"The Richest Man in Babylon"

The book's core principles can be summarized into its 7 Cures for a Lean Purse:

1. Start thy purse to fattening - Save 10 % of your income.

2. Control thy expenditures - Budget effectively so that you may have the coins to pay for expenses and worthwhile desires without spending more than 90% of your earnings.

3. Make thy gold multiply - invest your savings to build a stream of income.

4. Guard thy treasure from loss - Protect yourself from unwise investments and invest only where your money will be safe.

5. Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment - It is recommended that every person own their own home.

6. Insure a future income - Provide in advance for your needs in old age and the protection of your family.

7. Increase thy ability to earn - Through study, become wiser and more skillful so that you will always be in the forefront of progress.

I recently read a few aphorisms which I found striking about business:

The highest expression of the dharma is through business.
Life is about being happy, wearing good clothes, and being financially successful.

These were on www.americanbuddha.com

How to create with peace: or, slow and steady wins the race

Feeling a tiny bit overwhelmed at the moment.

I want to be able to create with peace and a decent living and healthy lifestyle.

Three projects emerge from my mind as maximally important:

The first is The Biotech Age.
The second is The History of Excellence.
And the third, a nascent project really still in it's inception, is Accounting, Economics and Marketing for Employees, Contractors, and Small Business. The concept here is to teach the intuitional qualities of these subjects without the analytical skill sets. Now you might say these three disciplines are only their skill sets, but that's false. There are definite accounting intuitions, Economic ways of seeing, and marketing personalities.

Not only that, but the connection between these fields and their antecedents is never explored. Thus:

Accounting is about supporting, being life-ward, anabolic, and useful. It's all about blocking drains on growth and supporting growth factors in life. So accounting is ultimately the most practical form of spirituality!

Economics is about knowing your place in the world, not as some bleak class struggle but as an expression of graciousness, acceptance, contribution and passion. We self-select our economic position within our perceptions of the available choices. Knowing economics is a natural trigger for growth because we perceive new choices, automatically initiating change within our economic position. Perception and economics are tied up together.

Marketing is about ethics, pure and simple. If you do not know what you stand for, then you will fall for bad marketing. But if you know what you stand for, then the highest principle you are able to acknowledge is the source of your brandname and marketing focus. Marketing is substantially about reminding you and those who support you what you stand for, first and foremost. The effect on networks and the wider-world marketplace is secondary.

Hence profit comes from character, not from caricatures of people as work-robots in factory farms. Profit grows as a consequence of who you are, not from some vile effort to force nature to yield cash.

So the basic idea is there, and yet I find myself a little overwhelmed, frankly.

It's like: "You want me to assimilate 23 examples of historical excellence into lively stories, AND write a bestselling novel, AND write a book about three business disciplines!!! AARrrghg!"

So it's an invitation to consider how I can create with peace.

I prayed about it and the sense I got was of the turtle: slow and steady wins the race.

I intend to write

1000 words of The Biotech Age every day,
300 of Excellence, and
100 of the Accounting-Economics-Marketing project, which I will henceforth call the AEM Project.

Here's hoping that I meet my AEMs. ;-)

Confidence and Character, a book review:

Confidence : How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
by ROSABETH MOSS KANTER

Turnarounds aren't easy.

Try not to lose twice in a row, is the essence of a turnaround for the better or worse. That is to say, if by losing twice you conclude there's no point in trying to win, there's trouble ahead.

The Signs of a losing streak include:

- weak accountability
- deteriorating relationships
- disappearing initiative.

This insight makes sense when you consider that humans on an evolutionary time scale have moved in packs, been accountable to inflexible tribe taboos, and been required to exercise vigorous initiative just to survive the day and eat.

The cure here is HOW - honesty, openness, and willingness.

It is to tell the truth before you can change the situation. In other words, just speak or write aloud what's got to change, even though there seems at present no way to change it. This creates self-accountability.

Then openess becomes important. Reaching out to one person is great, but the harsh reality is that humans understimate their need for support. Again on an evolutionary level, we have normally had the support of dozens of tribe members and numerous family members continually available. So when we moderns imagine that having ONE PERSON to ring if in trouble is enough, we gravely overestimate our abilities. I would suggest that the level of support must be at least a magnitude greater than we believe. So if, to get to gym, you think you need three people's varied levels of support, you probably really need thirty. And if to start a business you need ten people, you'll probably need to reach out to a hundred.

That is why the persistent practice of openness is crucial to winning in any situation. Openness acknowledges that the reality is larger than you, and that you are an active player in the realities of others which you share.

Finally, willingness is the key to initiative. Being willing to do something is good, but there are other more powerful ways to be willing:

- being willing to reflect on perceptions and question them.
- being willing to discuss steps with someone practical.
- being willing to be gentle in observing yourself and mind impartially.
- being willing to accept reality.

These are all important modes of willingness that are often overlooked. Willingness is an enormous source of power.

Finally, in dealing with lack of initiative, willingness becomes an emphasis on building on actions, not retreat, creating, not criticising, and staying engaged rather than isolating.

Willingness can help you to: stay calm, dig deeper, work harder, seek support, use small steps to achieve big goals.

Willingness can be used to resist the quick fix and deepen the process of growth immeasurably.

Someone has to take charge. If you lack an insightful manager or empathetic relatives, you may have to draw your own plan.

In crisis, then, human instinct is trained mostly to shrink from support, diffuse accountability, slow down and diminish intitiatives. But the frequently useful response may be in fact to seek more support than you think you need (because it is common to underestimate in it since it has been natural to have a tribal support system for most of human history), seek more accountability (in the sense of recording systems as well as caring people to report to) and more initiative, choice, action, intention and reflection on the whole process, not less.

In other words, a more intelligent and vigorous response is required to show greater love and kindness to the self. More gentleness and reflection is required also to buffer this vigorous approach. All in all, this book provides interesting insights to this process on an organisational level.

Confidence and Character, a book review:

Confidence : How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
by ROSABETH MOSS KANTER

"If you read carefully, she warns that turnarounds aren't easy. "Try not to lose twice in a row," she warns. If you conclude there's no point in trying to win, there's trouble ahead. Signs of a losing streak include weak accountability, deteriorating relationships and disappearing initiative. "The only good thing about losing is that it sounds an alarm bell," she concludes.

"Once you realize you're on a losing streak, Kanter emphasizes, you need to build, not retreat. Stay calm, she says. Dig deeper. Work harder. Seek support, even when you feel like hiding. And most important, remember you can't "jump the processes." Use small steps to achieve big goals. Everybody wants a quick fix and that's a surefire recipe for disaster.

"As a career consultant, I am often asked how to break individual losing streaks. Typically a client says something like, "I lost my job, got sick, had family crises, and had to move. And now I'm defeated." Or clients lose one job after another, fueled by discouragement.

"Kanter's book has to be translated to reach individuals. Her message seems to be, "Someone has to take charge." In one moving example, a family rallied behind a teenager who was failing math. They bought him nice clothes to communicate, "You're worth it." The stigma of hiring a tutor was defused by making the tutor a member of "Team Robert." In another example, a woman's public humiliation was defused by her husband's strong encouragement. So if you lack an insightful manager or empathetic relatives, you may have to draw your own plan."

Interesting insight into the requirements in crisis.

Human instinct is trained mostly to shrink from support, diffuse accountability, slow down and diminish intitiatives. But the frequently useful response may be in fact to seek more support than you think you need (because it is common to underestimate in it since it has been natural to have a tribal support system for most of human history), seek more accountability (in the sense of recording systems as well as caring people to report to) and more initiative, choice, action, intention and reflection on the whole process, not less.

In other words, a more intelligent and vigorous response is required to show greater love and kindness to the self. More gentleness and reflection is required also to buffer this vigorous approach. All in all, this book provides interesting insights to this process on an organisational level.

Substantial steps towards a cure for schizophrenia:

The cure for depression has been with us for several decades now. This site has taken another step towards a cure for schizophrenia which promises to help many millions in the future. This is inspirational news for me, and uplifts the overall level of consciousness.

http://www.nisad.org.au/

This breakthrough shows with certainty that the brain tissue loss that we now know occurs in schizophrenia patients is directly linked to impaired brain function and the abnormal thinking they experience.

The case study on television shows how good eating, sport, and a concern for others align the sufferers of mental illness with natural healing consequences. The TV show (Four Corners) also dramatically illustrates how association with the energy fields of drug, alcohol, certain kinds of music, and the spiritual ugliness of inner city environments pulls down the overall level of mental health.

Interesting stuff!
 

Humanure: a crap idea.

Okay, I like this guys work for several reasons.

First, this commercially successful and award winning book is posted on the web for free.
Second, he seems to have created a business around his cool idea of humanure.
Third, he tests really strong on the Hawkins scale, above 300 LoC.
Fourth, his BOOK ROCKS!

So yeah... if you have ANY interest in humanure, then you'll find reading this book quite a 'moving' experience. I know I did.

Martian Gaiaformation: a few proposals

Here are a few proposals for Martian Gaiaformers:

1. Turn poo into electricity on the voyage over! http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/astronaut_electricity_040519.html

2. Build MELISSA, a micro (picture at http://www.space.com/images/melissa_explained_0108_02.gif), a Micro Ecological Life Support Alternative. I prefer to call it a Gaian Agent myself.

3. Plant a tree in a Mars meteor, and pray it'll grow. ("Rummel suggests a more pragmatic approach to finding out whether plants could grow in Martian soil: Bring the soil back to Earth. "If we're going to challenge Earth organisms with Mars soil," he said, we could do it with returned samples.

Mike Meyer, NASA's Astrobiology Discipline Scientist, agrees with Rummel. He believes that it's important to take a step-by-step approach to understanding the potential for life on Mars. "If we learn enough about the soil on Mars," said Meyer, "we can simulate Mars here. Then we'd know what we want to test. Otherwise, we'd end up saying, 'Golly, it died, now what?'")

See http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_seed_010514.html

4. Go caving on Mars for Gaia (a translucent, inflatable balloon could be used to seal openings while still allowing light in. Settlers might then fill the cave with oxygen. Add a little water and an entire ecosystem might be possible. See http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_caves_000321.html

5. Practice humanure http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html, an entire 302 pages of crap.

Bacterial language discoveries:

I got excited when I read this link (http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050310_talking_bacteria.html) then disgusted at the cheap and vulgar turn taken by the story.

Let me explain:

Bacteria converse chemically in the same way we talk using sounds. They have metabolic sensors within their own species of bacteria, but a newly discovered chemical AI-2 connects them to the bacterial internet, allowing cross-species communication with bacteria.

The application of all this?

We can develop drugs that interfere with bacterial collective conversation and censor them! For an Australiane example regarding cholera, see http://www.livescience.com/imageoftheday/siod_041208.html

And what does Gaia think about all this interference in her activities? The answer is here: http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050128_bacteria_sonar.html

Sonar-equipped bacteria, that can detect dangerous threats to their well being by bouncing a signal of the toxin like bats do off walls. Do take that, human underlings! :-)

Exemplary Skillful Means in Regards to Sitting Meditation

This marvellous site teachings really impress me with their fine application of skillful means:

On recollecting what a sitting was afterwards

"When it comes to writing about the sitting, there are a few guidelines that I have found helpful (which you may certainly disregard if they do not suit your writing style). One is to focus on "description" and to only include an analysis or "ideas about the sitting" if they occurred within the sitting and are part of the description. You can always put afterthoughts (analysis, ideas) in brackets or write them in the margins as long as you are clear that they were not formed within the sitting. The second guideline is to always include 1) the date, 2) time of day, 3) length of sitting, and, 4) where the sitting took place, especially if it was not at home. This is done as an aid in remembering where and when a sitting occurred and can help you look at what kind of effect time, place, or other people had on your sitting, if any. The third guideline is to use your own words and present things as accurately and honestly as possible. In doing this, you can allow yourself to be vague and uncertain if that is truly the case. Each sitting can take as many sentences and pages as you like; most people write between five lines and two pages. The last guideline is simply to let the journal be what it will and not try to turn it into another project, another exercise, etc. It is just a meditation journal, meant for you to learn about what goes on when you sit in meditation."

On gentleness in beginning a sitting:

"So, to start off a meditation sitting with gentleness is to not dive right into doing some kind of instruction or practice. Simply allow a transition to occur. What you were thinking about before the meditation sitting will naturally carry on into the beginning of the sitting. Many meditators start off a sitting by trying to stop all thoughts. Thoughts, when they arise, are then perceived as distractions. Here is where gentleness truly starts in meditation. These thoughts coming into your sitting are not distractions, for they are your thoughts, and most of the time outside of meditation, you are the one who owns them, acts on them, and produces more of them. They are to be welcomed into the meditation sitting just as you would welcome a friend, a relative, or even someone you may not particularly like into your home."

And finally, an insightful passage on the root text of mindfulness buddhism, reinterpreting it marvellously skillfully in a way that makes it far more accessible:

"If one reads the sutta carefully, however, one will see that there are some "qualities" or "faculties" that are to be recognized as essential to the attainment of nibbana, and are thus to be retained and brought to completion. These qualities, known collectively as the "Components of Wisdom," become increasingly more apparent as one meditates, though they are not as concrete and easy to recognize as their enemies, the Hindrances. Being subtle, these qualities can go unnoticed in a practice of meditation that perpetuates the letting go of everything that arises. The Components of Wisdom are awareness, investigation, courage, rapture, lightness, unification of consciousness, and peacefully looking on. All of these work together in turning a seed of understanding into a fully completed realization. Full realization allows the true and final abandonment of a hindrance. This is where the Satipatthana Sutta says we should direct our attention for the ending of suffering and rebirth. However, it is hard to turn our minds in this direction because we more easily flow with the Hindrances, spending much of our time on earth consumed by them. For our minds to truly work for our liberation from suffering, the significance of these Components of Wisdom must be recognized when they arise in our meditation practice. If they are treated as impermanent or as distractions from our concentrated awareness of breathing or body sensations, then their value often goes unheeded."

This is marvellous and exemplary teaching clarity, and fine examples of skillful means in buddhist teachings!!

The Story of Isaac's Well

I thought this was so inspirational that I had to share it:

THE TALE OF ISAAC'S WELL.
When Isaac found himself in the middle of a famine, he asked God what to do. He felt God's direction to stay in a city called Gerar, where he became a successful businessman. But the people in the area began to envy him and wanted to make things miserable for him. They threw dirt into all the wells that the servants of his father, Abraham, had dug, clogging them up. Finally, they told him to just get out.


He and his servants started digging the wells again. When they found water, the herdsmen of Gerar started fighting against Isaac, telling him that the water belonged to them. Isaac didn't fight back, but instead dug another well, which they fought over also.


Finally he dug a third well, and the fighting stopped. Isaac named the well "Rehoboth," which means "wide-open spaces," and he said, "For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land" (Gen. 26:22).


I love the idea that in digging the wells Isaac actually opened up greater supply for others as well as for himself, although it didn't appear that way at the time.


Later that night God said to Isaac, "I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed" (Gen. 26:24). God promised Isaac that he would take care of his life.


What can you do when everything feels blocked, and discouragement is overwhelming? Isaac didn't let obstruction stop him. He didn't blame God, himself, or others. Each time Isaac dug another well, it was as though he was acknowledging the ever-present flow of good that he knew was rightfully his. I believe Isaac must have been confident that there was a perpetual source, Spirit, the only Creator, supplying abundance, freshness, and possibility, and that source could never be clogged. In this wide-open space of thought, there was nothing to fear.

Skillful Means, aka 'upaya', a compedium

This posting is the foundation for chapter five of my book on Excellence, on Buddhist teaching genius and its enormous impact on the world.

Skillful means is simply the practice in buddhism of pitching teachings to the level of your audience. It is significant however because in Buddhism everything one dues is a skillmean means, with the audience being yourself. The buddha's birth and teaching was a skillful means. Making your bed is a skillful means, depending how you do it. So the idea describes a whole attitude to living which is flexibile and easygoing and willing to adapt, as well as devoted, integrous and clever. The sankrit word for skillful means is UPAYA, which in Sinhalese these days means tricks. The tibetan word is 'thabs', means.

Overall the expansive definition of the word is any technique or trick that brings a person to enlightenment.

In worldly terms, skillful means is about improving character. The three steps and four tools of this practical form of upaya are as follows. The three steps are: Being that which you value, Seeing a clear mental image of how that value looks in the world, and Doing what increases your alignment with that which you value. Be-See-Do. The four tools are: Concentration, Strength, Stamina and Flexibility, which are values inherent in the achievement of excellence.

In religious (as opposed to spiritual) terms, the idea of skillful means is used to establish consensus: students will be taught the skillful means of cooperating and harmonizing with one another.

In spiritual terms, skillful means are spiritual principles. In Christian Science there is prayer, in Catholic Mysticism there is orthopraxis, lex divina, confession, and caritas. In Recovery there are 12 Steps. Acting on these things alters consciousness, which of course is the whole point of their existence.

In Buddhist metaphysics, skillful means involves observing the illusion of the material world for what it is for those who believe it to be real, and then using the observer's body-mind, the students, and all available material resources, to alchemically produce a spiritual result in the material world. The following verse describes it well:

Therefore, the skillful person
is the teacher of those who are less competent;
and those who are less competent
are the raw material of the skillful person.
Not to treasure one’s teacher, and not to treasure one’s resources,
even if we are clever, will lead us far astray.
This is called the subtle essence of the mystery.

This marvellous poem and the teaching which I will quote afterwards come from http://www.bioching.com/taoism/27.html, and I include it because it captures perfectly the contribution of upaya to human excellence. Upaya is the essence of freedom: the freedom to learn and to teach.


"People who Need People versus People who Control People:
The roles of teacher and student are fluid and flexible. We need each other for the feedback, the interface, the back and forth. The teacher who knows her own shortcomings and who does not have to come off as being perfect, is a good teacher.

Any relationship of control and submission is perverted. Those bonds can be made of steel, money, violent or devious emotions. Under these circumstances, we are not free.

The true gift is freely given, with no strings attached. The bolts and ropes that we put on our relationships are artificial means to secure what can only be freely given.

“Closing without a bolt” is like closing a deal on a hand shake and with good will, not needing the lock and bolt of a legal contract.
Similarly, the ties that bind a relationship are best when they are voluntary decisions between free people rather than the legal bindings of marriage contracts, etc.

Techno-zeal or emergent innovation? You decide:

The raconteurial Howard Rheingold is speaking here in the linked interview, 'Technology For A New Economic System':

Google is based on the emergent choices of people who link. Nobody is really thinking, "I'm now contributing to Google's page rank." What they're thinking is, "This link is something my readers would really be interested in." They're making an individual judgment that, in the aggregate, turns out to be a pretty good indicator of what's the best source.


"Then there's open source [software]. Steve Weber, a political economist at UC Berkeley, sees open source as an economic means of production that turns the free-rider problem to its advantage. All the people who use the resource but don't contribute to it just build up a larger user base. And if a very tiny percentage of them do anything at all -- like report a bug -- then those free riders suddenly become an asset.


"And maybe this isn't just in software production. There's [the idea of] "open spectrum," coined by [Yale law professor] Yochai Benkler. The dogma is that the two major means of organizing for economic production are the market and the firm. But Benkler uses open source as an example of peer-to-peer production, which he thinks may be pointing toward a third means of organizing for production.


"Then you look at Amazon (AMZN) and its recommendation system, getting users to provide free reviews, users sharing choices with their friends, users who make lists of products. They get a lot of free advice that turns out to be very useful in the aggregate. There's also Wikipedia [the online encyclopedia written by volunteers]. It has 500,000 articles in 50 languages at virtually no cost, vs. Encyclopedia Britannica spending millions of dollars and they have 50,000 articles."

This all points towards not survival of the fittest, but survival of the most integrous, most excellent, most servant-oriented, and most altruistic. This is Abraham's Blessing writ large!

Study hints from Win Wenger:

1. Become involved in the visual flow of imagery by planned sensory practice in pleasant contexts, such as your daily run in the park, or while you are staring out the window at the traffic lights. Consistently building visual flow - the imagestream - into one small aspect of daily life gradually at first then dramatically increases its availability in other aspects of the day and night.

2. Alter breath and body motion dramatically, to allow spontaneous states of contemplation to emerge in awareness, bringing with them fresh insights and new understanding with no effort on your part.

3. Breathe the morning clean air, practice pranayama (do a google search for instructions).

4. Increase your neurological contact with the issues you will be addressing - see http://www.winwenger.com/ebooks/btal1.htm

5. Practice makebelieving you are someone else, whose eminent work in the field you are studying you are already passionate; generate emotional juice and learn how to engage the limbic system in a subject.

6. Forget your first understandings, and fiddle around seeking a second then third understandings, each deeper than the one before, by expanding and condensing the details of your notes in an imaginitive way.

7. Make a scene where you automatically become a marvellous learning, just by being part of that scene.

Book summary on Amazon review: 7 Secrets of Learning

In "7 Secrets of Learning," Dr. Martel reveals what parents, teachers and students need to know to dramatically transform the learning process into the joyful, natural and successful experience we have dared hoped it could be. Now, as never before, Dr. Martel shows us that we have the knowledge needed so that none of us needs to struggle to learn. This book is built on 7 core concepts:
1. The message received is the message sent.
2. You get more of what you reinforce.
3. Any act of learning is an act of creating.
4. Diversity is a capacity.
5. Our strength is in our connectedness.
6. Stupidity is a learned behavior.
7. Everyone is born a genius.

On Evolutionary Ethics

This is a good description of the mind of the heart, or the level of the 500s in the Hawkins scale:


"Emotional reactivity is a highly sensitive and acutely perceptive view of social interactions. Successful and often very wealthy business people and professional diplomats hone their emotional skills in much the same way a professor hones his or her intellectual skills. Getting people to work together or finessing business deals in the millions of dollars very often turn on the most discerning insight into the emotions of a client or future business partner. The reactions of these people to and people around them are highly quantified and executed in their delivery. It is not a literate or mathematical quantification, rather and emotional and symbolic quantification that almost constitutes a language unto itself. It presence a valid form or reasoning and reactivity is evidenced by what these people achieve."

Moss in space grows in elegant spirals, but no-one knows why:

The results are unusual, Sack said, as this is the first time researchers report seeing this kind of plant growth response in space.


"Unlike the ordered response of moss cells in space, other types of plants grow randomly," he said. "So in moss, gravity must normally mask a default growth pattern. This pattern is only revealed when the gravity signal is lost or disrupted.


"The fascinating question is why would moss have a backup growth response to conditions it has never experienced on earth? Perhaps spirals are a vestigial growth pattern, a pattern that later became masked when moss evolved the ability to respond to gravity.

Margulis on Bacteria-Human collaboration:

Margulis herself on collaborative human-bacterial relations:

Our ability to perceive signals in the environment evolved directly from our bacterial ancestors.

That is, we, like all other mammals including our apish brothers detect odors, distinguish tastes, hear bird song and drum beats and we too feel the vibrations of the drums. With our eyes closed we detect the light of the rising sun. These abilities to sense our surroundings are a heritage that preceded the evolution of all primates, all vertebrate animals, indeed all animals. Such sensitivities to wafting plant scents, tasty salted mixtures, police cruiser sirens, loving touches and star light register because of our "sensory cells".

These avant guard cells of the nasal passages, the taste buds, the inner ear, the touch receptors in the skin and the retinal rods and cones all have in common the presence at their tips of projections ("cell processes") called cilia. Cilia have a recognizable fine structure. With a very high power ("electron") microscope a precise array of protein tubules, nine, exactly nine pairs of tubules are arranged in a circular array and two singlet tubules are in the center of this array. All sensory cells have this common feature whether in the light-sensitive retina of the eye or the balance-sensitive semicircular canals of the inner ear. Cross-section slices of the tails of human, mouse and even insect (fruit-fly) sperm all share this same instantly recognizable structure too. Why this peculiar pattern? No one knows for sure but it provides the evolutionist with a strong argument for common ancestry. The size (diameter) of the circle (0.25 micrometers) and of the constituent tubules (0.024 micrometers) aligned in the circle is identical in the touch receptors of the human finger and the taste buds of the elephant.

...

The spirochete group of bacteria includes many harmless mud-dwellers but it also contains a few scary freaks: the treponeme of syphilis and the borrelias of Lyme disease. We animals got our exquisite ability to sense our surroundings—to tell light from dark, noise from silence, motion from stillness and fresh water from brackish brine—from a kind of bacterium whose relatives we despise. Cilia were once free-agents but they became an integral part of all animal cells. Even though the concept that cilia evolved from spirochetes has not been proved I think it is true. Not only is it true but, given the powerful new techniques of molecular biology I think the hypothesis will be conclusively proved. In the not-too-distant future people will wonder why so many scientists were so against my idea for so long!

*from (http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_7.html#margulis)

Life as a collaborative process:

"Professor Margulis suggests a different way of viewing life," he said. "Instead of looking at us as humans, plants and animals, we should view ourselves as collaborative processes. Margulis has made one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th century."

The Long-Lasting Intimacy of Strangers:

"After centuries of speculation, we will soon have the capability of detecting ancient life or pre-biotic chemistry in the solar system, microbial life on extra-solar planets by its alteration of global atmospheric chemistry, and technological civilizations throughout the galaxy. Success in any of these areas would profoundly affect social discourse at all levels, reawakening religious questions in a new context."

Another quote from this site concerns a lady I admire tremendously and who inspired me with the Gaia project:

"She (Lynn Margulis) is best known for her theory of symbiogenesis. She argues that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations. Rather, new tissues, organs, and even new species evolve primarily through the long-lasting intimacy of strangers."

The long-lasting intimacy of strangers! What an evocative phrase for human relations in general, resonant with both our existential isolation and concommitant desire to connect with the Absolute! This also describes what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence between artists separated by centuries or decades.

The piece goes on:

"The fusion of genomes followed by natural selection, she suggests, leads to increasingly complex levels of individuality."

Could it be that the mistaken notion of the self arises directly from the fusion of genomes followed by natural selection?

Cyanobacteria as Gaian thinking processes

This is the opening gambit of an article on what I would call bacterial "thinking" processes. I understood that cyanobacteria and red bacteria are variations on a theme of the green stuff that later became our endemic green plants. Apparently I am wrong, and they are an essential thinking system of Gaia:


"Feb. 2, 2005 — A geomicrobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis has proposed that evolution is the primary driving force in the early Earth's development rather than physical processes, such as plate tectonics.

"Carrine Blank, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of geomicrobiology in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, studying Cyanobacteria - bacteria that use light, water, and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and biomass - has concluded that these species got their start on Earth in freshwater systems on continents and gradually evolved to exist in brackish water environments, then higher salt ones, marine and hyper saline (salt crust) environments.

"Cyanobacteria are organisms that gave rise to chloroplasts, the oxygen factory in plant cells. A half billion years ago Cyanobacteria predated more complex organisms like multi-cellular plants and functioned in a world where the oxygen level of the biosphere was much less than it is today. Over their very long life span, Cyanobacteria have evolved a system to survive a gradually increasing oxidizing environment, making them of interest to a broad range of researchers.

"Blank is able to draw her hypothesis from family trees she is drawing of Cyanobacteria. Her observations are likely to incite debate among biologists and geologists studying one of Earth's most controversial eras - approximately 2.1 billion years ago, when cyanobacteria first arose on the Earth. This was a time when the Earth's atmosphere had an incredible, mysterious and inexplicable rise in oxygen, from extremely low levels to 10 percent of what it is today. There were three - some say four - global glaciations, and the fossil record reflects a major shift in the number of organisms metabolizing sulfur and a major shift in carbon cycling.

" "The question is: Why?" said Blank."

Why indeed?

Why the body of the Gaian planet presupposes a mind

The article describes basic Gaian metabolism, which is frankly incredible, and supposes some intelligent behaviour. Now I beileve that intelligent behavior in inherent in the bacteriosphere, in other words, that Gaia thinks using conjugal bacterial transfers of DNA as our brains use potassium ions between neurons:

"...it is hard to believe that Gaian processes can evolve by chance. The trials would take too long. For example, one trial of the proposed mechanism for regulating the saltiness of seawater would take at least sixty million years. If Gaia didn't luck upon the right system for that problem on the first try, things would quickly become grim.

"Gaia makes much more sense if the stabilizing feedback loops were not blindly discovered, but were already available when the need for them arose. This would mean, for example, that the genes for cyanobacteria, for coral, and for animals with carbonate shells were already available when they were needed. Thus, the processes of oxygen accumulation, desalinization of seawater, and burial of carbon would have begun on this planet without delay. Cosmic ancestry would make comprehensible the existence of Gaian processes prior to the establishment of life on Earth.

What'sNEW

The Universe was created by a physicist hacker:

"You might take this all as a joke," he said, "but perhaps it is not entirely absurd. It may be the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird. On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker."

NUFF SAID THEN!

Magnetometer revolutionizes neurotechnology

From http://www.birf.info/artman/publish/article_383.shtml

This device has the potential to strengthen string theory greatly, and to aid in mapping the faint neurological fields of the brain to a far greater detail.

Here's how it works:

The idea behind Romalis' device is the fact that every atom can be viewed as a tiny bar magnet, and that even the tiniest magnetic field will tend to push that bar around. The apparatus contains a vapor of potassium and helium atoms and uses a laser to line up all these atomic magnets. Another laser then "reads" the atoms and measures how far they've been twisted out of line by external magnetic fields. While other magnetometers contain materials that function only at temperatures approaching absolute zero, Romalis' device works at near room temperature and is much more sensitive.

The neurological applications of this device promise a commercial neurotech within the decade, which would yield far better progress by democratizing the process of understanding the brain with these devices, which are several orders of magnitude cheaper than the present MRI scanners:

It's exciting:

Romalis' device could combine the best of both (MRI and MEG) technologies -- instant response with accurate localization.

At the same time, Romalis' device would eliminate the supercooled magnets that are required for MRI and for some of the electromagnetic tests, making the equipment much less expensive and more versatile. Laid out around a person's head, current supercooled magnetic detectors take readings about every 2 centimeters along the scalp. Romalis' magnetometers could measure signals every 2 millimeters or so. And while a current state-of-the-art magnetoen-cephalography machine costs $2 million, Romalis is building his prototype for $200,000.


"If we have more information -- more measurements from more points in space around a person's head -- we should be able to get much better localization at a much lower cost," said Haxby. "So it's really exciting."

Another marvellous

Charles McCandliss talks with his murderer:

This passage is from 'Architects of Emortality,' by Brian Stableford, and it one of the most magnificent passages of maybe half a dozen of it's like in the entire book:

This is the several hundred year old murder victim, unwittingly talking to his 22 year old murderess in the guise of his familiar young lover Julia:

START QUOTE:

"Nothing is historically superfluous," Stuart told her sternly. "Nothing is outside the causal process by which the world is made and remade. Art is merely the expression of that process, no matter what individual artists may think."

...

"Even the art of murder?" Julia asked lightly.
"If murder were not an expression of historical causality," Stuart insisted, "it would have to be considered devoid of artistry, even by the most daring interpreter."

Stuart had always considered himself a daring interpreter. His ambition had always been to understand the whole of human historycand the whole of the human world: to hold it entirely in his mind-s eye, as if it were a vast parorama in which every element stood in its proper relation to every other element, a huge seamless whole whose horizons held the promise of infinity. In a way, he had to reckon himself a failure, because he knew well enough that there was a great deal which he did _not_ understand, and never would understand, but he could forgive himself that inadequacy - which was of course and inedequacy he shared with all other living men - because he had at least made the effort. He had never allowed himself to be intellectually _confined_ in the way that men like Urashima and Teidemann had.

...

Although he could no tbring himself to entertain the thought, let alone believe it, Stuart McCandless was fated to die very soon.
It was likely that nothing could have saved him - certainly not a better memory.

...

Sometimes victims collaborate in their own murders, even when they have been forewarned of danger - and why should they not, if they believe that murder and art are mere expressions of historical process, deft feints, and thrusts of causality?

If indiosyncrasy, madness, and genius are no more than tiny waves on a great sullen tide of irresistable causality, even a man forewarned can hardly be expected to defy their force. Stuart McCandless certainly did nothing to avoid his fate, even when the second and far more explicit warning arrived. He simply coul dnot imagine that his pupil coul dbe anything but what she seemed or anyone but who she pretended to be. He was old, and he was complacent. He knew that he was fated to die, but he carried in his consciousness that remarkable will to survive that refuses to recognize death even while it stares death in the face. Nor was he a fool; he was probably as knowledgeable a historian as there was in the world, and as wise a lover.

If those who tried to warn him had been able to explain to him exactly _why_ he was being murdered, he would have laughed aloud in flagrant disbelief. Like the vidveg he affected top despise, and in spite of his claustrophobia, he was a man whose imaginitive horizons were narrower than he knew or could ever have admitted to himself.

END OF QUOTE.

I don't wanna do anything: from bad mood to good.

I don't wanna go to Bendigo.
I don't wanna go out today.
I don't wanna study, write, or think.
I don't wanna listen to even another car passing by.
I don't wanna play music.
I don't wanna rest or lie down.
I don't wanna go talk to bureaucrats.
I don't wanna deal with people.
I don't wanna take on any more stress.

I just want to let go, let go and let god.
I just want to lie in the dark with the cat
And forget about life for a while.


*** **** *** ****

A little later:

I guess instead of paying bills like a fanatic who doesn't need to eat, instead I can buy food. Since my level of income increases by a hundred dollars per fortnight next week, I can pay the bills off then. The only concern is...will I have to request an extension on them?

I'll have to find out!

So I found out that I can extend my electricity (25.50$) to March 23, and pay my phone bill (45.00$) to the same date without extensions. That means I have only deferred the normal 40$ bills in favor of spending it on food.

NOW.

As to other matters, my head is a bit misty at present after my upset minutes. I will ring the Employment Agency and discover what is happening there with my application for one on one support.

I got the answering machine as usual. They are not available. I don't know what to do now.

I sat down to write today but I'm not sure it's a going proposition. I will return to it and see.

It's difficult to know where to start. Obviously I want to write the highest calibrating story possible. Obviously I want to start with a cool image, such as the Gaiaformation of Mars, and go from there. So I have about ten different beginnings, each one a little less uninspired than the last! I would prefer to condense the best of each into one really inspired opening with a bunch of cool imagery. I'll leave that til later.

Last night I had a guy over. It was fun but today I feel completely dissatisfied with myself to be honest. I feel quite unmotivated and 'down'. I feel as if I have just gone for kicks rather than satisfactions. This is hardly surprising because the fella I was with tested weak and he wasn't too inspiring either.

I feel yuck. It's too hot to go out. I don't feel like staying home all the time today.

The best thing I can make of today is to clean up some more. Hopefully I can find my concession card, my study notes for the certificate that's due REAL SOON, and wait for this HORRENDOUS heat to pass. It's these days where I wish I hadn't misplaced my intolerably ugly and unfashionable hat.

Come four O clock it might be fruitful to head into town and pay some bills and pay rent. Being a Friday the State library and Uni library will be open until, respectively, 8 and 10. And Borders books will also be open for what good that will do. And also being friday the Adelaide market will be open with fresh fruit and veg til 9. So I might go in just as the cool descends.

However, I seem to be wasting time at present so I'll take that as a sign that I need a bit of a lie down...

Research findings for the day

Today I found two fascinating books. One was a summary of the relations between Tolstoy and Gandhi at 'Cosmic Pages' Bookshop. Another was a book called 'The Diamond Cutter' which taught the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness in the most astonishingly clear manner for me, contextualising it in the form of business, and simultaneously adding a new range of awareness to my notion of the nature of "problems" (see the last entry)...

Both of these books really add fuel to the theses of my nonfiction book, so I'm EXCITED. The first contributes enormously to the chapter on the story of nonviolence, and the second helps me comprehend the sophisticated and at times unfathomable response of Buddhists who embody the doctrine of emptiness to history.

So anyway, the latter book had a fascinating approach to problems.

What if everyone around you who engaged you were you Fairy Godmother? Aside from looking pretty funny in a pink bonneted dress and wand with a star on the end... imagine that everyone around you was trying to direct you in the best path for you to grow through. But then imagine that they need to conclusively close off the path that you are presently on in order to draw you into the one you're supposed to take.

So with that in mind, what do the people in your life who represent problems direct you towards being and doing?

So that is the reasonable, rational and logical approach to problems as opportunities to learn and grow.

SF Stories in "The Year's Best" Anthologies that Test Strong

There are precious few SF stories that test strong. SF is overwhelming a toxic backwater in the collective unconscious now. The future goes one way, and the past tradition of SF goes another. Genuine prediction is usually unprincipled and not mediated by the dominant moral tone of the world in recent years. The Science Fiction genre lives in the past, where the homosexual rape of a human priest by an alien in Mary Doria Russell's bestselling 'The Sparrow' can spark a reaction and borrow from the granduer of the Jesuit past.

Anyway, that's my rave about sci-fi. On with the strong!

"The Day We Went Through the Transition." This story made me cry :-))

"Slow Life" (which I have already mentioned on this site in December and quoted the magnificent opening, by Michael Swanwick.

"In Paradise," by Bruce Sterling. A sexy impetuous romance that denigrates society while asserting individual integrity.

"Crux", by Albert E. Cowdrey. Not read yet.

"Tendeleo's Story," by Ian McDonald. Not read yet.

Strong Medicine, William Shunn; Send Me a Mentagram, Dominic Green, ditto.

Incidentally, from the 1991 Dozois anthology only one story tests far far stronger than any SF piece I have ever read, and that is 'A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations," by Kim Stanley Robinson.

All but 'Slow Life' and 'In Paradise' rely in flashback extensively, and begin, in accordance with Aristotelian lore, in media res, in the middle of the matter.

Spiritual way to solve all problems: article published on a public website.

The spiritual way to solve problems requires courage or honesty. Functionally speaking, courage is the same thing as honesty and vice versa.

WHAT IS "PROBLEMS"? WHO IS "PROBLEMS"?

The person who has mostly problems is also generally problematic. The reality is that a person identifies problems when they themselves are at the level of consciousness where problems are perceived. So they become stuck at that level.

Therefore the quickest way to solve problems is to recontextualise them into a higher energy field. The main recontextualisations of "problem" are as follows:

1. Challenge.
2. Opportunty.
3. Stimulus or spur to learning.
4. Gift.
5. Blessing.
6. Expression of divine perfection, unfolding in the moment.
7. "Problems are non-existent."

This is not simply semantics, but a question of who you are and how you experience life.

"OUT-THERE" PROBLEMS
What people tend to perceive as out-there problems include economic and financial problems do not yield to analysis or normal methods of insight. The spiritual principles are those which allow the consequences to unfold with least harm to all parties. These are patience and freedom.

Patience, the natural consequence of being at peace, is an expression of consistently taking opportunities to grow. Patience is not, as Leo Tolstoy said, a heavy fur coat you put on more of when times have become colder. Patience takes no effort for people like Warren Buffet who say: "The market is a mechanism for allocating funds from the less patient to the more patient." The attitude of patience is thoughtful, civil and reflective, and far more likely to both accept downturns and recognise opportunities for what they are even in the midst of the worst "circumstances".

Freedom is not libertinage, nor is it license; rather it is inner liberation and external liberality, in the sense of having an generous and Falstaffian spirit.

Freedom as first articulated by the sage Abraham is the recognition that the higher power is an unfailing and abundant source of prosperity for everyone. In practice it looks like generosity and selflessness and that is merely the recognition through action of the inner liberation the person experiences.

HOW FREEDOM AND PATIENCE WORK:
There is no "out-there" or "in-here" to speak of except that we perceive it. So giving joyfully and recognising the Divine source of that giving tends to erase the person who is having the problem, because they are simply not present in the spirit of Freedom. The divine is, however.

The practice of patience and freedom resolve all external problems, and can be practiced at any time and place, and are universal and free for anyone to use. They function because they transcend the ego and greatly broaden the available power to the person who practices them in all their affairs without inconsistency.

"IN-HERE" PROBLEMS."

"In-here" problems stem largely from resistance, and by and large their resolution is in the principle of surrender. Here is Doctor David Hawkins, speaking last week on the subject in passing:

"The way out is to picture the worst possible scenario and surrender to that. You perpetuate what you resist. Sometimes it’s karmic blockages that need to be resolved, and when you do, it disappears."

[Questioner: Is there a way to speed it up?]

"Stop trying to speed it up. Your problem is, you’re not worrying hard enough. I want you to really worry harder. You disappear that which you choose, and you maintain that which you resist."

This then is the radical solution to inner problem. What we resist gains command of our lives. What we accept the worst of begins to vanish. Guilt and fear and worry and hate cannot possibly have any hold over our lives, except that which we give it by resistance.


RESPONSIBILITY AND PROBLEMS
We are free by nature. The problems we suffer are experienced as a consequence of our karma and present moment spiritual intention. They are not fixed or permanent in any way.

By writing down our problems and our flaws, and by accepting the fullest possible responsibility for them without guilt or fear, one exercises courage and self-honesty in the moment. This tends to trigger a cascade of new information into one's life, that allows problems to resolve as you grow and learn.

So the overall solution to problems is to take responsibility for them. The only way we can do this with peace is to acknowledge the higher power, that resolves all problems in the peace and freedom of our own true nature.

Aphorisms from my teenage years I found while cleaning up:

Finding joy in creation
Is living in heaven.

Endings make beginnings;
Effects create causes;
rain clears the sky for sun;
Joy generates all life.

Beauty is the ultimate source of all efficiency in practical matters.
Here's how:
Timeless art inspires graciousness, and grace inspires economy of gesture and dedication to skill in turn. This allows more to be done with less effort and fewer negative side effects.
So efficiency comes from beauty!

Beauty has no home in the world, and so is welcome anywhere, because it takes on any appearence to please her gracious hosts. We welcome beauty into our lives not by calling it in but by clearing - inside and out - a tidy space for its appearence.

Only the invisible is beauty.
Only the silent is musical.
Only the simple is art.
Only the pure are powerful.
And only love gives eyes to see these things.

A Miracle: the conclusion to the mad guy on the bus

As I listened to the mad guy on the bus shouting and raving, I found in my heart sympathy for the guy. He and I suffered alike, he of anger and I of desire. And I silently prayed for surrender but none came.

So I prayed instead for a sense of lovingness, and instantly the Presence was there, everywhere, and in everything. The silence deepened and opened out. The man fell silent as I became aware of the Presence around him and his wounded heart began to cool.

Time stopped.

He asked me, "'Scuse me, have you got a smoke?"

I met his eyes (which were lovely) and smiled and said "Sorry buddy, but I don't smoke."

Then he asked, "Have you got the time on you there?"

"I left my mobile at home, sorry," I said, and asked the guy in front of me the time, but he was stiff and didn't answer.

So I turned back to him and replied: "It must be about ten-thirty."

He nodded. "Ten-thirty," he said quietly.

A few minutes later he quietly went back to his girlfriend and sat with her. The sensation of lovingness gradually subsided as he returned to her, and became a soft, embodied sensation of bliss for me.

"A miracle is always a change of perception." ACIM.

Last night and thoughts about a mad guy on the bus

Last night I went into town WOMAD world music festival was on.

The cat is perched on the telephone stool, looking querelous and sedate. We have just woken up.

Insight from yesterday (on too much coffee) into the three hundreds: these are the people that seek support in being independent! The reality is that all the people I have met in the high 300s on the Hawkins scale are part of their support groups to an amazing extent. Whereas people in the 200s struggle to handle challenges on their own, folk in the 300s have transcended that and strive with others to attain common goals that also benefit society.

So, which comes first, the chicken or the egg, the independent person or the support organisation?

For instance, if spiritual healers calibrate in the 500s, why don't we all become spiritual healers and be done with it? The answer is that these roles are open to us at all times, even in our present situations. We have the roles of evil open for us should be choose it, but lack the context in which evil would a meaningful behaviour to adapt: likewise, the roles of virtue and happiness are open to us at all times and rendered meaningful by our constant choice to familiarise ourselves with them

Last night on the bus an extremely upset man was ranting and raving at his unfaithful girlfriend. I sat there peacefully reading Ramana Maharishi and slipping in and out of the silence. He came and sat two seats away, half a bus away from his gf, and continued yelling and cursing.

Naturally this disturbed me. I examined the disturbance then the source of it, and saw immediately the difficulty:

I held myself to be better than this man because I had dealt with anger issues already and was simply untroubled by them. So there was an immediate charge of egotism and superiority that released and opened me out to examine the root of my disturbance.

The disturbance was basically a seed of anger in the process of being stimulated by the blossoming anger of the man. Okay then:

But then I looked a little closer. I saw that was motivated by fully blossoming seeds of desire, he by anger... the difference was only in the poisin of the mind. Different consequences but the same net result of a lack of peace that the man was suffering from. And this insight stayed with me while I examined the foundations of desire.

Clearly the source of the difficulty lay in the identification of the self with the contents of consciousness. For instance, my body is 31 years old and experiences desire. The mind has traces of memories of desire which aligns it to behavioural grooves. Long familiarity with desire for its own sake without the attendant respect and care also left attitudinal traces.

And as I examined this, I asked myself: do I see the self or just the enaction of the desire role?

Of course I see only the latter. And the identification with that role is simply not the I. And yet the I vanishes when I am playing that role... hm... interesting.

"Karma is not a reward or punishment for our actions. It is what we are."

This statement is revealing. Karma is what we are. Karma is what I am right here and now. By recognising karma one can cleverly use one's life to karmic advantage.

Here is a quote from Triz in London on a discussion group about spirituality:

"Dr. Hawkins goes on the mention that the 'clever' ones amongst us (and he says this laughingly) will use our lives to a karmic advantage. He says that karma is not a reward or a punishment for our actions, rather it is what we are. We are our karma. So in this situation with the employee? You could just leave it to the energy field of your organisation to handle. But what about your karma (and your karmic advantage)? Your karma stems from your motivation within this context.


When we read Buddhist or Christian quotes to act lovingly to one another including yourself; these are not rules for which we will be punished if they are broken. This is karmic advice (to the clever ones amongst us). This is the most interesting point for me personally: that what I construe as loving to me at my LOC will be completely different to you at your LOC (assuming we have differing LOC's). So it matters not (karmically) if you think my actions are loving or not - as long as they come from my perspective of lovingness.


My advice is to consider your karmic 'advantage'. Therefore, act from lovingness from your unique perspective in the universe - not from mine, this groups, nor anyone elses opinion. And when you act lovingly the entire universe will respond to that love. What can you perceive you can do for your highest good and the highest good of the employee in situation? Once you have made this decision (to act from your own perspective of lovingness), the outcome and content of the situation will be set by the meeting of the energy fields and is not really in your control. Once you have made the decision to act from your perspective of love, Karmically speaking, you are in a different place."

Story Two of the History of Excellence - Outcastes and exiles

I'm starting to think about story two. The first story concerns the essential nature of capitalism, and in this story I want to talk about how outcastes and exiles innovate and transform societies for better and for worse.

I have a few issues with this. 'For worse' concerns the perversions of the caste system that Krishna suggests in the Atthava Gita, and the historical treatement of the Gypsies in Europe, both of which rely on creating the Outsider and then victimizing.

The real theme here appears to be the the need to be RIGHT creating devils of the imagination. The sleep of reason breeds monsters and all that kind of thing. But isn't it deeper than that?

Because the two great success stories of outsiders are - in exactly the same geographic locations - the Buddhists and the Jews. These are two inspirational examples of values that hit the road and change the world.

From Buddhism comes the notion of upaya, skilful means as they are somewhat vaguely translated. I call it marketing, however, and not without admiration; because Buddhism is one of the great marketing success stories, and trust-based marketing itself is often the domain of the outcaste on their comeuppance.

Now no one perhaps would claim good marketing of the Jews of the Ancient World through to the Middle Ages, would they? Would they?

Well, it depends on how you look at them. Clearly they were not concerned with the same issues as the Buddhists, and decidedly NOT living among the (so I understand at least) urbane and cosmopolitan Indian society of the Buddhists. They were not concerned with conversation and engagement with others so much as mutual support and flat out economic survival. Jews are great are social reproduction, which means they reproduce social mores and moneymaking ability excellently, and I believe even more so when they regard themselves as Outsiders to the system.

Because we are all outsiders, unless we are born into the elite and select few of capitalism. The lesson of the Jews for me is that we MUST survive in a hostile environment by first acknowledging our status as Outsiders. So long as we wilfully assume we "fit in" and accept our position in society, we allow ourselves to become slaves. So the lesson of the Jews might be said to be an historically progressive and cultivated malcontent.

On the other hand, the upaya of the Buddhists is an entirely more slippery concept, in fact not a concept at all.

Did the efforts of Lord Krishna to unify North India succeed? Did the Indian caste system EVER work at all, even during Krishna's day? What was the effects of the upaya concept on the Indian system, during Buddha's day and afterwards.

The other issue in mind as I develop these questions is the source of causation. We attribute cause and effect to historical movements as part of our belief in an objective external world. But from the higher perspective it would seem that the power of a nation or a people arises directly from their adherence to empowering spiritual principles. The example I have in mind is the difference between Sumeria and Babylonia when I calibrate them on the Hawkins scale.

Sumeria calibrates at 60, the level of guilt. That's a way low calibration!

On the other hand, Babylonia calibrates at 125, which is the level of desire, a highly motivating level even through it tests weak. The energy of desire pushes people to accumulate goods and engage and explore their world in selfish but ever-increasing detail. At this level capitalism becomes possible.

Ancient Athenian democracy pre-Revolution - 105.
Ancient Athenian democracy post-Revolution - very, very low indeed.
Socrates - 460.
Plato - 460.
Pericles - 200.
Lycurgus the Lawgiver - 300.
Aristotle - 499.

Ancient Republican Rome - 150, the level of vengeance, anger and war.
Ancient Imperial Rome - 201, tests strong at the level of courage.

Julius Caesar - 350, Inspirational Leadership.
Caesur Augustus - 400, Reason.

So I'm not sure how to proceed here yet. The Jew's source of power stems from Abrahamic principles, while the Buddhist's stem directly from Buddha. So Jewish social reproduction and Buddhist upaya will find their sources in their originals first and foremost.

And that is where I will go look!

Story Two of the History of Excellence - Outcastes and exiles

I'm starting to think about story two. The first story concerns the essential nature of capitalism, and in this story I want to talk about how outcastes and exiles innovate and transform societies for better and for worse.

I have a few issues with this. 'For worse' concerns the perversions of the caste system that Krishna suggests in the Atthava Gita, and the historical treatement of the Gypsies in Europe, both of which rely on creating the Outsider and then victimizing.

The real theme here appears to be the the need to be RIGHT creating devils of the imagination. The sleep of reason breeds monsters and all that kind of thing. But isn't it deeper than that?

Because the two great success stories of outsiders are - in exactly the same geographic locations - the Buddhists and the Jews. These are two inspirational examples of values that hit the road and change the world.

From Buddhism comes the notion of upaya, skilful means as they are somewhat vaguely translated. I call it marketing, however, and not without admiration; because Buddhism is one of the great marketing success stories, and trust-based marketing itself is often the domain of the outcaste on their comeuppance.

Now no one perhaps would claim good marketing of the Jews of the Ancient World through to the Middle Ages, would they? Would they?

Well, it depends on how you look at them. Clearly they were not concerned with the same issues as the Buddhists, and decidedly NOT living among the (so I understand at least) urbane and cosmopolitan Indian society of the Buddhists. They were not concerned with conversation and engagement with others so much as mutual support and flat out economic survival. Jews are great are social reproduction, which means they reproduce social mores and moneymaking ability excellently, and I believe even more so when they regard themselves as Outsiders to the system.

Because we are all outsiders, unless we are born into the elite and select few of capitalism. The lesson of the Jews for me is that we MUST survive in a hostile environment by first acknowledging our status as Outsiders. So long as we wilfully assume we "fit in" and accept our position in society, we allow ourselves to become slaves. So the lesson of the Jews might be said to be an historically progressive and cultivated malcontent.

On the other hand, the upaya of the Buddhists is an entirely more slippery concept, in fact not a concept at all.

Did the efforts of Lord Krishna to unify North India succeed? Did the Indian caste system EVER work at all, even during Krishna's day? What was the effects of the upaya concept on the Indian system, during Buddha's day and afterwards.

The other issue in mind as I develop these questions is the source of causation. We attribute cause and effect to historical movements as part of our belief in an objective external world. But from the higher perspective it would seem that the power of a nation or a people arises directly from their adherence to empowering spiritual principles. The example I have in mind is the difference between Sumeria and Babylonia when I calibrate them on the Hawkins scale.

Sumeria calibrates at 60, the level of guilt. That's a way low calibration!

On the other hand, Babylonia calibrates at 125, which is the level of desire, a highly motivating level even through it tests weak. The energy of desire pushes people to accumulate goods and engage and explore their world in selfish but ever-increasing detail. At this level capitalism becomes possible.

Ancient Athenian democracy pre-Revolution - 105.
Ancient Athenian democracy post-Revolution - very, very low indeed.
Socrates - 460.
Plato - 460.
Pericles - 200.
Lycurgus the Lawgiver - 300.
Aristotle - 499.

Ancient Republican Rome - 150, the level of vengeance, anger and war.
Ancient Imperial Rome - 201, tests strong at the level of courage.

Julius Caesar - 350, Inspirational Leadership.
Caesur Augustus - 400, Reason.

So I'm not sure how to proceed here yet. The Jew's source of power stems from Abrahamic principles, while the Buddhist's stem directly from Buddha. So Jewish social reproduction and Buddhist upaya will find their sources in their originals first and foremost.

And that is where I will go look!

My Competitive Advantage as SF Writer

My competitive advantage as a SF writer is that I and some of my work tests strong on the Hawkins scale.

The simple but unnoticed fact of the matter is that the need to make SF stories actually moral and useful to the world is overlooked. The inspirational worth of SF is about all it can claim as intrinsic usefulness as a genre.

So much of the SF genre tests weak that I have an advantage if my work is:

A, craftsmanlike quality of storytelling, and
B, testing strong on the Hawkins scale.

SF stories DO test strong. Bruce Sterling's 'In Paradise' tests really very strong, 350, the level of hope, self-help inspiration, business, and self-help groups.

It is notable that in studying business David Hawkins also studies 12 step groups in the same chapter of Power Versus Force. And in talking about how different people react to crisis, he mentions how people in the 350s go for support groups to grow personally, whereas folk in the 400s seek University, and the high 400s seek Science, and the 500s seek service and (higher 500s) spiritual healing.

But he goes on to say that in the 600s one becomes "great" by alignment with spiritual principles, while the living demonstration of that through one's conduct calibrates at 700, which he characterises as "legendary". 700 is the level of Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Ramana Maharishi, originators of the great patterns of peace, service, insight and self-knowledge respectively from the twentieth century.

I recently calibrated myself at just over 310. This kind of reflexive self-calibration is dubious work, but I find it ironic that I am willing and earnest in doing what I can do, even though in everyday life I had significant and humbling struggles to do things like GET UP, lol. So the calibration of 310 might be altogether higher than reality. Or not.

I'm not fussed either way so long as me and my published work tests strong.

Halo, by Charles Stross

Halo is one of the few stories from the series of nine published in Asimov's SF that I have read (Lobsters is the other story of the nine), and I was absolutely thrilled by it.

Then I began to study it a la Nancy Kress. Oh dear.

It's good. It really is. But when I calibrated it at the level of anger at 150 on the Hawkins scale, testing weak below 200 obviously, I didn't really comprehend why until I did a scene by scene breakdown of the throughline, following the protagonist Amber through her dramas with her mother.

It's really very very good. But it's true that Anger is Amber's middle name... and although the solution to her mother's attempt to get her legally back is ingenious (she declares herself a Queen in Jovian space, sort of like Esther Dyson did over the internet a few years back, lol) it's still motivated by hatred and rage.

As to the CETI project - Communication with extraterrestrial life - the motive for her joining that seems expedient. But the emphasis on velocity of change a la Timothy Leary sort of erodes that funny weird moral stuff we live by.

Oh well. If I said I admired Charlie Stross' work tremendously, but that everything of his tested weak due to a deep nihilism to his work, it would sadly be true of ten of the brightest writers in the field as well.

That would include other great writers that test weak: Ursula le Guin, Greg Egan, Robert Reed, etc.

Chapter One of History of Excellence, first draft, finished!

It's more like a simulation than a first draft. I wrote over 300 words per day for the last 30 days, but it comes to sixteen thousand words altogether, of 23 chapters.

It is VERY rough, VERY uneven. Much of it I have been learning which way I'm going, and questions of tone still haven't been settled until the material is printed out and I have a chance to just read, reread, describe, and begin to shape it in my mind.

But it's DOWN, isn't it!??

I feel quite startled at the fact that I'm getting there.

Anyway, today I sought to upload this to the Yahoo Briefcase, a feat beyond my un-geeky skills pretty much. I suceeded but it took and hour. I tried to upload my resumes and failed so that's that for another day.

Marc is visiting from Kangaroo Island, which is great news. I 'm looking forwards to seeing him.

So today I mentioned this book project to another person online, edging towards getting readers for the topic. It's all good so far but haven't asked straight out because I want to actually have a READABLE first draft. What I have now is a hodgepodge, even charitably speaking.

But it's first draft. YAY for me!

The Tale of the Fall of Babylon to the Persians, by Herodotus

At the moment I feel bogged down in historical detail about Babylon.

I think I am going to have to simulate doing research on the economic and social background of Babylon.

And as to the Aryan thesis in my entries on capitalism (the notion that Aryan tribes generated capitalism in ancient Babylon) it is looking much less probable. The odds are that the fuel in the fire of capitalism was the "Turkic" tribes, whoever they are.

It also turns out that Sumeria wasn't a 'nation-state', but rather a confederacy like the Greek Penninsula of warring city-states. So Babylon was likely the Great Leap Forward in terms of organizational capitalism. But more research will confirm or deny.

And I have been reading Herodotus' account of how the Persians won Babylon, and it is a classic war story which I think I simply must reproduce here:

"Cyrus, with the first approach of the ensuing spring, marched forward against Babylon. The Babylonians, encamped without their walls, awaited his coming. A battle was fought at a short distance from the city, in which the Babylonians were
defeated by the Persian king, whereupon they withdrew within their defences.

"Here they shut themselves up, and made light of his siege, having laid in a store of provisions for many years in preparation against this attack; for when they saw Cyrus conquering nation after nation, they were convinced that he would never stop, and that their turn would come at last."

[1.191.1]
"Cyrus was now reduced to great perplexity, as time went on and he made no progress against the place. In this distress either some one made the suggestion to him, or he bethought himself of a plan, which he proceeded to put in execution.

"He placed a portion of his army at the point where the river enters the city, and another body at the back of the place where it issues forth, with orders to march into the town by the bed of the stream, as soon as the water became shallow enough: he then himself drew off with the unwarlike portion of his host, and made for the place where Nitocris dug the basin for the river, where he did exactly what she had done formerly: he turned the Euphrates by a canal into the basin, which was then a marsh, on which the river sank to such an extent that the natural bed of the stream became fordable. Hereupon the Persians who had been left for the purpose at Babylon by the, river-side, entered the stream, which had now sunk so as to
reach about midway up a man's thigh, and thus got into the town.

"Had the Babylonians been apprised of what Cyrus was about, or had they noticed their danger, they would never have allowed the Persians to enter the city, but would have destroyed them utterly; for they would have made fast all the street-gates which gave upon the river, and mounting upon the walls along both sides of the stream, would so have caught the enemy, as it were, in a trap. But, as it was, the Persians came upon them by surprise and so took the city.

Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents at Babylon declare) long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had chanced, but as they were engaged in a festival, continued dancing and revelling until they learnt the capture but too certainly. Such, then, were the circumstances of the first taking of Babylon."

On Spiritual Realization

This entry quotes from a marvellous and inspiring site called www.realization.org I highly recommend it, especially the pages on Nisargadatta Maharaj and (here) Ramana Maharishi, the two saintly sages of the twentieth century who also calibrated at 700 on the Hawkins scale, the level of enlightenment. Most of the other teachers here calibrate in the high 400s and in the 500s.
About Ramana Maharishi's self-inquiry:

From David Godman:
"[Ramana Maharshi] said that if one can keep one's y on this inner feeling of 'I', and if one can exclude all other thoughts, then the 'I'-thought will start to subside into the Heart-centre."


As this sentence suggests, self-inquiry is basically about keeping the attention fixed on the I-thought — that is, on the feeling of me.

*** **** *** ****

Some distinctions on inquiry:
The word inquiry leads many people to think, wrongly, that the technique has more to do with asking questions than with focusing attention. Since the technique does involve questions, the misunderstanding is natural.

One of these questions, "Who Am I?", is the name of Ramana Maharshi's first written work. He meant to suggest that self-inquiry reveals the answer to this question, not that a seeker should ask the question over and over.

Self-inquiry also involves a second question, "To whom does this thought arise?" Ramana Maharshi advised meditators to ask this question whenever their concentration is interrupted by a thought, because the answer causes the attention to return to the feeling of me where it belongs.

*** **** *** ****

Ramana Maharshi summed up his technique as follows:

What is essential in any sadhana [practice] is to try to bring back the running mind and fix it on one thing only. Why then should it not be brought back and fixed in Self-attention? That alone is Self-enquiry (atma-vicara). That is all that is to be done!"

A QUOTATION ABOUT SELF-INQUIRY:

"Devotee: If I go on rejecting thoughts can I call it Vichara?

"Maharshi: It may be a stepping stone. But really Vichara begins when you cling to your Self and are already off the mental movement, the thought-waves."

Tolstoy to Gandhi:

Leo Tolstoy inspired Mohandas Gandhi in the 'Hindstan News' with the following statement, which I have doctored slightly:

"If people only freed themselves from their believes of all kinds, the simple law of love, natural to humanity, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory."

Marvellous stuff!

"Simulated" draft for The History of Excellence

“What's right about human nature?”

I was walking down a city street, packed with restaurants, fashion boutiques, cinemas and bookshops, with this question on my mind. I had been studying the roots of business throughout South East Asia for the past four years, answering questions about why they worked.

Often the answers were phrased in terms of what was wrong. Which is only fair when you consider that business has developed to fill needs, to occupy people, and create a profit. There must be a problem to begin for business to solve, almost by definition. So I had collected lots of answers as to why things went wrong, why people couldn't be trusted and why systems had to be transparent to catch out the wrongdoers.

But just at that moment I walked past the Tobacco Shop owner, outside his shop smiling at the sunlight. In recent years smoking has become unfashionable but his shop still does a roaring trade. The doors are open morning and night and he sells a range of sweet smelling and perfumed tobaccos. I smile and say hello as I pass and at that moment an insight flashes into my mind.

Out of all the businesses that go bust, go wrong, and fail, there are literally hundreds like this little shop. Open year after year, the owner happy, they not only never fail, they succeed daily. That's it! I thought: We are surrounded by successes at all times. We get used to them. We don't notice them because there's so many people winning and doing well. Our city streets are crowded with businesses doing well. Our suburbs are packed with prosperous people. Much of the world is prosperous, having sufficient of everything to live their lives happily.

Now there are folk who think they're only being good if they're worried about others. This is a very simply misunderstanding, but the understanding is subtle and must wait until later in this book.

1. Next time you walk down a city street, note all the shops that are prospering and flourishing. Think of all the well-off people buying from those shops who are also doing fine. And simply feel gratitude! Feel grateful for being surrounded by success.
2. People often suggest to get around people who are successful. I suggest you start noticing it all around you. Look for success in nature. Every plant that grows is a success. Every baby that cries is successful at expressing her needs. Success is everywhere around you!
3. Widen your perception of successful people. Start looking not just at them but at the context or, as we will discuss in later chapters, at the field around them. Most of the time they will be successful in many wonderful areas.