they're really just old chunks of coal.

[clover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Omnitir', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'y')es, of course, radiance. humans think they are diamonds, but they're really just old chunks of coal.

[jsb1969]

The ability is the crossroads. You can go anywhere, and you will almost never know where it is before you get there.
Also, the human who thinks he is this or that is a fool, but then again that is our most common trait, foolishness.
The character in my avatar is 'mu', which translates as 'not' or 'no' or 'nothing'.
A famous koan (a story, dialog, question, or statement in the history and lore of Zen), is as follows:
A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" (a very stupid question)
Chao-chou said, "Mu."

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jsb1969', '
') Also, the human who thinks he is this or that is a fool, but then again that is our most common trait, foolishness.
The character in my avatar is 'mu', which translates as 'not' or 'no' or 'nothing'.

[jsb1969]

A monk asked Nansen: `Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?'

Nansen said: `Yes, there is.'

`What is it?' asked the monk.

Nansen replied: `It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.'

Mumon's Comment: Old Nansen gave away his treasure-words. He must have been greatly upset.

Nansen was too kind and lost his treasure.
Truly, words have no power.
Even though the mountain becomes the sea,
Words cannot open another's mind.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Hey I'm just an old chunk of coal but I'm gonna be a diamond some day
I'm gonna grow and glow till I'm so blue pure perfect
I'm gonna put a smile on everybody's face
I'm gonna kneel and pray every day lest I should become vain along the way
I'm just an old chunk of coal now Lord but I'm gonna be a diamond some day

I'm gonna learn the best way to walk gonna search and find a better way to talk
I'm gonna spit and polish my old rough edged self till I get rid of every single flaw
I'm gonna be the world's best friend gonna go round shaking everybody's hand
I'm gonna be the cotton pickin' rage of the age I'm gonna be a diamond some day

[jsb1969]

[Wednesday]

All I need is the instructions to connect my radiance to my hot water heater.

[galacticsurfer]

I had some thoughts I wanted to post somewhere and this seems a good place.

I would like to start by making a comparison of peak oil awareness to mourning:

My wife lost her Dad a month ago to cancer.

1) shock- At first she was shocked and "saw" him and felt him around in the apartment and elsewhere. I think we can all relate to initial shock of days to weeks after hearing of peak oil. Ntohing seems real anymore like in a dream.

2)sadness or depression- now she is pretty down sometimes and thinks about her own mortality and thinks every liitle tweak on body is some disease. She has asked me if her family is cursed or something as she listed all the various bad luck her family had had. She wanted to find a witch or something(this just shows how in Russia-she is Russian-religious repression only brought about more superstitious beliefs than allowing standard religion). I just gave her a mantra fitting to her ascendant planet I found in a book about Hindu astrology and some prayer beads which she says every day five minutes now. I tried to get her interested in this sort of shit for 10 years and no luck. I am amazed quite frankly.

I think people start being willing to make radical changes upon hearing about peak oil and realizing the situation is serious like a smoker diagnosed with cancer.

3) Anger-
depression can only go so far- for almost no reason at all my wife attacked me (despite PMS) physically and was completeyl pissed off. She said later it helped to get angry and that she felt a lot beetter afterwards- depression dissipated. I think getting angry and doing something real and taking action helps us to get over this initial phase of depression with regards to peak oil.

Now what I really wanted to write about- my wife is death obsessed and asked me what I think of her theory that we poison our cells by bad nutrition. I said that this sounds like the free radicals theory and is limited to chemical interactions, etc. and that I have another general theroy which I believe is more encompassing and could jive with JSB1969's comments. I think we as individual human beings and each of our body cells individually are like magnetic fields. When we strengthen these magnetic fields through positive actions(good nutrition, positive thinking or prayer or meditation, exercise) then the strengthened field becomes more resistant to disease or stress. Entropic things are hatred, cigarettes, alcohol. Positive things to encourage higher order in cells and body energy field are yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, prayer.

Now my idea why this is important is that the whole doomster mentality we develop when hearing about PO and the serious stress that will come when society starts breaking apart, to whatever extent that will in actual fact happen, will demand a strong immune system, or in the case I have suggested more generally a strong energy field to enable personal survival and deter chaotic situations due to asocial reactions which can cause, as we read all the time in all the posts here, everything from suicidal tendencies to civil war and global thermonuclear conflict.

I am well aware of the current cultural situation where secular people want nothing to do with fundamentalist christians, who are "idiots" and christians who remain skeptical of "secular atheist amoralists who are going to hell like Sodom and Gomorrha".

Trying to bridge this gap by some sort of new age mumbo jumbo as my statements made above might appear to be, may seem nonsense to 99% of population as they are predisposed to skepticism to anything not fitting their mode of thinking-either pure rationalistic scientific materialism or patriarchal religion. However I would pose that neither of these systems presents a sufficient theoretical framework to our current situation.

There is a model where ideas develop in the historical order Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis:

1) Thesis- Patriarchal God at the head and a society with a pyramid structure of authority- up until 1700 or 1800

2)Antithesis- revolution and sceintific rationalism-hiuman rights, democracy, capitalism, Man is the Measure of things- 1750-2000

3) Synthesis- Man and God and nature interconnected as one field of energy/consciousness- universe as hologram- everything effects everything else simultaneously in the whole universe(Einstein-Rosen also the butterfly flattering its wings somewhere causing a storm idea).

Now obviously if I were just talking to someone like JSB199 I would be preaching to the converted more than likely. This would however be a waste of time and no challenge whatsoever. I believe deeply in science and in "religion" and hate being told that the search for truth should exclude anything A Priori. My own personal experince tells me that I am not going to be able to plug myself into run the hot water heater as Wednesday suggested but the actual fact of increasing and stabilizing body and Psyche energy is real. 11 years of yoga and other practices show this clearly. Other serious practitioners of eastern religions can likely testify to this as well. Whether or not they are willing or able to reinterpret their experiences in terms of science I don't know. There are lots of attempts at fusions which are dissed as quasiscientific fuzzy headedness.

When science says I am just a piece of rock and dead is dead and moral values are completely relative I know intuitively that it is BS. On the other hand most will doubt the usefulness of stone age fundamentalism(back to Kansas or Afgahanistan) in modern society. However morality and ethics in business, government and science are needed. A scientist can gain much by a deep belief in God(before he starts saying "Gee whiz lets make a new type of neutron bomb") without becoming an idiot. The religious person can win very much by being open to a deeper understanding of the mechanical working of the world around him without losing wonder and respect for the whole and/or his faith(as if a seven day creation story were any more credible than Santa Claus and should not be seen in historical perspective of who wrote it).

The popular PO quote is "Deal with reality or reality will deal with you". I think it is obviously our bad theoretical framework of reality which has gotten humanity into the current situation. If we have a new theoretical construct which fits actual reality more accurately(the intuitive human reality as well as the perceived matrialistic reality) just as Einstein's theory contained Newton's theory as a subset within it survival will be more likely for humanity. I believe the proposed theory contains scientific materialism and current religion advanced religious thought without exclusivity either way.

[jsb1969]

"I think it is obviously our bad theoretical framework of reality which has gotten humanity into the current situation..."

So many thoughts you have, galacticsurfer.

Thoughts are the birdshit on a windsheild, let them go, wipe them off. As Betty the android said in 'Blade Runner', "All the things I have seen; these shall be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die."

Practice dying, galacticsurfer.

[BrownDog]

I agree that a poor framing of issues prevents understanding, galacticsurfer. You talk about many things that make more sense when you don't try to frame reality as either 'this' or 'that'. I think that is the point of a koan, with it's seeming contradictions, to make us think without such framing.

[BrownDog]

jsb1969, regarding facing death, it seems strange to fear it so much, when we know it's inevitable. Holding onto that fear seems to me to be a big distraction, which ironically keeps us from finding that radiance of which you speak.

[jsb1969]

You don't fear death? I might disagree. Facing death can be a tool, a practice. Believe it or not, you are dying. Do it well.

[mekrob]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Omnitir', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'y')es, of course, radiance. humans think they are diamonds, but they're really just old chunks of coal.

[galacticsurfer]

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
but thanks to God, who gives us the victory by our Lord Jesus Christ. 1. Corinthians 15:55-57

So I get the Christian ideas better than eastern ideas and they are more widespread in west so I will put arguments in those terms to cross cultures/communicate better.

We all die and have no need to fear this as it is inevitable(although in point of fact an illusion/maya).

We fear the bad we have done, our sins, negative karma, upon death. These bad things are dictated by what society says is bad. We are not free/enlightened from social pressure, from sin until we are enlightened(have Christ consciousness).

Despite all of this being an illusion the communication with the lower levels of reality are necessary, otherwise we(and Jesus, Buddha,etc) would never have been incarnated. These holy saints wanted to tell us poor fearful animals there is another stronger reality, that we are in a dream of our own making and to free us from this.

Ok, fine. As a culture we broke from the past completely. practically on the official level scienctific materialism is God. This has to change. However we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater as the scientists did to religion. Integration of body and soul are important if humanity has any long term chance on planet earth(as God must want if he put us here. However there are two arguments against this survival. One is religious(It's an illusion, we all die, who cares-typical in India) and the second is materialistic(eat drink and be merry, tomorrow we die-stereotypical USA materialism). Both are just as bad as each other. Sri Aurobindo believed in human evolution through spirituality. I am sure the more connected we are with God the more we see the big picture and tend to blend neither part of it out(spiritaualist or materialist).

Energy and the diamond(or rainbow or golden) body discussed in esoteric circles is the transformation possible of the physical biological body through spirituality. In previous eras this information was secret, passed on by gurus to individual pupils over years of intense practice. Now it is more widespread but new age rip off artists and con men are everywhere like used car salesmen.

Obviously indian religion and culture has persisted while for example Egyptian religion disappeared as it was not passed on. I presume that pure scientific materialism as practiced in the west has no long term future without a much deeper and more genuine spiritual component.