He began to see God and the church and those activities that he thought of as the world - education, business, politics - as male and serious, perhaps comically so; while women were their own temples and walked cryptic, oblivious, and brooding across the earth.

Andre Dubus

The House Across the Way

The leaves looked in at the window
Of the house across the way,
At a man that had sinned like you and me
And all poor human clay.

He muttered: "In a gambol
I took my soul astray.
But tomorrow I'll drag it back from danger,
In the morning, come what may;
For no man knows what season
He shall go his ghostly way."
And his face fell down upon the table,
And where it fell it lay.

And the wind blew under the carpet
And it said, or it seemed to say:
"Truly, all men must go a-ghosting
And no man knows his day."
And the leaves stared in at the window
Like the people at a play.

Ralph Hodgson, Poems (1917).

Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness, expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes.

- Jorge Luis Borges

We keep hearing and talking about some event called “Collapse”.

Some believe it’s coming in 10 years. Some believe this year. Some believe it’s happening right now. And some even believe it has already taken place. I’ll tell you what, Collapse is not relevant in those terms, i.e. what you or someone believes or thinks.

The collapse I’m referring to has nothing to do with earthquakes in NZ. Nothing to do with what’s happening in Wisconsin. Nothing to do with sabotaged oil fields in Libya. Nothing to do with the price of a gallon of gasoline. Nothing to do with the price of Gold. Nothing to do with what Charlie says or what Marc says. Nothing to do with what Mac says. Nothing to do with what I say.

No, Collapse has to do with something else and here’s how it works-

When you are cold and can’t get warm,
When you are hungry and can’t satisfy that hunger,
When you are sick and can’t get well,
When you are tired and can’t sleep, night after night after night,
When the bills are piling up and there’s not one cent in the “closed” account,
When the police are knocking down the door,
When you are trembling with fear and your body shakes uncontrollably,
When the world appears to be imploding around you,

When you experience any of the above, then, and only then, does the word “Collapse” have any relevancy to your life because then you “own” it. Until then, it’s non sequitur. Not lived, not felt, a make believe, illusory, fantasy world.

So you see, Collapse, in those terms, will be experienced by billions of people, when the time is most appropriate. When the lesson comes knocking on the door.

Fortunate are those who will never hear that knock.

We keep hearing and talking about some event called “Collapse”.

Some believe it’s coming in 10 years. Some believe this year. Some believe it’s happening right now. And some even believe it has already taken place. I’ll tell you what, Collapse is not relevant in those terms, i.e. what you or someone believes or thinks.

The collapse I’m referring to has nothing to do with earthquakes in NZ. Nothing to do with what’s happening in Wisconsin. Nothing to do with sabotaged oil fields in Libya. Nothing to do with the price of a gallon of gasoline. Nothing to do with the price of Gold. Nothing to do with what Charlie says or what Marc says. Nothing to do with what Mac says. Nothing to do with what I say.

No, Collapse has to do with something else and here’s how it works-

When you are cold and can’t get warm,
When you are hungry and can’t satisfy that hunger,
When you are sick and can’t get well,
When you are tired and can’t sleep, night after night after night,
When the bills are piling up and there’s not one cent in the “closed” account,
When the police are knocking down the door,
When you are trembling with fear and your body shakes uncontrollably,
When the world appears to be imploding around you,

When you experience any of the above, then, and only then, does the word “Collapse” have any relevancy to your life because then you “own” it. Until then, it’s non sequitur. Not lived, not felt, a make believe, illusory, fantasy world.

So you see, Collapse, in those terms, will be experienced by billions of people, when the time is most appropriate. When the lesson comes knocking on the door.

Fortunate are those who will never hear that knock.

- European American

7. Abandon any attempt to get along with my fellow man, and just accept that i do not belong in this or any possible world and should therefore just continue as i am, apart;

- Elberry

"In the field of strategic knife
defense, the Pekiti-Tirsia System
of Kali is THE most progressive,
practical and sophisticated system
of tactical knife self-defense and
edged weapon awareness that I
have ever encountered"

Guro Dan Inosanto

Looking for your light,

I went out:

it was like the sudden dawn

of a million million suns,

a ganglion of lightnings

for my wonder.

O Lord of Caves,

if you are light,

there can be no metaphor.

--Allama Prabhu

Six months went by and I asked to see the head monk and they refused to let me see him. I waited and eventually he came out and I asked for my second lesson. He told me I had graduated and to leave him alone. Again I begged him to teach me the second lesson. He again told me that I had graduated but I told him more about my work as a Dr. at the mental hospital and after a while he
(a much smaller skinny little guy) grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me to the edge of the rocks. He said see Victoria Peak? They have guns there that can shoot us and blow up this monastery. What is the point of learning martial arts? It is worthless since there are guns. More important is to be a good person and have compassion. Do you fight the patients in your hospital? Have no enemies and you can forget about locking your door.

- patfromlogan

New agers have got to be the dumbest demographic to insist on parting with their money.

- internet guy

Rise up by kneeling down, into the soil, into Earth and into ourselves. When we garden we consume the fruits of our labors but more importantly we consume the soul of the soil and with it comes the power to live free.

- BigGreenFrog

Lots of people , usually in late teens to late 20s , in their desire to find deep meaning, absolute truths. etc turn to all sorts of things. it seems that human construction comes packaged with an acute desire to appoint god figures....people need to worship...to appoint authorities outside themselves, divine or otherwise...season to taste...to take responsibility for all the stuff they cant handle......the burden of responsibility is to great....This desire to worship and be led has been ruthlessly exploited by politicians, rock promoters, cult leaders etc etc etc for a long time. And every new generation we get a new batch of stupid seekers and suckers. Like every decade or so we get the new hybrid-hindu hustler...remember maharishi mahesh yogi?..then we get Krishna murti who tried to be a little more mainstream...then we get bhagwan shree rajneesh with his fleet of rolls royces in Oregon....( he became a father figure granting permissions and benedictions to the middle aged neurotics that entered his barrack-compounds...these were the deeply inhibited people that could only use there stunted genitalia if someone told then it was ok....and they only had to give him all their possessions to get his nod) then we get a modern hustler like deepak chopra, same crap in updated wrappers...and the idiots never wake......of course ISKON is for the truly demented...how people swallow this line of crap about a thumbnail sized blue deity with 20 arms ruling the universe...screw the metaphors...certainly sceew the literality....as i type this i have very little sympathy for the wolves or their sheep......anyone stupid enough for even a second to fall for any of these ploys deserves everything they get......if there is a god, take your pick , and he designs creatures with IQs so low that they buy these cons.....then I have nothing to say about it.....if some silly punk is lonely and sees a group of brainwashed idiots leaping around in the name of whatever deity it is that week...and decide it's a good way to get laid....and then ends up swallowing some shit he didn't expect...it's because hes a damn moron., and as for the meaning of life, it goes like this: first your force fed shit.....then you start to eat it on your own,,,then you start to like the taste...then you die from shit poisoning.....

iskon....IS a CON

people aren't merely receptive to messages and hypnotic oration.......they are also like swarms of gnats that orbit streetlights in the summer. first you start with something bright and sparkly, or sweet and sticky.....anything perceived as "attractive" and this can be a speech by Hitler or a candy bar with a garishly colored wrapper. If more then one person is attracted by the lure...even if its by nothing more then wide open blank-eyed curiosity...then another person will notice the first person and now we have 2 slack jawed cow eyed people watching. That is enough to begin the pooling effect...more will come for no other reason then that there are already 2 assembled...it isn't necessary to analyze this feature...it is already irreducible,,,it can be called part of the "genetic architecture" of the species for lack of some more precise term. and i agree that people of "higher intelligence" are often the first in the door. Lets say we have a high IQ person that is also young and /or emotionally inexperienced or volatile and experientially limited. Or like many smart people is frustrated and dissatisfied with the boring mundane options that life offers......hard work.....gradual advancement........shitty jobs etc.....so the person is looking for something "different" and is more inclined to bend the physics of common sense to adapt to his frustration and the probable lonlinesss that comes with it. and now...voila.......he finds a whole new crowd of people...and this offers the possibility of meeting pals or lovers.....and so what if it comes with a thumbnailsized blue deity with 10 arms that rules the universe by playing a flute........I think the most powerful lure for any organization that wants believers for its own ends (which are usually economic) is the simple fact of crowd magnetism...and like any growing entity...the larger it becomes..the more powerful the gravitational force...this type of social physics is just as true as the gravitational force found with inorganic objects...and anyone can see endless examples in history..or just go to a sports arena or concert etc.
One more word on money...the most dangerous cults are led bt people who are "true believers" where money actually isn't the issue...then we get the Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhites.....these are the freaks that lead their flocks right out of this world and then we get the bloated decomposing corpses.......ahh well....lets hear it for free will.

- some random internet guy

Overall, regardless of deflation/inflation, we're f**ked pretty much - either way, we don't have the localized infrastructure to do *anything* anymore, which is pretty much the only way I think we could get out of either direction in the long run.

-CZ

The Nine Steps of the Law of Extraction

1. Promise people something they desperately want, no matter how ludicrous it may be.

For example, promise to show people - for a price, of course - how to get everything without doing anything.

2. Make the process for achieving this sound as mysterious as possible. For example, call it a mystery or maybe even a secret.

3. Legitimize your process by quoting a scientist or two. This way you can claim your process is actually “based” on science.

4. Assure people your process is foolproof. That is, anyone can do it and it will work every time all the time. Calling it a universal law is helpful in this regard.

5. Include a universal loophole so that when the process fails you can place the blame elsewhere.

For example, “The reason it didn’t work is because you didn’t do it right. Fortunately, there are advanced techniques that can help you.”

Notice, this loophole not only deflects blame, but also creates additional revenue streams (see points 6 and 7).

6. Sell advanced techniques in the form of high-dollar, back-end products, seminars and coaching programs using a multi-level commission structure in order to maximize revenue extraction.

7. Offer high-dollar “Certification Programs” to license others to sell your process to others. Be sure to require your licensees to also pay you a sizable percentage of any future sales they may make.

8. Focus your efforts on the right target audience. As the old saying goes, you can fool some people all of the time and they are the ones you need to focus on.

9. Express gratitude at least three times a day for all the abundance the Law of Extraction is bringing into your life.

- Blair Warren

Ponzi schemes have been and always will be a CONFIDENCE game. Gain the confidence of your mark before you burn him.

President:I belive there is much to learn from each other if we can make a truce. We can find a way to co-exist. Can there be a peace between us?

Alien: Peace? NO PEACE!

President: What is it you want us to do?

Alien: Die... Die.

- Independence Day

I was shocked and dismayed –I think we all were- to learn that Goldman Sachs had been involved in whatever it was they did. I had always ranked them with unlicensed boxing promoters and taxi drivers in Cairo, as people who inspire one with absolute confidence.

I was visiting my poor mother in Somerset when I heard the news.

"You’re never going to believe this," I told old Longbottom the farmer. "Goldman Sachs defrauded investors out of more than $1bn by mis-marketing toxic sub-prime mortgage-related securities."

He looked at me with tears in his honest, weather-beaten old face.

"I don't understand it," he said, "but I know it's wrong".

- blog: Chase Me Ladies I'm in the Cavalry

Soon his lungs are full and he holds it the way he would hold pot smoke. He exhales and is immediately coughing. The taste is like medicine, or cleaning fluid, but also a little sweet, like limes. The smoke billows out into the living room like a great unfurling dragon. As he watches the cloud spread and curl, he feels the high at first as a flutter, then a roar. A surge of new energy pounds through every inch of him, and there is a moment of perfect oblivion where is is aware of nothing and everything. A kind of peace breaks out behind his eyes. It spreads down from his temples into his chest, to his hands and everywhere. It storms through him - kinetic, sexual, euphoric - like a magnificent hurricane raging at the speed of light. It is the warmest, most tender caress he has ever felt and the, as it recedes, the coldest hand. He misses the feeling even before it's left him and not only does he want more, he needs it.

Bill Clegg 'Portrait of an addict as a young man'

I loved something that I made up

– Scarlett O’Hara

Worship Shiva neither by day or night.
By transcending day and night, Shiva is always worshiped.

Hatha Yoga Pradipika 4.42

So this is continuous happiness. You know, I always imagined it as something more.