So Much Better than the Original!

Who Else Wants to Develop a Society Based on Love?

It's such a cliche now in our culture to say that the man is keeping us down.
I don't even think anyone's actually considered that statement since the sixties.
What does it mean anymore?
Who's the man?
What's he doing?
Why's he doing it to us?

I realized something yesterday. I was walking with my girlfriend and I started thinking about everything I've ever had to do to get some help from "the man". Consider health-care subsidies, student loans, employment insurance, welfare, career counseling, aptitude tests, high school, grants, college, etc, etc.
There is a pattern with all of these.
Every single one of them has inlaid mechanisms designed to try to either get you to conform, make sure you are conforming, and/or classify your degree of conformity.
For instance try to get a student loan in Canada.
First you have to define your level of conformity and the conformity of your parents. You have to be classified, fitting certain criteria, and those criteria are obviously based on an arbitrary standard of conduct. I guess it's not entirely arbitrary, the criteria are obviously in place to make sure you're acting the same way others act.
Case in point: if you've been away from school for X number of months they expect you to contribute x number of dollars to your tuition. Otherwise they won't give you funding or won't give you full funding.
Counterintuitive I think. Doesn't really make sense to deny full funding to someone who has less just because he was able to sustain himself by other means than a typical job.
This one instance alone doesn't prove my point, and don't think I'm saying that there are "people at the top out to get the little guy". What I'm saying is that it's always like this. Society as a whole is risk averse, and it sees individuality and creativity as risky. Is this a conscious thing? Probably not, at least not for the most part.
I think it's just the fact that the average person, most of the people reading this I'm sure, refuse to actually question things.
Our culture is so obsessed with the status quo, consumption, appearances, and prestige that it's never stopped to look at what it's actually doing to a large part of the population.
The powers that be are effectively stomping on whatever they don't recognize. Anything that's actually new and inovative, especially in the artistic world, is ignored, or ostracized.
Try to get funding for an artistic endeavor in Canada. Try to explain to the welfare bureau that you've been absorbed in meditation for the last six months and that's why you weren't working. Try to tell a career counselor that you want to help and teach people but you don't want to be a teacher because there's too many restrictions and you can't be a priest because you're too honest. She'll tell you to take a journalism class.
We all need to start taking more chances on people, see them as individuals and not categories.
We need to educate ourselves, start seeing what's truly important, give up the things that we cling to cuz they're holding us all down.
Our progress as a race depends on our willingness to see past our own consumptive wants and lecherous greed and gain a perspective that takes into account the monumental benefits of art, religion, personal growth, and compassion.

Two Views on Emotional Control.

I've been thinking a lot lately about emotional control.
For a long time I thought that the best way to deal with my emotions was to try to a appreciate them for the energies that they are manifesting but recently I came to the realization that I can just let them go.

I've known about the Buddhist idea of non attachment for a long time, and I've also known about the Sedona method for a while as well, but until just a few days ago I viewed them as a type of repression. I saw them as a denial of the unity of existence and nothing more.
I still think that adopting this type of practice to deal with your emotions is in a sense a denial, but now I've also come to realize that they are just too darn practical (especially when you first start trying to control your emotions) to ignore.
Let go of emotions for now, then when your living in some sort of state of imperturbability move on the trance of wonder to gain that sense of unity.

I'll go into it a bit more later.

Eurpean Kids are so much More Creative...

than north american kids.

JimJams from glasgow

The Intellectual Aspect of Life.

Intellectual development isn't as complicated as most people seem to think (especially considering that most books you'll find are 80% garbage).
It get even simpler once you've developed the right skills.
Just get some concentration under your belt (that's the hard part), then work on your memory (I think the Qabalah offers one of the best mnemonic/peg systems), then work on your information processing abilities (ie. photoreading and image streaming). Once you've got all these things highly developed you'll be able to understand everything and be able to do it in a quarter of the time.
As for the topics to consider I think everything is good to learn. There are, however, a few that stand apart from the rest.
First you got the obvious ones Math, Classics, and Science. Just dive in and have at er. Don't stop until you're perfectly satisfied.
Other than that anything to do with language is really valuable, and psychology and philosophy can be a lot of fun.
The main point should always be to get an understanding of something not knowledge.
It's so much less important to be able to memorize a bunch a facts than it is to be able to understand the larger concepts. Thankfully Photoreading and the Qabalah help immensely with this.

Caravaggio

The lusciousness of Caravaggio is unrivaled, even today.
His expression was pure ecstasy, unadulterated living. He was a real artist, with eyes for reality, an internal light that comes through his work unimpeded by bias or rational interference.
He is a great representative of artists as merchants of messianic messages.