Bobblehead

June 27, 2009 · Posted in mon(k)day, news and thoughts · 1 Comment 

bobblehead

Was in Chicago for a whirlwind visit last weekend. Got to have the tremendous pleasure of officiating my friends’ wedding. Was the largest one I had done so far. Great fun all around, lovely people, and from the reviews I got, they enjoyed the ceremony (checked with grandmas, too)… One of the sweetest things was that the bride and groom gave away personalized bobbleheads to the wedding party. So, I got my first philip action figure…

In general, the Chicago visit was a tremendous experience. Got to see at least some of my wonderful friends there and revisit my life and the last six years since I had last been there. Recorded a monkday on the topic.

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On religion…

April 25, 2009 · Posted in news and thoughts · 2 Comments 

you are the flameSomeone asked me about my religion the other day. Heard once that this is one of the topics you should always avoid when talking to people you don’t know - worse, I guess, to take a stance in public and put it on your blog… hmmm….

I am a big fan of religion. In Latin, religio means anything from “Religion” (in the sense it’s typically used), to superstition, all the way to - neutrally - belief system (BS). It is related to re-ligare and re-ligens.

Now what are those words about?

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Launching consciouscreatives.net

April 20, 2009 · Posted in news and thoughts · Comment 

consciouscreatives.net

The new c3 community site at consciouscreatives.net is officially up and running! There are already over 150 artists, musicians, healers, coaches, shamans, poets, producers, everything and the kitchen sink (literally)!  We created this online community, so we could finally have a place where all you beautiful people can express, meet, exchange, collaborate, and build this platform with us further to ever better serve you in your authentic self-expression!

We have several groups on the site for c3 already and will be constantly adding more. Feel free to join, participate or create your own groups around topics you are interested in!

c3: Center for Conscious Creativity has been one of my favorite projects for the last few years. One of the core beliefs of c3 is that we would not have a lot of the current issues in our world if people just did what they are here to do instead of buying into other people’s stories. We are about supporting individuals in their authentic self-expression through community, events, content and consulting services. c3 is an open source organization. We built our executive team around the eight chakra system and created groups on the site so that each member of the community can actively participate in shaping this organization.

It’s a project dear to my heart and it has been absolutely amazing so far. We received all kinds of wonderful responses already and I am psyched to see people signing up on the site and starting to collaborate already. 

Hopefully, we will see you there, soon, too!

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From Economy to Ecology

April 3, 2009 · Posted in news and thoughts · Comment 

Fortunately, I have a pretty good information diet. world_economyDon’t read the news, don’t watch TV, don’t even listen to NPR. Do have google reader for RSS feeds that I am actually interested in (RSS feed for stuff I am sharing), but hardly any of them have anything to do with “news”. Now, strictly speaking “news” would only be something that is actually “new”. Perusing “news”-papers occasionally, it seems that there is a serious lack of real information provided. Given, names and dates change, but the games that are being played out and described have not changed much in many years.

The same old stories…

Just a couple of months ago my friend from Germany sent me a poem about the economy. I gave it the half-interested read and thought how “cute” it was that people were making poems about the mortgage crisis and how that will lead to more war machinery. Laughed out loud when I realized the poem was from the 1930s and written in Germany. Same old story - a bunch of people creating junk money and ripping off the “little man”. Back then it happened in Germany, this time it’s happening in the US.

What our world really needs are completely new stories. We know how to wage war, kill each other, rape each other, screw each other over. Super. Boring. Let’s do something new. Completely new. Let’s not even address our current global challenges. Let’s invent a future in which they don’t even exist.

Shift happens…

One big piece of that is the necessary shift from Economics to Ecology. Economics is the science of scarcity. It is a collection of games and rules around how to distribute a limited amount of resources. It is about how to split up the pie… From the getgo there is an assumption of scarcity and a bias toward anaylysis (from Greek cutting into pieces) vs. integration. There are limited resources, only one pie, and we need to figure out how to must “justly” cut it into pieces.

This is not what is really happening in nature. There is no pie. There is a beautiful fruit tree which needs watering, light, some love, and will provide plenty of fruit for everyone. There is human creativity which has solutions to problems we haven’t even encountered yet. There is abundance in all kinds of ingenuity, of which we have at best scratched the surface.

In an Ecology based model, there is no waste. Every single output becomes nutrient for another process. There is no lack. No need. No conflict. No unhealthy competition. It is a system based on each individual part doing what they came here to do and sharing that with each other.

Into the 21st century we go…

As we progress into the 21st century, we have a shot at shifting into an ecology based model - especially as the economics based world is collapsing (which seems like an appropriate teleological end-game for scarcity). The interesting part will be to see how the shift happens. For now, the assumption I am banking on is that we can begin to build ecological models, prototype them, and hence make economics-based thinking obsolete altogether.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - as Bucky Fuller put it…

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God - Money - You

March 25, 2009 · Posted in news and thoughts · 2 Comments 

“What we once did ‘for the sake of God’ we now do for the sake of money…. This is what at present gives the highest feeling of power.” -  Friedrich Nietzsche

Well, this was over a century ago… Now, as the monetary debt illusion is breaking down and we are facing the end of the dominion of gold, this yet again has to shift.

For whose sake, shall we do anything then???

Well, for your sake. For your own personal joy. You are the new God that needs pleasing. You are who you should worship and who you should aim to please with your actions. That will give you the highest sense of power in the 21st century.
This is not to be confused with hedonism. This is not about pleasure, about fulfilling wants, but about joy, about fulfilling will (not that pleasure isn’t nice at the appropriate times).
Each and every one of us came here for a reason. In Eastern thought exists the concept of “dharma“, which translates to the natural order of things. Have written about this before a few times…
The key characteristics that will show you that you are aligned with the natural order of things, that you are doing what you came here to do, according to the yogic tradition are as follows:

 

  • You experience tremendous joy - you love doing what you are doing and you would do it for free if you could
  • It uses your strengths - there is really no point in fighting your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths, outsource your weaknesses. In business, they call this focusing on core competency.
  • It benefits others - we are not alone on this planet. Each of us has gifts that we are here to share with each other (even money, in its origin even before trading, came from gifting - think about that for a second).
  • It sustains you - tricky one a bit. This is about making sure you set up proper value exchanges, so that when you benefit other people, something comes back to you to ensure you have all you need to continue.
  • There are synchronicities - as my friend stosh likes to say: “universe isn’t talking to you, pal, but you better fucking listen“
So, all that said, think about why you do things. Why do you get up every morning? Why are YOU here?

 

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