PROTOCOL

The most insidious crime being committed on the planet today is being committed every moment of every day in every corner of the planet by virtually everyone.  It is a crime of such magnitude that it dwarfs Armageddon.  It is a crime promoted as noble and honorable and, yes, virtuous by virtually all academicians, philosophers and ministers of every ilk...even so-called enlightened ones.  It  is the crime of mass genocide being committed in every so-called civilized society against everyone within its reach it is the crime committed under innocent sounding names: Protocol, Propriety, Normality.

It is the crime of imposing boundaries, limitations, social pressures, on what man may or may not do, ought or not do, how he should or should do it, when he should or should not do it, with whom he should or should not do it. Decorum, civility, custom, tradition, decency, correctness, niceness, appropriateness, rightness are the words used most frequently to ensnare a gullible public into bondage.

It begins within minutes of birth.  The newborn's body is washed and cleansed and swathed in a blanket.

"It's a girl.  We need a pink blanket."

"What do you want to call her?"

 "Alex."
 "Isn't that a boy's name?"

"I'd like to hold her."
"It's normal for a newborn to be first held and cuddled by the mother."

And it continues till death.


It is a killer crime because it is rooted in the nonrecognition and ever more frequently, outright denial, of a key and fundamental aspect of man's life's nature:  Man has free will, the glorious power to choose what to do.  Every restraint, every limitation, imposed on man's actions kills his life to one`extent or another.  You know this from your own experience.  Every single time your freedom to move through life as you choose is limited, you feel bothered, stressed, annoyed, angry.  As you should.  If anything is normal, it is that reaction to an imposed restraint.

Another killer aspect of this crime is its denial of reality.  Its goal is to make us all the same, or at least more the same than we naturally are.  But we are in fact all different, are we not?  No two of us precisely the same.  Different perspectives, different degrees of feelings, different ideas.  This crime thinks that undeniable truth is irrelevant.  This crime also kills the excitements of life and generates boredom by restraining spontaneity, by placing feelings and desires on the back burner.  Rather than ennobling man, it emasculates him, as it bit by bit destroys his identity...as we destroy the beautiful identity of wild animals when we cage them in a`zoo.

That all of this is done in the name of raising the quality of life in modern day societies, is potent evidence of our total ignorance of and total blindness to the consequences of what we are doing:  the imminent destruction of civilization.
  
Years ago I wrote that if man wishes to live life to the fullest he must live it as a sovereign man, unshackled from the will of others.  There is no other way.

FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness is a religion-contrived notion designed to further the well-being of...religion.

Like it or not, the past cannot be changed.  What was, was.  And if what was per se, naturally, carried implications and consequences, nothing we do today can change that.  Sorry.  You broke the vase.  It was broken.  

Religions do not recognize that fact of life.  Forgive, they preach, and you will be forgiven.  By whom?  The ultimate judge.  God.

Well, to avoid God's not forgiving you for your sin with heaven knows what penalties in store for you, say these prayers, be contrite, ask for absolution, give of your wealth to the religion...for only religion can save you.  Aka, you need religion and it is in your interest to further its well-being.  The ultimate penalty awaiting you sinner? Eternity in hell.  Better to pay now, no?

The necessary precursor to this fundraising charade is religion's setting standards of behavior for every facet of your life, and denoting your failures to abide by those standards as mortal sins.  At last count, there were over 630 of them in the Old and New Testaments.  Hard to keep all of them in mind, isn't it?

To reinforce the benefits of contributing to the religion, it came up with another bit of folderol: "It's better to give than receive".  No, it's not, and we've all known that since we were infants.  It's better to receive, to have more than you had before, to feel loved.  If it's better to give, why don't religions give away, rather than horde, their wealth?

And perhaps the biggest religion-promoted nonsense is that sex is dirty and should be experienced only for the purpose of having children (thus more people to contribute), only after marriage (thus more fees for marital services), and never for pleasure (thus making almost all of us sinners needing religious cleansing).

Heaven help us.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

SHAME

"You should feel ashamed for what you did (or failed to do)?"

No you shouldn't.

Shame is an emotion...a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.  But it is a misbegotten emotion, predicated as it is on the failure to acknowledge two fundamental aspects of man's nature:

     (1)  man has free will, and

     (2)  man always acts to enrich his life.

People feel ashamed when they haven't lived up to a behavior standard (generally set for them by other people).  But standards of future behavior are but goals, not chains of bondage.  As such, they are subject to the following facts of life:

*  every personal goal entails time to reach
*  the future is not yet reality
*  you are not yet the person you will be in the future

*  until a goal is reached it has not been reached
*  your free will cannot be programmed by others or even by you
*  your failure to act in accordance with a standard may be evidence that the standard is an incorrect or undesirable one
*  humans`are not omniscient.

Any reason to punish yourself with shame?  Only if you ignore one or more of these realities and choose to answer Shakespeare's question this way:  "Both.  I want to both be and not be...human".

EXPECTATIONS

A young woman gives birth to a baby girl.  At 6 months, the baby gets ill and is taken to a hospital. The young mother waits nervously while her baby is being ministered to by a physician.  After awhile, the physician emerges from the examination room and tells her that her baby has died.  The young woman is distraught.  The physician asks if she would like to see her daughter, to touch her for the last time.  She nods yes and goes into the examination room.  Tears filling her eyes, she holds her daughter's hand.  Fifteen minutes pass.  Suddenly, a cough.  Her daughter has coughed.  And again.  She screams, the physician rushes into the room, disbelievingly checks the baby's heart and cries, "Alive, she is alive."  Can you imagine the mother's euphoric joy?  The totally ecstatic consuming joy.   Her precious daughter is alive.

Did you feel euphoric when you woke up this morning?  Likely not.  Why not?  Like the baby, you are alive, are you not?  Well, you may think, the situations are different: when you went to sleep last night, you expected to be alive in the morning, and so finding yourself alive was not euphoric the way it was for the young mother to learn her daughter was alive.  True. 

And what does that tell us?  The expected is not as bliss generating as the unexpected.  Finding a $5 bill on the street produces more excitement, more pleasure, than getting a regular $1,000 weekly paycheck.   We  buy lottery tickets knowing that should the unexpected happen and we win despite the unbelievably horrendous odds against us, it will be the most euphoric moment of our life.

In every aspect of our life, the unexpected has more impact on us than does the expected.  Positively or negatively.  Is that not why we feel more dismay when the car unexpectedly won't start in the morning than the pleasure we feel (if any) when it does start for the 500th consecutive time?

The irony is that as humans, we have the wonderful capacity to think ahead, to anticipate what might go wrong, and to microplan our endeavors, our lives.   All of which increases the likelihood of our succeeding and our expectations coming true...and, as is crystal clear, decreases our pleasure and bliss, and may even produce a bit of ho-hum, when they do.

The lesson?  Don't think it all out in advance, don't dot all the i's and cross all the t's.  Throw a bit of  forethought, a bit of preparation, a bit of caution to the wind.  Wing it some.  It might just set your spirits soaring!

CLEAN SLATES

It is generally agreed that a newborn comes into the world with a clean mental slate...knowing nothing, having no opinions or beliefs, its mind ripe to be fed.  And that during its life, it fills the slate with every thought it has and every action it takes.  True to a point.

What that view fails to recognize is that we each have free will as to what we think and believe...that we are not bound by what is presently on the slate.  Haven't you ever done that:  completely altered your mind about some thing or someone?  Is that not tantamount to erasing the tape, reversing it back to a clean one, and inscribing something new on it?  And if that is so, and it is, is it not more accurate to say that when we choose to think or do something, we do so onto a clean slate: either affirming (in a sense, rewriting) what was on the slate, or erasing what was on it and inscribing something new?  In either case, passing through a clean slate phase.

Is it important to think of it that way? Yes.  That perspective repeatedly reminds us that we are forever free to choose the course of our lives, to make it what we will, not bound to the past or to current social mores, and that, to paraphrase the words of William Ernest Henley in Invictus, "I am the only writer on my slate".  That perspective prods us to recognize the multitude of choices we have every day of our lives with regard to so many things, and that awareness feeds our sense of the magnificence of human life.

REGRETS

"Say you're sorry for what you did...or didn't do.  That'll fix things and so-and-so will feel better".  All destructive nonsense.

Whatever you say or do has zero effect on the past.  Can you in any way change the past?  The past is not here, gone, over.  It cannot be fixed or changed.  And you didn't do or not do it.  You didn't live in the past and you don't live in the future.  You live only this moment.  And it's gone.  This moment.  Gone.  This moment.  Gone, gone, gone.  Are you responsible for what "you" did when you were 5 years old?  10 years old?  Any wonder New Year's resolutions are generally soon broken?  The you that made them on December 31 is not the you that is alive on January 15. Is your body the same?  No, it changes every moment.  Is your mind the same?  No, it is constantly learning new matters, forgetting things, changing beliefs and perspectives and positions.  Are your emotions the same?  Not necessarily.  So in what way are you and you the same?

And saying you are sorry makes who feel better?  Who is it that you owe an apology to?  What type of person feels good because you feel bad?  And you will feel bad because regret confesses guilt and responsibility and unworthiness and is the progenitor of lowered self-esteem.

Today, saying you are sorry is not enough.  They have upped the ante.  You must be "very sorry", you must acknowledge that you must have been totally crazy or an idiot (to have done what you didn't do...you weren't alive then, you are only alive now). You must be contrite, pay penitence, and chomp around beating your chest and barking "mea culpa, mea culpa".  Problem is:  you're not the mea.

The past and the future are not reality.  Reality is only what is.  And you are responsible only for what you do in the is.

 Isn't that so?

HAPPINESS

Happiness can only be found in reality.  What is in your imagination may be pleasant to think about, but it is not in reality and cannot make you happy.  The same is true of memories.  They may seem more able to make you happy because they were once real, but, alas, they are no longer part of reality.  Happiness stems from "is" not "was" or "may be" or even "will be.".

Happiness is not a requirement for life.  One can survive and live quite well, be successful in business, have a good family and good friends, without being happy.  We are not born happy, or unhappy.   We do not acquire happiness from anyone or anything outside ourselves.  If that were true, it would be much more common for people to be happy than it presently is. 

Happiness is not merely a psychological state that exists solely in our minds, or solely in our emotions, as commonly perceived.  It exists in every fiber and part of our being. It is manifested in every heart beat, in every breath we take.  It is life itself. 

Happiness is not something we need to acquire.  Unfortunately, we have been led to believe that that is so, and most of us seek it in all the wrong places.  If we are alive, it is already resident within us, within the wondrous and beautiful life within us.  There are not five steps or ten steps to happiness. There is but one:  to recognize and sense it through our awareness, which far transcends what we know through our five senses.  It is in our mind and body and spirit and soul.

It is You...and it is there for you to be.

ASPIRE

We have been taught from the beginning to aspire, to desire, to covet, to crave, to hope for…things, position, power.  We have been told that aspiration is a prerequisite to success.  We have been led to believe that happiness comes from the attainment of our desires, our aspirations.

We have been taught and told wrong.

We aspire for what we do not have, what we perceive as necessary for our well-being and self-esteem.  If the aspiration is driven from within ourselves, then it is bred from a belief that we are incomplete.  And that belief is the source of psychological suffering.  If the aspiration is driven from without, rooted in a belief that we do not measure up to others, that we are not worthy because we do not meet social standards,  then it is an insatiable aspiration, for there are and will always be others who have more.  Either aspiration fixes our attention on what we don’t have rather than on what we do have. 

And the unassailable consequence is unhappiness.  Do we not see so many, including ourselves, who have so much yet are still unhappy?It is deprivation that flips the switch…for when we have less, and desire less, we value more what we do have, and that is the true root of happiness.

If man aspires to build a castle, he should do so not because he believes he cannot be happy without one, but because it is an expression of his recognition of the glorious and wondrous and beauteous everything he already has:  Life.

DESIRES

Man is desire driven.    Every action he takes every waking moment is fueled by desire.  Even his sleeping time can be said to be driven by his desire to be well-rested, to be more alert, to be more energetic, the next day.  Man is the only life species with free will, and it is that aspect of his nature that empowers his desires.  Man is free to choose which desires he wishes to pursue, and the extent to which and how he will pursue them.

  

When he attains a desire, man experiences a measure of contentment, of satisfaction, and of pride.  When he fails, or perceives himself as failing, in attaining a desire, he feels a measure of ineptitude and discontent.   The frequency and scope and importance of his successful and unsuccessful desire attainments play a significant role in his overall happiness or unhappiness.

It is critical in your desire to learn about desires that you recognize that virtually no desire is a solitary one, though it may be perceived as the ultimate one.  Rather, each desire must be seen as but one of a related package of desires…and that one unsuccessful desire within that package may preclude the attainment of any other desire in the package.

For example, you desire to be rich.  That can be perceived as your ultimate desire.  To attain it, you must also have the desire to choose your method of attaining it, the desire to invest the time and energy and money it will take to attain it, the desire to risk failure and to bear possible ridicule and loss of self esteem, etc.  The attainment of your ultimate desire is dependent to a great extent on your attainment of each of the other desires in its package.

At the beginning, as an infant, man’s desires are few: food to satisfy hunger, affection to ease pain.  As man grows older, the number and complexity of his desires increases geometrically, to the point that it is likely difficult or him to identify all of them.  There may be subconscious psychological pressures that hide certain desires from himself.  He may have desires that, to a degree, conflict, or to him seem to conflict, with each other:  he may wish to be both just and compassionately forgiving, assertive and cooperative, spiritual and rational, independent minded and just one of the boys.  He may keep certain desires secret from family and friends because he believes they would not approve of them.  He may have unremitting desires that he knows are immoral and improper.  He may not be certain whether his desires are thoughtful or emotion driven.

Magnifying the problem is the fact that little or no attention is given in our educational systems to the whole issue of desire, though critical to the shaping of your own personal identity, and vital to your quest for happiness.  Desires are often relegated to the “too personal to reveal” list.

Overrun with desires propelling him in various directions, it is understandable for a man to step on the brakes, and just drift unproductively aimlessly. Or, to discard his desires, or at least to stack them away, and accept society’s desires as his own.  Society is willing, nay anxious, to tell him which desires he ought have and how and when he ought pursue them.  Social proprieties, normalities and conventions replace his true desires.  Is it any wonder that so many are stressed and discontented with life, uncertain of who they really are and what they truly want out of life…the path to fulfillment and happiness hidden from view?

The journey to a new and better life, more satisfying life, begins as it did in infancy…with a clean slate.  On that slate we must list our life’s desires, slowly, specifically, carefully, clearly.  For it is those desires that are of preeminent importance in shaping the quality and value of our life.  The truer, the deeper, those desires are, and the loyalty we have toward them, the greater the likelihood of our attaining them.  They must never be surrendered to the desires of others, nor relegated to a position of unimportance.  Compatible desires  are the cornerstone of all successful human relationships: marital, business, social.   Your chosen desires must, each moment, be given the honor and prestige of which they are truly deserving.

THE U.S. WHAT?

What word means regulate, command, direct, manage, supervise, discipline, wield authority, restrain, prohibit, curb, bridle, dominate, run, decide, hold at bay?

Govern

And what word is not found once in the original U.S. Constitution?

Government

ON THE BRINK

How foolish can we all be?

A father involved in a custody suit throws his 3-year old son off the top of a`50-story high rise, and then jumps off himself.  Four thugs stole a young man's car in a NJ mall, and killed him for no reason.  These`are not isolated cases.  THEY HAPPEN EVERY DAY, EVERYWHERE.

Politics has taken over our newspapers and radio and tv news stations.  You would think that everything will be just rosy if we get Obamacaare and NSA surveillance problems resolved.  Thems the only two problems we have.

But 'taint so.  We are living in stressed-out times that affect all of us.  We have more and are enjoying it less.  Racial hatreds seem at an all time high.  Gangs are more commonly to be seen on city streets.  Violence between people, between nations, is every day headlines. Nuclear war rhetoric is common.  Lying at the highest levels of government is prevalent.

We have lost our moral bearing, and our heads are in the sand.  I do not know if civilization itself is threatened, but it may be.

We need a renaissance. or we will all pay...some how, some way.

And we need it quickly.

THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

There are a thousand glib sayings about time...about how time is the master of our lives, about how not to kill time or it will kill you, etc., etc.  But there is one that to me says it all. It was said by Israel Gevant, the greatest, in my mind, unknown philosopher:

      "The best time to do something you want to do is when you are alive."

In the misbegotten name of progress, we humans, we of the super-animal intelligence, have enslaved ourselves to Time.  We are a clock-driven species.  We waken by the clock, we sleep by the clock, we work and eat and play by the clock.  We have come to generally agree that now is not the right time to do this, you must wait for the right time, the best time, the only time.

When we bought into the Industrial Revolution for the benefits it promised, we paid for them with the currency they were not worth:  our time.   Don't want to work today?  But you must or you will lose your job...that is, your freedom to choose how to spend the time of your life.  And without the job, what have you?  Our ancient forebears were smart.  They had no jobs, other than to go out and do their hunting/gathering thing when they wanted to, with whom they wanted to, where they wanted to, for as long as they wanted to.  The common denominator:  wanted to.  How many people want to go to work?  I have often wondered why primitive tribes dance and chant a lot, and seem happy with so little.  Error.  They have a lot...of time to do what they want to do.

Unshackle your life from the bondage of time...and begin to enjoy the time of your life.

THE SHAME OF GETTYSBURG

RAPTURE: ARISTOTLE

THE RAPTURE OF BEAUTY EXPANDS THE HORIZONS OF OUR SOUL

IN ALL THINGS OF NATURE, THERE IS SOMETHING OF THE MARVELOUS 

HIGH CRIME

So, the deputy consul general of the Indian delegation to the U.N was arrested the other day, strip-searched and held in a cell with drug addicts. She has claimed diplomatic immunity; the U.S. says immunity does not apply to non-diplomatic functions.  Her alleged crime: filing a visa form saying she was paying her Indian housekeeper in New York the minimum wage when, in fact, she was paying her less $3/hr.  India is irate about the way she was treated, and has revoked certain privileges accorded U.S. diplomats in India.  The U.S. says she was treated no differently than any other accused.  The potential sentence if she is found guilty: 15 years in prison.

1.  Get the U.N. out of the U.S. and the U.S. out of the U.N.  It is a useless organization and it subjects America to international laws we ought not be subject to.

2.  Diplomatic immunity is unconscionable.  Foreign diplomats have literally gotten away with murder under its irrational protection.  The only reason we accord it to foreign diplomats here is to get the same protection for our diplomats in foreign countries.  Stupidity to match stupidity.  If our diplomats would not otherwise be treated fairly and with justice, we shouldn't send them there.  And if a foreign national commits a crime here, he ought be prosecuted and punished as any American would be.

3.  We ought have no minimum wage.  It is a clear violation of freedom.  An adult ought be free to work for whatever wage he or she wishes...and is an unconstitutional intrusion of the government in the economy.

4.  Strip searches may be appropriate for those accused of crimes involving the use of force, but not for the nonviolent crime alleged here.

5.  Fifteen years for "underpaying" the minimum wage.  Must be a damn serious offense that threatens the very survival of our country!

The whole thing is a pile of horseradish...or something.

RESPECT 101

So, the high school senior walked up behind his teacher and hugged her for a moment. It appears from the video that another faculty member was in the room.  The teacher says he had done that before and she had warned him that he  would be punished if he did it again.  The student denies the prior incident.  The school suspended the student and postponed his graduation for a year.

A lurking error in the story.  If, in fact, there had been a`prior incident, the teacher should have reported it to the school, and the school should have set up a meeting with the student's parents.  The object being to teach the student respect for other people's lives, and the consequences of inappropriate behavior.  That ought be a part of the school's curriculum, ought it not?  Learning why each of us is entitled to peaceful co-existence is a critical prelude to civilization.  If the student then repeats the offense, punishment is warranted.  A one year suspension seems a bit excessive, but punishment is not calculable by a mathematical formula.

When two young men at a mall in New Jersey yesterday wantonly shot a young man in the head and killed him for no apparent reason, it is clear that they too had not learned respect for other people's lives.  The Pythagorean theorem alone doesn't teach it.

RAPTURE: ELIZE and AMIRA

THE RAPTURE OF BEAUTY EXPANDS THE HORIZONS IN OUR SOUL

RAPTURE: THE HIMALAYAS

THE RAPTURE OF BEAUTY EXPANDS THE HORIZONS IN OUR SOUL

THE SIX QUESTIONS

Where was the guard at that Colorado High School?

Is there a guard today at that school?

Is there a guard at every school in the country?

Has the principal of that school been fired?

Are you going to send your child to an unguarded school?

Who made that shotgun available to the shooter?

A PALTRY 3 BILLION

Every .................  (second, minute, hour, day), the federal government spends $35,000 more than it takes in.

second

Sounds like a lot but its only 3 billion a day, what's the fuss about?