Beware the Pure Spirit, Let the Flesh Instruct the Mind

This was an article that was a requirement for my Ethics class in CJCR 5005. I enjoyed the class taught by Dr. Braswell and I have incorporated this article in my COBH 3330 course.  Feelings and Perceptions                 I was very glad to see Thich Nhat Hanh as the author of one of the selections in this course book.  I have had the pleasure of reading articles written by the author and had wondered if he would be included in the discussion of nonviolence.  The article included here is a goldmine.                He begins by discussing the challenge of perception. What we often see is not often add up to true perception. For example, we never see the sun as it truly is. We see the sun always through the past as it takes over 8 minutes for the sunlight to travel the immense distance from its surface to our planet....

My mid morning nourishment for my atman - this speaks to me rather loudly today. Are we addicted? Cultivating addiction? Should we replace weed with tobacco, or tobacco with weed? Water with wine, wine with water? Sugar with honey or agave? Meat with tofu? Ridding ourselves of toxins, is that it? Ridding ourselves of the unwanted, the undesirable, the unhealthy? Are your thoughts simply an echo of how you feel? Are your feelings as good as thoughts? Can you distinguish between the two? ~ Saul Williams The Answer to the Question that Wings Ask 

The following excerpt is from a policy paper that I wrote several years ago when beginning my doctoral studies. Times have changed for the better in some instances. Still, I should definitely reacquaint myself with changes and challenges still facing this important issue... Evaluation of the Policy             The  U. S.  federal government currently spends million of dollars to fund AOE programs, programs which present little or no scientific evidence related to efficacy. In other words, taxpayer dollars are being used to fund programs that have not been proven effective. The  U.S.  continues to lead the industrialized world in teen births and in STD infections for youth. Studies conducted on AOE curricula have found false and/or misleading information about the effectiveness of contraceptives, false information about abortions, blurred the distinctions between religion and science, reinforced gend...

My A. konjac's are now in full bloom and ready to have sex. The flies are a swarmin' and the stench is noticeable. These are beautiful plants. I think they knew it was Earth Day

Winged Deer Park today

Some thoughts that I had to submit for a past class:  Each of us is ultimately alone. From my perspective, this is true. Ultimately, we are left to ourselves and can only understand, control, and learn in relation to ourselves. We interact with others, love others, build lives with others, but at the end of the day, we are alone unto ourselves. We must live with the choices we have made, we can truly only depend on ourselves.  We come into this world on our own and we leave by ourselves.  The only thing that we can honestly know is the self. There is only the self.  All of our experiences, sensations are filtered through and interpreted our own self and thus the only thing we can be sure of is what we sense. This may be slightly or greatly different from how others perceive.  One thing that all of us share, is that we are all alone.  We can be lonely side by side; we hide from ourselves and our aloneness with one another. From Spamalot, the musical b...

Come on... tomorrow is YOUR day. Who else is ready for the Spring Equinox?

Fundamentalism – whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim – rarely arises from a battle with an external enemy. It usually begins, instead, as an internal struggle in which traditionalists fight their  own coreligionists who they believe are making too many concessions to the secular world. The fundamentalists will often instinctively respond to encroaching modernity by creating an enclave of pure faith. Pentecostalism can be seen as a grassroots rebellion against the modern cult of reason. The astonishing achievements of scientific rationalism had made the idea of god incredible and impossible for many Westernized people, since it had gone hand in hand with a suppression of the old mythical consciousness.  Fundamentalism is a spirituality that reveals almost ungovernable fear which  can only be assuaged by the meticulous preservation of old boundaries, the erection of new barriers, a rigid segregation, and a passionate  adherence to the values of traditio...

A retreat from the world earlier this week. Much needed time for rest, reflection, and relaxation.

I'm always interested in what happens with in/out grouping amongst various groups. Karen Armstrong offers the following that caught my attention yesterday. The quote is lengthy but for me, it was important to put this in its proper context. "A tightly knit and isolated community however, can develop an exclusivity that ostracizes others . In Asia Minor a number of Jewish-Christian communities, who traced their origins to the ministry of Jesus’s apostle, John, had developed a different view of Jesus . Paul and the Synoptics had never regarded Jesus as God; the very idea would have horrified Paul who, before his conversion, had been an exceptionally punctilious Pharisee. They all used the term “Son of God”  in the conventional Jewish sense: Jesus had been an ordinary human being  commissioned by God with a special task. Even in his exalted state, there was, for Paul, always a clear distinction between Jesus kyrios Christos  and God, his Father. The author of the Fourt...