Evolution's End

¡Hola! Everybody...
Last Sunday morning I heard applause right outside my window. When I looked, I realized I had forgotten all about the NYC marathon and that its path passed right by my block. It was amazing how many New Yorkers were out there exhorting the runners: “You can do!” “You’re looking great!” Others staffed Gatorade/ water tables, and others held up signs inscribed with positive affirmations. Only in New York...

* * *

-=[ Evolution’s End ]=-

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

I think people are under a false impression that I don’t watch TV. Actually, I watch tons of TV. My TV is on if I’m home. I watch a lot of garbage too: shit like Bones reruns!

I also think people are under a false sense of security, thinking that if they don’t watch TV that they’re immune to its influence. Nothing could be further from the truth: there’s a “cultural DNA” (memes) and unless you’ve been totally deprived you’re not immune from the larger external forces that shape our culture. From a biological perspective, our neurological systems are like feedback loops and we are shaped by our relationships in ways we have yet to fully explore. I actually think keeping yourself ignorant of what goes on the boob tube is probably not a good strategy.

I mean, we all like to think we’re different, or smarter, or whatever, but we’re not, we’re just like the next person in many respects, just as prone to social pressure as the average Jane. Doubt me? Well, I’m not in the mood to get all that deeply into it, but I’m sure you throw away more shit than you’re conscious of -- whether you want to or not. As a society, we let out a collective fart that’s choking the rest of the world. You consume to a disproportionate level compared to other people in the world. For example, we rationalize purchasing gas-guzzlers because “we have to drive the kids around,” or some such nonsense.

We drive to work when we can take public transportation. We are the target of an onslaught of messages (approximately 80,000 a day) that we’re barely aware of them. And all this shit seeps in. It’s not a matter whether we buy into it or not, but rather, the degree to which we have bought into these messages.

Please don’t intellectualize/ rationalize this fact thereby forcing me to cram it down your throat, ok?

I don’t think the Television Machine is necessarily an evil thing in and of itself. It’s when we become passive observers that it becomes an issue and that’s the aim of marketing -- to make us passive consumers. It’s good for the economy.

When my son was young, I would use TV to mine learning opportunities. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an opportunity to discuss a whole slew of interesting and relevant adolescent issues. Everything from peer pressure to the “horrors” of what it is to be a teenager in a postmodern world gone slightly mad. LOL

Watching TV, for my son became an opportunity to learn cultural studies and critical theory, except he didn’t know it. The commercials for drugs were the best. You know those commercials where there’s some woman in a filmy sun dress traipsing through a field of flowers (Claritin, maybe)? Then, towards the end of the commercial, there’s like a ten-second rapid-fire sotto voce disclaimer listing all these awful side effects? Like, anal leakage -- what the fuck is anal leakage?!!

I think what I was teaching my son (and myself) was necessary to be an active observer. I was teaching him how to form the correct questions, to be a critical thinker. In this sense, TV was a tool for learning and we were fully aware of what was going on at some larger cultural level and in that way were able to inoculate ourselves (to a degree!) from the mindless push to consume.

I dunno, maybe it’s the Tantric influence of which everything -- even what we consider negative -- can be utilized in the service of waking up. Shit, even fertilizer has its use, right? And isn’t waking up (not to be confused with analyzing, which is merely mental masturbation) -- isn’t waking up what it’s all about. Isn’t waking up evolution’s end?

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Imperfectly Perfect]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Catastrophes kill, social policies decimate...

* * *

-=[ Standing on the Verge ]=-

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better... and the catastrophe towards which the world is headed -- the ecological, social, demographic, or general breakdown of civilization -- will be unavoidable.

-- Vaclav Havel, joint session of the U.S. Congress, 1990

Truly, we don’t really live in the world, we live in the conversation we have about the world. Only we limit the shape and tenor of this conversation -- it is completely malleable. The world may or may not be a changeable place, but we have complete power over the conversation we engage about it. This is where genuine change happens, where health, safety, and love come about. This is the wellspring of compassion and forgiveness. This is where the future lives, where possibility and reality converge.

We live at a pivotal time in human history. On the one hand, we’re caught in a global thrall of an ego-centered paradigm, or what I call the Mini Me. The mini me is a state of mind marked by a painful sense of separation from others, a sense of lack, and an overwhelming experience of limitation, fear, and desire. We engage in all manner of activity in order to numb ourselves. We rush to consume in order to avoid our feelings. This is the trance of problem-based living, and though regarded as normal, it fuels a never-ending struggle. It seeps through the cracks of our armor and manifests itself as disease, conflict, and failure. From a global/ collective perspective, the Mini Me is expressed as war and economic and environmental madness.

This is no hell and damnation rant. Certainly there has been greater cruelty, inequality, and imperialism in our history, but up until now, it has always been localized to a tyrant here, a despot there. Hitler and Stalin may have yearned for global dominance and caused much destruction and suffering as a consequence, but ultimately their insanity was isolated. Today the cancer has become systemic rather than local. The dominant neoliberal paradigm of today affects everyone, everywhere.

We are all in this together, for better or worse.

On the other hand, there is an opposing, countervailing “emerging paradigm,” or force. We’re on the cusp of a major evolutionary quantum leap. If you look closely, there’s a movement afoot, a small movement, but a movement nonetheless. The head of a new human being is being pushed through, and its first faint cries can be heard. Yes, it is a dangerous time, but childbirth is dangerous and we are experiencing the birth of a new consciousness on earth. These dangers are part of the birthing process. We are riding the crest of a wave whose consequences are unimaginable, and which contains the only true basis for optimism for our planet and its inhabitants. On this edge we can already sense the possibility of a quality of life that has been seldom been dreamed of. But as with all evolutionary leaps, there is an inherent danger. If we fail to take advantage of this opportunity, we will become the first species to make ourselves extinct.

As I look with a broken heart at the consequences reverberating in Haiti today (and Katrina before), I realize that natural disasters kill, but social policies act as fate. Today, as in the past, poverty, corruption, apathy are doing more to kill than any earthquake or natural disaster ever could. Haiti should stand as a reminder that the threat to our world’s stability comes from a collective expression of greed, most sharply embodied by global corporations, which put the bottom line before integrity, profits before people.

Those opposing the current paradigm are quite possibly outnumbered or at least much less powerful, but we are increasingly motivated to act for social change. Will we see life as we know it mutilated beyond repair by corporate greed and fundamentalists bent on proving themselves right and the (made up) enemy-of-the-month wrong? Or have we finally arrived at the dawn of a collective shift into sanity? Here’s the kicker: there’s nothing to be gained twiddling your thumbs awaiting the ending of this Bond movie gone mad. The final pages of this script are still being written, and you and I have been handed the job of writing the last act...

Love,

Eddie

Thinking Outside the Box

¡Hola! Everybody...
Last night was one of those magical NYC nights. I took a road less taken and headed uptown after work and walked among the trees of Central park. Simply magical!

BTW, when did we become such a judgmental society, so quick to judge and slow to reflect? Lately, I see too many of you act as if you were all toilet trained at gunpoint...

* * *

-=[ Human Potential ]=-

We throw our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

-- Anonymous

I like to think that I have the mind of a scientist and the heart of the poet. I believe that only when we fuse the two that we arrive at true wisdom. Better put, wisdom is approximated at the intersection of the mind and heart -- when they become one. I’m not saying I am wise, just tryin’ to get me some integration up in this piece I call “Eddie.”

Without integration, we are blind our rational minds literally half-cocked. As blind in its obsession as the superstition it ridicules. Idolizing the power of reason does not banish the old passions and fears. It’s an illusion of control based on a myth of predictability. Our obsession for certainty grew out of a misunderstanding of science in its original sense. Science comes from the Latin scientia, knowing.

I know I’m losing you, but hold on for a moment. LOL!

Our ancestors spoke of “science and conscience” in one breath. They pronounced it “con science” (with knowledge). In ancient Latin conscientia meant knowledge with another person. In English, it came to mean “a knowledge of one’s inner truths,” or as the Oxford English Dictionary quotes, “deity in the bosom.”

What I call uncommon sense is science tempered by the heart. Rather, reason tempered by passion. This science is not the scientism we have made into a contemporary god. Our inordinate obsession with mindless materialism threatens, well, our material existence. Take, for example, the unquestioned assumption of the power of free markets to alleviate social ills. Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that there is no such thing as a “free” market: all markets are supported by government institutions. This allegiance to free market ideology is something similar to a superstition. A superstition that demands that only that which generates economic growth is worth doing undermines our sense of responsibility to our communities, to the environment, and to our quality of life. An awakened consciousness would tell us there is something terribly wrong with this form of thinking.

We have to wake up...

We have to become aware of the dysfunctional behavior patterns and that keep us locked in stupidity. Our ability to wake ourselves is more vital to our future than anything on our political agendas. Our intuitive sense tells us that specific problems all revolve a few core issues:

Can we become kinder, more rational beings?

Can our intelligence be enhanced?

Can we transcend the boundaries of our ego-centered goals and see the bigger picture?

Visionaries throughout history have debated the issue of human potential. Revolutionary philosophers have argued that “ordinary” people are potentially smarter and better than they’re cracked up to be. I tend to agree.

Today, the issue of human potential is literally life and death for our species. In the Middle Ages, sailors refused to travel beyond a certain point because they feared falling off the edge of the earth. Today, we have a similar counterpart: some call it a “Flat-Earth Psychology, an assumption about human limitations. On the other hand, there is also a human potential movement. Just as in the olden days, there were people who knew the earth was round and dared to journey past human-created limitations; today there are small groups of people with the daring to have visions. Visionary thinking in uncommon sense in action. Vision is an imagined goal that serves to organize our intelligence and set fire to our reason. Vision sees beyond limitations and prepares us to grasp the larger picture -- the world beyond this road.

The ability to see the possible and how to get there is the human potential for evolution and social progress. Vision is the cutting edge of human intelligence. Throughout history our ability to think experimentally -- or “out the box” -- has shaped us. What separated our Paleolithic ancestors was their remarkable ability for creativity and inventiveness.

I can’t help but think that there are forces today that, as one conservative pundit proudly proclaimed ‘sit athwart history.” Those very same forces that dismissed John F. Kennedy when he demanded we put a man on the moon before ten year’s time. That is exactly the kind of vision we need today, but we have become a nation of fools too enamored of ideological dogma. We need to wake up before it’s too late.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [The New Mythology]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I spent a pleasant eve with a good friend last night. Soon summer will awaken from its doldrums and leave us at that precise moment we most need change...

* * *

-=[ The Old Gods ]=-

The old gods are dead or dying...

I’ll start with a brief story. One day a group my leadership develop workshop graduates came to me with a problem. It seems they were concerned about a spike in gun violence and drug activity around their housing. What’s interesting is that this group was composed exclusively of men and women who had been formerly incarcerated. They wanted to do something about what was happening where they lived.

Ask me some day to tell you about that story. The important part here was that here was a group of men and women who had previously didn’t have a functional connection to their community or to social institutions. In fact, they were often the ones committing crimes, selling drugs, shooting guns. What had changed was that they now felt a part of rather than apart from. They had a stake in their community and wanted to feel safe and enjoy some measure of serenity and safety.

There’s an important lesson to be learned from that experience. Part of that lessons lies in the challenge to the assumption that punishment is a just response to failures in economics and education. The other part, the one I will concentrate on today, is about connection and spirituality. We have lived too long believing that our essential self is disconnected from our ecology.

Our religions seem to have gotten it wrong when it comes to our relationship to the earth. Those among us who have a relatively large forebrain have no doubt that the scientific story of evolution is true. Perhaps evolution can help us with an upgrade of our collective metaphysics. Haven’t we gone long enough believing that our purpose and our salvation lie somewhere outside the life we are now living?

Look around at the wreckage of our past and the ecological wreckage we are creating now. The only logical conclusion is that they old beliefs are dysfunctional. They rob the divine from the earth and place it in some other kingdom, in the process taking away the reverence of this life. Our major religions regard earth as little more than a training ground, a glob of mud where we come to learn a few lessons, or burn off some karma, or get saved by a messiah, or some other bullshit. The general idea is that once we’re gone from this little piece of greenery we can all go off to some kind of spiritual Club Med, where we truly belong, and enjoy the happily ever after of our old myths.

Wouldn’t it serve us better if we brought out spiritual attention to the earth? Perhaps we could then learn, as my leaders did, to feel a part of the life in this planet and in that way seek to take better care of our environment. I see many of you concentrating on witch-hunts, looking for rapists and pedophiles on the internet, for example. You want to make the internet safe for your children you blab. However, the fact is that the vast majority of you don’t give a fuck that we -- you and I -- are destroying our children’s birthright of a sane and safe earth. You will buy that gas-guzzler; you will blissfully pollute this planet and smoke cigarettes; you will spread deadly chemicals on the lawns your children play on and not give one fuck about it and the theft you're committing. If we were to bring our sense of the divine to this earthly existence, we just might find more joy in living in the here and now rather than waiting for a hereafter.

The story of evolution can offer us many gifts usually glommed from religion. It teaches us humility, liberates us from our narcissistic drama, presenting us instead with as much awe and wonder as any bible. Instead of resisting its truth, maybe we should be mining the story of evolution for whatever spiritual gems it offers, learning our role in the grand scheme of things.

So, stop it: stop looking for some high God-in-the-sky to punish or reward you. Those are old tales created in olden times. Those gods are dead... or dying. Drop your gaze at the wonder of this Earth and all the wonders she offers us. Celebrate Nature, the instrument of our creation and most obvious of all of our gifts.

Love,

Eddie

Evolution's End

¡Hola! Everybody...
A repost... Here’s to a great week.

* * *

-=[ Evolution’s End ]=-

“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

I think people are under a false impression that I don’t watch TV. Actually, I watch tons of TV. My TV is on if I’m home. I watch a lot of garbage too: shit like Miami Vice reruns!

I also think people are under a false sense of security, thinking that if the don’t watch TV that they’re excluded from its influence. Nothing could be further from the truth: there’s a “cultural DNA” (memes) and unless you’ve been totally deprived you’re not immune from the larger external forces that shape our culture. I actually think keeping yourself ignorant of what goes on the boob tube is probably not a good strategy.

I mean, we all like to think we’re different, or smarter, or immune, but we’re not, we’re just like the next person in many respects, just as prone to social pressure as the average Jane. Doubt me? Well, I'm not in the mood to get all that deeply into it, but I’m sure you throw away more shit than you’re conscious of -- whether you want to or not. As a society, we let out a collective fart that’s choking the rest of the world. You consume to a disproportionate level compared to other people in the world. For example, we rationalize purchasing gas-guzzlers because “we have to drive the kids around,” or some such nonsense.

We drive to work when we can take public transportation. We are the target of so many messages -- about 80,000 a day -- that we’re barely aware of them. And all this shit seeps in. It’s not a matter whether we buy into it or not, but rather, the degree to which we have bought into these messages.

Please don’t intellectualize/ rationalize this fact thereby forcing me to cram it down your throat, ok?

I don’t think the Television is necessarily an evil thing in and of itself. It’s when we become passive observers that it becomes an issue and that’s the aim of marketing -- to make us passive consumers. It’s good for the economy.

When my son was young, I would use TV as learning opportunities. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an opportunity to discuss a whole slew of interesting and relevant adolescent issues. Everything from peer pressure to the “horrors” of what it is to be a teenager in a postmodern world gone slightly mad. LOL

Watching TV, for my son became an opportunity to learn cultural studies and critical theory, except he didn’t know it! The drug commercials were the best. You know those commercials where there’s some woman in a filmy sun dress traipsing through a field of flowers (Claritin, maybe)? Then, towards the end of the commercial, there’s like a ten-second rapid-fire sotto voce disclaimer listing all these awful side effects? Like, anal leakage -- what the fuck is anal leakage?!?!

I think what I was teaching my son (and myself) was to be active observer. I was teaching him how to form the correct questions, to be a critical thinker. In this sense, TV was a tool for learning and we were fully aware of what was going on at some larger cultural level and in that way were able to inoculate ourselves -- to a degree! -- from the mindless push to consume.

I dunno, maybe it’s the influence of Tantric practice in which everything -- even what we consider negative -- can be utilized in the service of waking up. Shit, even fertilizer has its use, right? And isn’t waking up (not to be confused with analyzing, which is merely mental masturbation) -- isn’t waking up what it’s all about.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Yo Momma! and Evolution)

¡Hola! Everybody...
I love disagreement. In fact, I think disagreement is really cool. I love when an individual who has taken the time to understand my position disagrees with me. The thing is this: if you show no evidence that you understand my premise then you cannot disagree.

Let me repeat: If you don’t understand something, you cannot disagree with it.

And no, cutting-and-pasting cherry-picked studies without offering your synopsis of said study does not count as an intelligent dialog. It’s actually quite stupid. And the irony is that those who practice that shit the most are often the same assholes who rant about the stupidity of others in their blogs.

* * *

-=[ Yo Momma Was Cosmic Slop ]=-

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1816

Among those who have relatively large fore brains, there is no longer any doubt that the scientific theory of evolution is true. If you want to get a grasp of the intellectual status of our nation, stop blaming the children and note that an overwhelming number of adult Americans are sadly ignorant of evolution. For example, it is quite possible that our next president will admit publicly that he or she doesn’t “believe” in evolution. That’s a lot like saying that you don’t believe the world is round, or that you still believe that the universe revolves around the earth.

I have a solution: I propose that any elected leaders hostile to the science of evolution should be denied any of its benefits. Shit like vaccines and other modern medical findings.

I’m only half kidding.

One of the problems is that people are having a hard time conforming outdated creation myths with scientific facts. Maybe we all need to take our cue from the Dalai Lama who when confronted with the question, “What if science were to prove certain Buddhist beliefs wrong?” answered, “Then Buddhism would have to change.’

But you know, backwoods neocons needn’t fear evolution so much, there’s a lot in it that they could embrace. For example, if you have sinned, or if you feel seriously flawed as a human being, evolutionary theory can be your salvation! Just place yourself in the story of evolution, the history of all life, and you will immediately note that no one among us is to blame for who we are. The theory of evolution says you were created out of the shape-shifting stream of life as it danced its cosmic dance with natural phenomena. You did not choose to have your consciousness, your senses, or your instinct for language anymore than you chose to have thumbs! It’s not your fault...

Can I get a witness?!!

We are all human beings. I know, I know... some of these humans voted for Palin, seriously challenging the theory of evolution, but they can’t be faulted. Perhaps they’re relics of a bygone era, I dunno. We are all human beings (most of us), and we’re a very young species -- a new kind of animal -- an animal figuring out how to be an animal. The body that you and I inherited broke away from the rest of the primate crowd only about five million years ago -- a mere second in geological time. After the creation of the Great Rift Valley in Africa forced our ancestors to swing down from trees of the jungle to live in the tall grasses of the savanna, life must have been difficult. Among those who were hanging out at the time was an ape-woman scientist call “Lucy,” considered to be the mother of us all. Actually, in scientific terms, yo mama was a bacteria, or some gooey primordial slop. Yeah, I said it: yo mama was cosmic slop!

Anyway, after living on the ground for a bit, our ancestors began making tools and in the process, they became a subspecies of human called homo habilis, or “handyman” (no, I don’t think “Joe the not a Plumber” descended from this species). What happened then was that these handy men and women started standing upright more often, probably to fix a leaky roof, or screw doggie style, and we became known as homo erectus, or “upright humans.” Once fully upright, the porno era was ushered in with mass full-frontal nudity. Four-legged animals don’t have to worry about clothing because their privates are covered by their stance. Standing up, put our cocks and va-jay-jays right out front for everyone to see, and no doubt this led to underwear.

More importantly, standing up triggered a rapid increase in brain size. Standing up, left our hands free, and after we stopped playing with ourselves, we realized we could manipulate other objects, so we started using tools, which in turn created the need for far more brain connections in order to coordinate the more precise movements of our hands and fingers. In effect, a feedback loop was created: better hands, bigger brains, bigger brains better hands. Pretty smart that fuckin’ Mother Nature!

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that neocon fundamentalists don’t need to fear evolutionary theory because it offers us template for a new spirituality based here on earth, not some Pie in the Sky bullshit. In a way, the Jews got in wrong: we are all chosen in some way. We are chosen to participate in the creation of an evolutionary spirituality. How you act and whether you use your brain or not makes you an actor in the on-going evolutionary drama. You inform evolution and vice-versa...

Or not...

Love,

Eddie

Extinction Spasm

¡Hola! Everybody...
Tony has a heart condition and a problem with obesity and yet he (excessively) spends his time online threatening people.

Just recently, he attacked someone here by divulging shared intimacies as a way of attempting to humiliate that person. If he does this to someone else, what makes you think he won’t do it to you?

You’re a real man Tony...

SMH

* * *

-=[ Species Extinction Spasm ]=-

The new world is not only possible, she is on her way. When I am quiet I can hear her breathing.

-- Arundhati Roy

I was laughing along with some friends about the whole e-thuggery phenomenon. Almost none of my friends are on the internet and they think the energy I put into the “blogging thing” could be better put to use actually writing. Well, blogging helps me write. If I didn’t blog, I probably wouldn’t write. I am lazy.

Anyway, laughing about what kind of person would go to the extreme of threatening bodily harm to another human being on account of something as irrelevant as a blog, made me think about the very real crisis we’re all facing as a species. We may very well be the first species to make ourselves extinct. And it’s this type of thinking -- this narcissistic wish fulfillment of doing harm to others, that is at the crux of our problem.

Anthropogenic global warming is a fact and it has some of us thinking. Recently, I read an article stating that basic human needs are destroying our planet much more quickly than previously thought. The article cited a four-year multinational study, “The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,” which found that humans “have ruined approximately 60 percent of the earth’s ecological systems to meet our demands for food, fresh water, timber, and fuel.”

Research shows that we’re in the middle of the fifth or sixth largest species die-off in biological history. What naturalists call an “extinction spasm,” which to me evokes an image of the earth purging itself of unhealthy organisms.

It appears that we do have something to fear and it is us.

I would ask why, but I think I already know. We can’t handle our technological advancements. It’s as if evolution has given a child a loaded gun and we’re playing with it with the safety off.

When I reflect on this mindset, I am reminded of the paradox of the egomaniac with low self-esteem. It’s how I used to describe the addictive personality, but I am confronted with this narcissistic behavior too often, and I have to wonder if it doesn’t apply to our society. The issue at hand today, ladies and gentlemen, is that we have to do something. If crisis is danger mixed with opportunity, then opportunity abounds!

Many of my friends were moved by the last election to decide to become more politically active, through dialog or local politics, and that’s where we all have to start. Each of us has our own temperament, but we engage we must. Perhaps your way is to picket an oil company. Others may fight to save an endangered coral reef. Maybe part of the challenge is bringing back as sense of awe and reverence to everyday life. So you might want to engage in some nature-loving pagan ritual. Go ahead, hug a tree, or bow down and kiss the earth.

We race around in these little boxes of steel, chasing after instant gratification and in the process we’ve forgotten our own humanity.

Stop... look... listen... breathe.

I have one suggestion that I think will help the most and you can begin to implement right now. Here in NYC, some companies give away tiny squares that unfold to a large map of the NYC subway system. It’s the size of a credit card and not much thicker. What we need in order to save ourselves is keep a bigger perspective in our pocket, just like the NYC subway map. A big perspective that you can unfold in your head at a moment’s notice. Too often, I see comments in my blog and from people in the real world that betray a singularly selfish perspective. We seem to have lost the ability to understand things from a larger perspective. “Don’t bail out the auto workers!” we screech, resenting the fact that as small business owners, we’re not getting any “handouts.” But if we were to hemorrhage all those jobs, who would buy your services/ products?

We seem to want to demonize those we see as different, forgetting that in denying a gay or lesbian couple the same rights we enjoy erode our own rights. Too many are willing to allow tens of thousands die simply because we want to cling to the concept of health care as a privilege than a basic human right. We decry taxes that could make our schools better, but are blind to the taxes that funded the land-mine some child in some far-off land just step on...

This very moment... and the next...

Think! Or rather, think differently. Think with the larger perspective. Consider -- from a more panoramic perspective-- that denying others their rights erodes yours. Think that if we all would stop using plastic bags, it would have an immediate and tremendous impact.

We need to hold a big perspective to remind us that nature is one tough bitch, and life has so far survived the collision of continents, mountain ranges erupting in volcanoes, murderously cold ice ages, the plague, your ex mother-in-law and even Bush Jr. (well, the jury still out on that last one).

The Big picture also carries your inner understanding that you are part of it all, and so are they (<--insert anyone you hold resentment towards: immigrants, blacks, whites, men, women, etc.). My father had a great phrase he used to describe people he didn’t get along with, “friendly enemies.”

This is a species-wide problem -- we live in interesting times with plentiful opportunity and need to act wisely and with compassion. If your Big Picture doesn’t include a Bigger Love then we’re doomed for sure.

Love,

Eddie

Monday Madness (Moral Reasoning)

¡Hola! Everybody,
Happy St. Paddy’s day, people. great day to take advantage of a drunken lass! ::grin:: Today an mad prelude (really a poem) and a map!

* * *

Nows [no. 2]

You’re fighting me I find,
and you will fight me all the way
to that painful
instant of surrender
we can both already sense.

You will fight
my instant messages
my postcards
my presents
and my desperate calls.

You will fight
the endless affections of my tongue
and I will ignore
your enormous eyes
and that unbearable smile.

I can buy you
jewelry,
airplane tickets,
roses,
dinners in San Juan,
and clothes you must learn to
love yourself to wear
and still you will fight me.

Because I have taken away
your practiced old
game of giving,
and made of you
an honest trader again.

-- Edward-Yemíl Rosario

* * *

-=[ A Map ]=-

Not too long ago, I sat beside a woman on a panel. We were addressing college students, and what struck me about this particular woman was the level of her selfishness. I found it interesting because she sought me out before we spoke and mentioned that she too was a “practicing Buddhist.” Her version of Buddhism, it seemed to me, was simply meditation. I had a teacher who once joked that practicing Buddhism without ethics was like trying to row a boat without first untying it from the pier.

What struck me about this woman was that her whole existence centered on her and she was oblivious to how she was connected to her environment; how her actions reverberated and caused ripples. In her world, what mattered was the conscious cultivation of her ego. She could actually see the “logic” in the needless death of an infant. This is what happens when you mix Ayn Rand with meditation! LOL Nothing could be further from my vision of Buddhist practice.

Two people, two different worlds.

This got me to thinking and I have come to realization that “practicing meditation” or any set of practices isn’t enough. I have come to realize that we create our world according to what level we operate from. It’s the same with love. For some people love’s ultimate reason for existence is to satisfy the individual. Love is something that you go “out there” to get in order to satisfy your hunger for connection. similarly, religion and everything else is filtered -- distilled according to where you stand in terms of growth.

I’ll explain. Let’s look at moral development as a starting off point. Let’s say moral development has three distinct stages. An infant at birth hasn’t been socialized into the culture’s ethics, standards, and conventions; let’s call this the preconventional stage. It’s also known as egocentric, in that the infant’s awareness is largely consumed with self -- self-absorbed. but as the young child begins to learn its culture’s rules and norms, it grows into the conventional stage of morals. This stage is also known as ethnocentric, in that it’s focused on the child’s particular group, tribe, clan, or nation, and it therefore tends to exclude those not of its group. But at the next major stage of moral development, the post-conventional stage, the individual’s identity expands to include care and concern for all peoples, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed, which is why this stage is also known as worldcentric.

If you’re still with me, you can see that moral development tends to move from “me” (egocentric) to “us” (ethnocentric) to “all of us” (worldcentric). This is an example of unfolding waves of consciousness.

Using this consciousness “map” one can see how religion (or love) will manifest itself differently in a person who’s at the egocentric stage than a person who’s at a worldcentric stage. Both people can be just as devout (or “in love”), but spiritual practice will evolve according to any one individual’s level of moral development.

So imagine love from an egocentric perspective. Love at this stage resembles a yearning -- something like a need for a fix -- an ego boost. Same thing with almost anything you look at in life: it changes according to what level you choose to engage the world. religion from an egocentric perspective probably resembles the scary wave of fundamentalism currently threatening our existence. And I mention fundamentalism in all its manifestations -- including our own home-grown Christian fundamentalism.

I find all this quite interesting because a lot of my work involves helping people move from one stage to another. But it’s also interesting because it helps me tease out the idiosyncrasies when someone says, “I love you.” Perhaps we need to know a little more about others and ourselves when we travel the terrain of the heart. For what may sound like “I love you” may in actuality mean “I love me.”

I would like to start using this “map” as a way to discuss different issues.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Karma and Evolution)

¡Hola! Everybody,
I went to see Vantage Point yesterday and was disappointed. I might post a more detailed review on multiply, but suffice it to say that the film is an example of great actors (!), and a good idea, gone to waste. The sad part is that I’m sitting there going this could be so much better...

* * *

-=[ Karma, Reincarnation, and Evolution ]=-

When the historical Buddha asked us to examine our relationship to the elements as a path to the realization to the awareness that our body has no separate, independent existence, he was encouraging us to become scientists of the self. His instructions were based in part on one of his era’s principles known as the law of karma.

In Sanskrit, the word karma means “to do” or “to make,” and refers to the fact that every action is followed by consequences. As I have written before, in common modern usage karma has been corrupted to mean “payback” and has become synonymous with retribution. This is a faulty and misinformed concept of karma.

The Hindu law of karma, which was current when the Buddha lived, was concerned mostly with an individual’s actions in the world, and how the consequences of those actions would affect that person’s destiny, even in future lives. For example, if one person hurts another, that sets up whole series of events that ends in the first person experiencing pain. People today like to say, “Everything that goes around, comes around.” ::sigh::

The Buddha added a completely new dimension to this law by emphasizing that karma is also a psychological conditioning process that operates in this very life. He recognized that our thoughts as well as our actions have consequences and that those consequences take place in our own mind.

The Buddha advised us not to try to tease out all the specifics of the entanglement of our karma, saying it was imponderable. We could never isolate or measure all of the events and processes that have produced this particular here and now. What is important is to see the fact that nothing arises independent of causes and conditions. Equally important is that we become aware how unwholesome states such as hatred and greed create suffering. What happens when we do this is that we begin to see ourselves and each moment as embedded within all of creation.

It has nothing to do with other people getting their "payback."

All of this got me thinking (always a dangerous thing) yesterday and I came upon a series of photographs of the development of the human fetus. I was taken immediately at how it seems as if the development is a reflection of our evolutionary history.

Note: for the religious quacks that refuse to be convinced of evolution, please tell me you don’t believe the next time a vaccine created through the science of evolution saves your whacked out ass.

Looking at these photos, I came away thinking that the scientific story of evolution can offer a new angle on the idea of reincarnation. Life itself seems to reincarnate in form after form, with new forms of locomotion, perception, or types of consciousness. In fact, the human condition can be seen as our shared incarnation, part of common “evolutionary karma.”

Evolutionary science is even showing us some of the faces of our previous shared past. You can see, twitching away on a Petri dish, a living example of past life as a single-celled organism. In a water-breathing fish, you can imagine a version of yourself in a previous life, swimming through the single ocean that once covered the earth. You can perhaps more easily recognize yourself as a great ape, or as a Homo Habilis in the Stone Age.

But what struck me was that our shared lives could be even more easily recognized by looking at individual development in the womb. Think about it: within a nine-month period we develop from a single cell to a complex mammal, keeping the adaptations we might need and discarding those that are unnecessary, such as gills, and downsizing others, such as the acute olfactory region of the brain, since smell is no longer as essential to our survival as humans.

In the book, What Is Life? Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis put forward the depth of our inheritance: “We share more than 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees, sweat fluids reminiscent of seawater, and crave sugar that provided our ancestors with energy three billion years before the first space station had evolved. We carry our past with us”

The notion that we have previous lives in the evolutionary past can extend beyond biology, into the realm of elemental forces and cycles. After all, the entire earth was once a cloud of gas, and later cooling into a molten mass. Were we not part of those too? The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in The Heart of Understanding, “As I look more deeply, I can see that in a former life I was a cloud. And I was a rock. This is not poetry; it is science. This is not a question of a belief in reincarnation. This is the history of life on earth.”

The concept of life evolving is not foreign to Buddhism, whether it be told in legends of reincarnation, or as the interconnection of all things in the universe. And perhaps most importantly it is expressed through the core belief in the possibility of transformation in this very life.

Love,

Eddie

HeartPrints

Hola Everybody,
I want to take a moment to recognize someone who I a power of example for me. Whenever I get to feeling sorry for myself, or start thinking my load has become to hard to bear, I go to her page and I’m reminded how petty and trivial I can get sometimes. Believe me, this woman demonstrates a tremendous spirit everyday, sometimes every second. When even a glass of water sends you into prolonged agony, well… let me just leave it at that.

While I don’t usually tell her this, I have a lot of admiration for her. She lives much of what I merely write about. Lately, Nan’s hit some hard bumps, go by her page and leave her some love (click here).

I had a really deep, totally earth-shattering, insightful ::grin:: blog on states and stages of consciousness prepared, but I ran into an little journal article yesterday that sidetracked me.

* * *

-=[ Heartprints ]=-
“Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being, to return to Eden, make friends with the snake and set up our computers among the wild apple trees.”
-- Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards

Deep down we all probably know that our true calling is some kind of spiritual evolution. An integration into the Universal Principle, The Godhead, into Love – wtf you want to call it. And yet we spend an enormous amount of energy suppressing that awareness because to make it conscious is to recognize that most of our manipulations, religious dogmas, personal ambitions, and financial plays are not merely counterproductive, but probably trivial. Our mission, whether we recognize it or not, is to do away with the trivial pursuits and take on the responsibility of the infinite, hard-won joy that comes from our psycho-spiritual integration. Or at least get to taste the perfect slice of pizza before we move on. ::grin::

We are now living at a point in time in which the choices we make will either lead us to certain self-destruction on one side and a miraculous evolutionary leap on the other. Sometimes my posts on personal liberation – what I call conscious evolution – make me feel self-indulgent. It’s winter in America and in this prolonged season of violence and war on every level, perhaps concentrating on self-improvement seems a wee bit trivial. But just maybe, taking a step back and looking at the world we have created with a light heart can help us see it more clearly. Perhaps with fresh eyes we can learn to respond more wisely to the crucial choices we have before us.

Do we continue in our trivial pursuits, or do choose to take on the primal and all-important task of sowing the seeds of joy and peace in our hearts, to use the uniquely human gift of reason to come up with meaningful solutions to the challenges that face us, act with wisdom to change the global climate of love. And in case you haven’t noticed, our previous choices have placed us on the ever-increasing endangered species list.

Sure, I know many of you are saying that you would love to have all these things. You want peace, a safer world, and you want to prevent our world from turning into ash. You might be saying that sure, you want world peace, but so does every political candidate and beauty contestant. You might tell me that the problems we face are too large and that nothing you do will make a difference. And my answer to you is damn skippy! I know how that feels. I know the despair that sometimes comes from trying to make a difference. But I’m dense, I will fight to the last, even if I knew my struggle was doomed and it wouldn’t make a difference, I refuse to bend over and take it up the ass without a fight.

Anywaaaaay… (LOL!) I came across these insights and perhaps they can be helpful to you, maybe not…

The first thing we have to grapple with is the possibility that our ideas about money, power, and dogma have outgrown their usefulness. In fact, all this competitiveness, self-righteous warring, in combination with technological advances used in the service to strengthen our status and satisfying our material desires, just might be making matters worse. Interestingly, the Dalai Lama has observed that in spite of tremendous poverty and disease, the people in the Third World seem happier , more peaceful, less stressed out, and less anxiety-ridden than those “more fortunate” citizens of the developed countries.

Hmmmm…

Perhaps this is a sign that we should be looking for another way of being and doing.

I think the crucial question is, “How am I personally contributing to co-creating the world we live in.” As a mental health practitioner, I know too well true healing comes from a sense of personal accountability. The key to personal transformation comes from self-responsibility.

We can take our cue from the environmentalists. In response to the climate crisis, environmentalists are asking us to re-assess our “carbon footprints,” by living differently and working toward making that footprint eventually disappear.

And this is where the concept of a “heartprint” can help us find answers to out questions. What is a heartprint? According to Karen Truheart, a heartprint is the impression made by every feeling, thought, word, and deed.

At every moment, we are generating heartprints. Anger, fear, ignorance, and hatred make heartprints. They literally leave their mark within us and are picked up by mirror neurons in others and oftentimes acted out unconsciously. They create a ripple effect expanding in ever widening circles. If we don’t feel these destructive emotions deeply, thinking clearly, and using their energy wisely, these heartprints cause much of the world’s pain and suffering, creating the emotional climate we live in. On the other hand, heartprints generated by love, compassion, and kindness, love, understanding affect our inner and outer climate, and we create those too.

According to Trueheart, what we need is an emotional climate change, a shift in the emotional atmosphere. By feeling deeply, thinking clearly, and acting wisely, we can create heartprints for humanity and all life on earth. I realize this sounds like too much for all you reality-TV-watching, too-cool-to-care ma’fuccas. I realize for those who have learned helplessness at a deep level, this may even sound impossible.

Maybe not.

But the dogma and all the trivial shit down for one moment, STFU, and listen… for once.

One of my friends likes to reference butterflies as a defense to the drama he creates. I would like to borrow those butterflies for a moment for use in a different context. Perhaps you have heard of the Butterfly Effect. Actually, she’s another friend. LOL! In scientific Chaos theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil eventually affects the weather in New York City. Chaos theory recognizes the profound interconnectedness inherent in all existence. A real connectedness on a global scale. In addition, current scientific findings on the neurological basis of social intelligence, there is an emotional equivalent that is called The Heartprint Effect.

Climatologists have used the Butterfly Effect to help us understand our participation in global warming and have shown us how to understand our behavior. By understanding the Butterfly Effect, we can see how small actions like planting a tree, changing a light bulb, or dialing back our thermostats even a little really do make a difference.

Conversely, by understanding the Heartprint Effect, we can begin to internalize our importance to a movement that creates a more peaceful and sustainable world. We can generate our inner light to change our internal climate. And this in turn can create environments that can help others do the same. In other words, drop the Jesus talk and be like Jesus. Be the change you want to see in the world, Gandhi said. Understanding The Heartprint Effect could take something that seems impossible and help make it easier, or at least “doable.”

Think of it, with every movement of our hearts and minds, we contribute to the emotional and mental climate of the world. If you can take this premise as true, then you can make a difference for the better. If our mission is to do away with the trivial in favor of psycho-spiritual integration, then the Heartprint Effect let’s us know that even a simple act of kindness contributes to global change.

Sorry for the long post, today, it’s a challenge sometimes to put all this in one Word document page. For those looking to act, I have listed some resources below. I’ll leave you with the following:

In the Buddhist tradition, compassion is systematically developed through metta mediation. Metta meditation begins with the repetition of the following mantra: May I be kind. May I be peaceful. May I be free from suffering. The point being that you progress through stages so that you’re doing metta for all sentient beings. In traditional practice, a student is not allowed to offer metta for others until the teacher is sure the student can make this offering, not out of need, but from a full and open heart.

Notice what brings you true joy and fills you with peace. Then notice how when you feel this way, your way of relating to the world changes.

Love,

Eddie

Resources

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning – to learn more about social and emotional learning in schools

Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education – promoting human values and a sense of oneness within humanity

Common Peace – center for the advancement of nonviolence

M. K. Gandhi Institute - inspiring and supporting individual and group efforts to end violence

Alliance for a New Humanity – to join with like-hearted individuals and groups

Mind and Life Institute – to learn more about the science behind The Heartprint Effect

The Network of Spiritual Progressives – an activist group

Humankind - Voices of Hope and Humanity – a public radio project

We the World - forming international networks of collaboration and action

The Heartprint website