August 6, 2006 We are Staying Awake to our intentions, sensibilities and curiosities while attending our experiences at hand. Your Subscription Management — Commentaries — click a topic What Are You Feeling? Reasonable Unreasonable Questions » Focused Excellence author, publisher, originator of this ezine, Staying Awake. » Newsletter Production » Graphic and Web Design » Life Coaching » Staying Awake Blog » DavidMoorhead.com 1+ 214 341 5599 Email Staying Awake I bring together fun-loving, thoughtfully curious and dynamically creative people! That’s the possibility I bring to clients’ businesses. ~ DM I think with intuition. The basis of true thinking is intuition. Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells a man his purpose in life. One never goes wrong following his feelings. I don’t mean emotions, I mean feelings, for feelings and intuition are one. ~ Albert Einstein (b 1879) Signs and symbols control the world, not phrases and laws. ~ Confucius (b 551 BC), thinker, social philosopher of China Cosmology One of the three philosophies in metaphysics is cosmology: The study of the origin and evolution of Universe, especially with such of its characteristics as space, time, causality, and choice. (*) Robert Muller (b 1923), Belgium born, former Assistant Secretary General to three consecutive Secretaries General at the United Nations; currently Chancellor Emeritus of the Peace University, Costa Rica He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses. ~ Quintus Horatius Flaccus (b 65 BC), Roman lyric poet during Augustus’ rule To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battle and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately... The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. ~ Michel de Montaigne (b 1533), French Renaissance writer, possibly invented essays If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. ~ Thomas Jefferson (b 1743), U.S. Founding Father, 3rd U.S. President, drafted Declaration of Independence When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (b 1803), American essayist, thinker Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned — not to see what is not. ~ Maria Mitchell (b 1818), American astronomer, first to discover a comet with a telescope, first woman admitted to American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Philosophical Society, Vassar professor of astronomy, led the 1875 Women’s Congress The world will persist in exhibiting before you what you persist in affirming the world is. ~ Emma Curtis Hopkins (b 1849), American theologian, teacher, writer, feminist, student of Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ~ William James Durant (b 1885), American philosopher, historian, writer, General Non-fiction Pulitzer Prize 1968 Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundations and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received. ~ Paul Johannes Tillich (b 1886), German-American theologian, existentialist philosopher I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~ Elwyn Brooks White (b 1899), American essayist, author, prose stylist The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. [...] One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith (b 1908), Canadian-American economist, author What troubles me is a sense that so many things lovely and precious in our world seem to be dying out. Perhaps poetry will be the canary in the mine-shaft warning us of what’s to come... Maybe the best we can do is do what we love as best we can. ~ Galway Kinnell (b 1927), American poet, 1980 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award © 2004-2006 All rights in all media reserved. You may quote my words as long as you attribute my name. Staying Awake content may be forwarded in full without special permission for nonprofit purposes only, provided full attribution and copyright notice are given. Thank You. Staying Awake Archive and publication dates. My email database will not be given away, borrowed nor sold. This ezine is freely distributed by EZezine.com Our constant curiosity is key to watching what’s being created. ~ DM

Good Day, Everyone!

Here’s another moment to think gratitude. Remembering an instant of gratefulness in this instant, then this instant, then this instant, can only be good. As you and I read these Staying Awake ezines, we might find profound times require profoundly creative insights for our well being. And, we want to find those insights wherever we can.

If ever you wonder where I get information, take a moment to look at the Links page on my web site. There, you’ll find some 190 links in 28 categories. I read transcripts and listen to online interviews of journalists, philosophers, and scientists who are also authors. Reading blogs has become a daily dose of the political and religious (one in the same, now). I have a library card, and I use it.

That should give you an idea how this tenacious student tries to catch up on Earthlings’ histories, psychology (U.S. pathology in particular); our philosophies, our cosmologies, our stories. Once a grieving process had settled following my wake up day — September 11, 2001— curiosities, buckets of questions and books finally revved my engines into study and writing.

What Are You Feeling?

The other day I read an article that contradicted another article, and I thought, ‘How can you know what you’re reading is true? Have I read enough to understand the veracity of either author?’ Maybe those weren’t the pertinent questions, because enough information gathered can glean tiers of contradictory results. So, I thought better questions: ‘What are you feeling while you’re reading? Are you awake to the distinctions the intuitive prompts?’

Having those moments of inner query, pausing to scan our mental files, may bear reminders to feel while reading and thinking; then allow mental and intuitive capacities to string information together for resulting assumptions. Our feelings and knowledge gleaned from experiences, tossed like a salad with deep breathing as dressing, and we’ve got a winning meal.

Many of us were not trained so. Our worlds of knowing stuff is so entirely empirical, that is, information wrapped with arrogance, gifted pompously as if the only extant evidence is gleaned only from humans’ five senses. Thank goodness, it appears Earthlings are awakening out of seduction of the grandest cosmological aphrodisiac: too much investment in the empirical.

All the while, empirically proven, specific measurable results became mountainous insinuations and illusions, steering one generation of Earthlings’ psyché one way, and the next generation into another; frequently, purposefully into a near opposite direction. We see by recycles of history, changing directions relatively quickly has been one in a box of manly tools creating chaos within citizenries of taxpaying hirelings. And, I’m always, always asking, ‘To what end?’

Some of our global sisters and brothers experience less than day to day peaceful existences. I, for one, send them my wish that all unrest would end — now. Unpeace would eventually stop if a few men agreed to make it so. But, instead, as Robert Muller once said…

“Most humans are encapsulated, limited, enrobed, enrolled in a religion, a nation, a corporation, an institution, a profession, a movement, a belief, etc. They spend their life without emancipating themselves from that. And this happens when the world, the Earth, the universe and the elements want us to be parts, components, active members of them! How can we achieve this new latest transformation of our evolution?” (*)

Our evolution is nearly all I think about, really. When we take seriously our governmental caretakers, we tend to get lost in our trust. Associating fear, paranoia, shame, and other guilt feelings with an alertness to fear-projected insinuations from religious militant governances is not only debilitating, it’s getting down right boring. Fear-mongered tactics have been sold ad nauseam over millennia at an ongoing expense of women and children’s lives. Umph! You’d think Earthlings would’ve caught on, and we are! We’ve now enough cosmologies of previous civilizations to recognize pending tactics right in our faces.

Moreover, to keep believing and speaking as if the religions, philosophies, psychologies, histories, or the sciences we’ve learned are stamped infallible may complicate our lives as we move deeper into this decade. Everything is irritatingly possible even while grieving losses that were narcissisms in the first place; we are forced into relinquishing some delusional paradigms for evolving shams on a stage of opéra comique. In this ezine, we’ll not toss the topic of Sun’s forecasted impact on Earthlings.

Perhaps, I’m just too optimistic! I still want to believe Earthlings are awakening into an elegant transformation of beingness. ‘Only thing is, and, the exciting part, we’ve not yet a clue for what that looks like. For thousands of years, we’ve been dragged by the nose, taught to speak and behave in separate cultural ways, and that’s not phased into lasting peace. Of course, a few macabre men cannot exist without producing myriad controversies in our bio-spiritual planet. Talk about a handful of confounding dualities! What are you feeling? I gawk, galled.

Reasonable Unreasonable Questions

Considering the global bickerings horribly impacting our global sisters and brothers, I think a plethora of perfectly random reasonable unreasonable questions is in order to glimpse possibilities into unknown futures together.

I’m stumped, though. How can we describe to each other our visions about anything new, not least of which are global peace and empathy by using masculine paradigms, philosophies, and vainglorious words that have been around for centuries? Are alternative languages available?

Can you imagine learning, then using a language that’s compatible with every other civilization? Can you imagine a world without dependences on empiricism (assumptions gleaned from humans’ five senses)?

Can you imagine a world without imperialism? Can you imagine governments that don’t map Earth into landscapes according to weather conditions, natural resources, kingships, or ideologies? Can you imagine governments that disallow poverty and starvation without economic regret, or use unlawful methods insinuated as philanthropic programs to regain the money they’ve lost?

Can you imagine the church publicly denounced as a global travesty, a juggernaut political machine? Can you imagine the three western monotheisms’ scriptures requiring a loathsome rigorous rewrite?

Can you imagine a world without standardized quizzes to assess one’s core characteristics? Can you imagine your physical heart and brain showing who you are within intuitive, synchronous experiences? Can you imagine consciousness; what is it, who is it, where is it?

Can you imagine women in roles yet knowable? Can you imagine newly born children stunningly more intelligent and intuitive than their parents, one generation after another? Can you imagine a world without necessities of medication, prayer, or meditation?

Can you imagine the human species extinct? Can you imagine Sun being the only ruler of Earth?

Can you imagine armed combats continuing without electricity? Can you imagine a world consciousness lost to electronic money or robotics?

Can you imagine Universe always says yes? Can you imagine Universe undefined by clocks or calendars? Can you imagine Universe caring for its creations? Can you imagine Universe creates infinite differentiations in every species? Can you imagine Earthlings coalesced into robot languages in which differentiations get diminished or glorified?

Can you imagine an unimaginable undesigned plan being played out between Universe and our species? Can I pose questions before you sense answers?

Now, I am not a prophet. Thousands, nay, millions of people have the same access to the same information and the same religious background as me. Having said that, there’s always the possibility we Earthlings won’t extinguish ourselves after prying behaviors from psychological systems inherent in shaming traditions; disengaging addictions to financial one-upmanship; or braving to challenge perplexing human trafficking systemic in humans’ matrix.

Not unlike industrialized nations, presumably, Neanderthals went extinct because they made the same tools, planted the same seeds, hunted the same animals, and even stole art from others until finally the species disappeared. Apparently, Neanderthals weren’t staying awake to wisdom of reasonable unreasonable questions; instead, uncreatively standardized themselves into a resting place of oblivion.

Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee (b 1889), British historian of rises and declines of civilizations

In the next Staying Awake, we’ll explore possibilities in the United States’ grief process.

Staying Awake :: an ezine with your awareness in mind