Integral Options Cafe

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Extreme - More Than Words

I remember really liking this once upon a time.

via videosift.com

Winter Nature Photography by Monique Bogaerts

From Linkinn, Winter Nature by Monique Bogaerts.

Satire: Online Dating Helping Pathetic Women Get Their Hopes Crushed More Efficiently

This might be a little mean, but it's funny.

Websites like Match.com allow sad, lonely women all over the country to invite pain and rejection into their lives with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Online Dating Helping Pathetic Women Get Their Hopes Crushed More Efficiently

Monday, February 11, 2008

Anam Cara - The Soul Friend

My friend Jami gave me this great book by the recently late John O'Donohue called Anam Cara. Here is a very cool quote on deep friendship.

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world is the "soul friend." In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam cara. It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life. With the anam cara you could share your innermost self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality, and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the "friend of your soul." The Celtic understanding did not set limitations of space or time on the soul. There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into you and into your Other. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship....

In everyone's life, there is a great need for an anam cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. When you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul.

I agree that everyone needs this, and so few of us have it. I feel blessed to have two such friends in my life these days (hi Susie, hi Jami).

And contrary to the popular thoughts on male-female friendships, it is possible to have a deep, soulful relationship with someone of the opposite sex without there being some romantic and/or sexual agenda. A man and a woman can feel deep love -- what one might consider agape rather than Eros -- for each other without going to bed together. In fact, this love can be shared between men and between women.

This is not to say that there isn't sexual energy (the Eros element), because I think there is in all relationships. But there is a difference in feeling the energy rising from the battery of the body and wanting to engage in a sexual relationship. Too many people confuse these things. I have -- going the other way (mistaking agape for Eros).

Anyway, I think this is a valuable concept that we need to recognize in our lives -- to seek it out and nurture it. It's hard to find, but when we do, we need to be brave enough to embrace it.

Satire: Obama Wins Country Music Entertainer of the Year

Campaign news from Andy Borowitz:

Obama Wins Country Music Entertainer of the Year

Extends Amazing String of Victories

Coming off a weekend in which he racked up victories in Nebraska, Washington, Louisiana, the Virgin Islands and Maine, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) extended his amazing winning streak today by being named the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year.

For Mr. Obama, who is not a country music entertainer, the award represents a significant upset since it had been expected to go to longtime country favorite Kenny Chesney.

Mr. Obama barely had time to cobble together an acceptance speech when he received word that he had also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

The Illinois senator had been considered a long-shot to win the Nobel, given his history of not being a chemist, but the Nobel committee awarded it to him nonetheless, passing over the prohibitive favorite for the prize, Dr. Hiroshi Kyosuke.

Reached at his laboratory in Tokyo, where he has been studying the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription for the past forty years, Dr. Kyosuke said he had “no hard feelings” about losing the chemistry prize to a non-chemist, explaining, “If anyone else had beaten me, I’d be upset, but Barack Obama? I do love him so.”

The news about the Nobel Prize was slightly overshadowed by the release of a new poll today showing Senator Obama defeating Hannah Montana in a head-to-head match-up.

The poll showed Mr. Obama defeating Ms. Montana 67 percent to 31 percent among people who describe themselves as rabid fans of Hannah Montana.

Elsewhere, seeking funds for her cash-strapped campaign, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) fired her campaign manager and replaced her with Heather Mills McCartney.

Speedlinking 2/11/08

Quote of the day:

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered."
~ C.K. Chesterton

Image of the day:

BODY
~ Let's Get Nasty -- "Got your gym bag handy? Good, because after reading this article, you'll want to head straight to the gym to try out one of these 5 great heavy-loading techniques."
~ Sugar Substitutes May Contribute to Weight Gain -- "Purdue researchers report that saccharin altered the ability of rats to control their appetites. However, the head of an artificial sweetener trade group scoffed at the findings, saying they don't necessarily translate to humans." Of course they scoff, but similar research has shown the same thing with aspartame. See below for an alternate point of view on artificial sweeteners.
~ How to Keep Your Knees Out on Squats -- "Why You Must Keep Your Knees Out. It’s easier to break parallel when your knees are out: your stomach doesn’t get in the way of your legs. Knees out also means more strength and less chance of injury."
~ Low-Calorie Sweeteners Are Helpful In Weight Control, Confirmed By Study -- "A recent review of the scientific literature concluded that low-calorie (or no-calorie) sweeteners may be of help in resolving the obesity problem. Although they are not magic bullets, low-calorie sweeteners in beverages and foods can help people reduce their calorie (energy) intakes."
~ The Hockey Workout: Finding Strength in Balance -- "When a guy is preparing Sid the Kid Crosby physically for on ice performance, chances are good that he knows what he’s talking about. Mike Kadar, head strength coach for the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins described recently in a Men’s Fitness article a few off-ice exercises used by his players to stay in strong hockey form. However, these exercises aren’t exclusively for professional hockey players. Anyone can benefit from once incorporated into their routine." One arm snatches rock!
~ Longer Telomeres Mean Longer Life -- "If you need proof that exercise helps to keep you young, look at the exciting study from King's College in London, England reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine (January 28, 2008). The researchers showed that people who exercise regularly have telomeres in the DNA of their white blood cells that are longer than those of couch potatoes. White blood cell telomeres shorten over time and serve as a marker of a person's biological age."
~ Cross Training: Your Best Bet for Fitness -- "A physical fitness routine does not mean just one type of exercise over and over again. In order to optimize your fitness, you need to have a well-rounded workout regimen. It will decrease your boredom with your workout routine, and more importantly, it will workout all of your muscle groups and your body will be in better shape overall."
~ Flu Vaccine Outgunned By Two Different Strains -- "While everyone knows that someone who gets the flu vaccine can still get the flu, this flu season may hit more people harder than previous years." Never had a flu shot, haven't had the flu in more than 10 years.
~ The Skinny on “Skinny Bitch'’ -- "Does a popular diet book prey on women's insecurities?"

PSYCHE/SELF
~ Brainy people have a higher chance of developing an alcohol problem, say scientists -- "Intelligent people are more likely to develop alcohol-related health problems than their less brainy counterparts, a study has found. Middle-class women are particularly likely to drink heavily in their 30s - putting them at risk of liver disease and certain types of cancer."
~ Pavlovian-Instrumental Transfer in Humans -- "In behavioral neuroscience, we use a lot of animal models. We assume that these animal models have features that are the same or similar to features of humans. However, it is always reassuring when someone gets around to proving that this assumption is accurate."
~ Comment on Psychedelic Science by Romeo Vitelli -- "The Mind Hacks blog has tipped me off to a 1997 documentary on the history of the use of psychedelic drugs for medical purposes. The documentary was produced by Bill Eagles and originally broadcast on the BBC program “Horizon.” It is now available, in its entirety (48 min) at Google Video."
~ Want Success? Learn to Listen -- "If you ask most people what the opposite of talking is, they will say it is listening. The truth, though, is that the opposite of talking is waiting to talk. Pay attention to conversations and you will see that there is very little listening going on. Each person is waiting to speak their mind, nearly heedless of what the other person is really saying."
~ Eat Your Projections -- "Want to get full real fast? Just learn to eat your projections."
~ Comfortably Numb-er [The Corpus Callosum] -- "Anyway. Charles Barber wrote a book, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation. Now he has written an article in the Washington Post: Healing a Troubled Mind Takes More Than a Pill."
~ T.H.U.M.P. - 5 Ways to Deal with Irresponsible People -- "These individuals are constantly late, they don’t follow instructions, they miss appointments, they forget to call, they make drastically uninformed decisions, and they just generally create negativity and angst for the rest of us."
~ men and obesity -- "finally, here is the long-promised post on the topic of men and obesity. the U.S. national eating disorders association mentions a number of behaviours, physical problems and emotions experienced by men with binge eating disorder. let’s look at a few of them."
~ 7 Steps to Turn Your Self-Improvement Desires Into Reality -- "How many times have we told ourselves in complete earnestness, “I’m going to be more organized and productive from now on.”? Or that the diet starts tomorrow? Or that we’re going to make a real effort to exercise now?"
~ 5 Time Tested Techniques to Control and Calm Your Mind -- "It is no secret that your thoughts influence your effectiveness and your feelings, amongst other things. In short, they affect the quality of your life. Therefore, mental skills are not merely a luxury – they’re a necessity."

CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Child-Man in the Promised Land -- "Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood."
~ Critical Condition -- "Book reviewing may seem in reasonable health. But the authority of critics is being undermined by a raucous blogging culture and an increasingly commercial publishing industry. Literary journalism needs to get better if it is to survive."
~ The right way to "do God" -- "How should we "do God"? The question occurs to me as I watch the run-up to the presidential elections across the pond. A Mormon (Mitt Romney), an evangelical Christian (Mike Huckabee) and a devout Christian in the American black church tradition (Barack Obama) are hoping to become the next president of the United States. What will their religion bring to the table?" Posted before Romney dropped out.
~ On the History of Imperialism Theory -- "In his illuminating survey, “The Imperialist World System: Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth After Fifty Years” (Monthly Review, May 2007), John Bellamy Foster remarks that “The concept of the imperialist world system in today’s predominant sense of the extreme economic exploitation of periphery by center, creating a widening gap between rich and poor countries....had its genesis in the 1950s, especially with the publication fifty years ago of Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth.” While acknowledging that traces of such a concept could be found in Marx and Lenin, he feels that “The classical Marxist approach to the worldwide spread of capitalist relations has often been characterized as a crude theory of linear stages of development” whereby the less developed countries would necessarily traverse the same path as the more developed ones."
~ Rimbaud was no genius -- "The vagabond prodigy promised greatness, but never delivered."
~ Deepak Chopra: When God Splits His Vote -- "It's been said that the fundamentalist movement is demoralized and fractured during this election cycle. The Republicans are gaining a candidate, John McCain, who is viewed suspiciously by the religious right, even after a series of half-hearted capitulations on his part. As a commentator remarked recently, if you aren't a thousand per cent pure, the religious right disapproves."
~ Election 2008: Hillary Clinton Is Down But Not Out -- "As Barack Obama wins five weekend contests, Hillary Clinton reorganizes and plans for the Texas, Ohio, and Penn. primaries."
~ What Dems Need to Know About John McCain -- "A former GOP operative gives the background on what it will take to compete with the likely GOP nominee."
~ Winehouse rules Grammys, but Hancock shocks -- "British pop singer Amy Winehouse, whose rapid decline into an abyss of drug abuse shocked fans last year, won five Grammy Awards on Sunday after taking a break from rehab to perform at the show from London." In case anyone cares about the Grammys."

HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Environment: Have Humans Caused the Earth to Enter a New Epoch? -- "The Anthropocene epoch would mark the period when humans became the predominant force over the Earth's environment."
~ Date Set for Presidential Candidate Debate on Science 2008 -- "The organizers of Science Debate 2008 have sent invitations to the leading presidential candidates in both parties for an April 18 debate that will focus on hot-button science issues like evolution, climate change and stem cell research."
~ Madagascar's Tortoises Are Crawling Toward Extinction, Groups Say -- "Madagascar's turtles and tortoises, which rank among the most endangered reptiles on earth, will continue to crawl steadily toward extinction unless major conservation measure are enacted, according to a recent assessment. The researchers said there is still hope to save these ancient animals, but time is running out as their habitat continues to shrink and illegal hunting worsens."
~ Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse Blamed On More Than Climate Change -- "When the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapsed in 2002, the event appeared to be a sudden response to climate change, and this long, fringing ice shelf in the north west part of the Weddell Sea was assumed to be the latest in a long line of victims of Antarctic summer heat waves linked to Global Warming. However scientists now say that the shelf was already teetering on collapse before the final summer. Global warming had a major part to play in the collapse, but it is only one in a number of contributory factors."
~ Deforestation May Make Humans More Vulnerable To Infection -- "A new study suggests that socioeconomic factors best explain patterns of the infectious disease American Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Costa Rica. Contrary to the established belief that deforestation reduces the risk of infection, the research shows that deforestation may actually make socially marginalized human populations more vulnerable to infection."
~ Spitzer Catches Young Stars in Their Baby Blanket of Dust -- "Newborn stars peek out from beneath their natal blanket of dust in this dynamic image of the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope."
~ Starbucks Switches to Free AT&T Wi-Fi -- "Starbucks Corp. and AT&T Inc. will start offering a mix of free and paid wireless Internet service in most of the international coffee retailer's U.S. shops, beginning this spring. The move announced Monday ends a six-year partnership T-Mobile, which did not include free Wi-Fi and charged higher fees than AT&T will."
~ Latest Supercomputer Calculations Support the Six-Quark Theory -- "A new calculation, reported in the January 25, 2008 issue of Physical Review Letters, confirms the six-quark theory of particle-anti-particle asymmetry. This is the first complete calculation of this phenomenon to employ a highly accurate description of the quarks that adds a fifth dimension beyond those of space and time."

INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ The Pop Culture Manifesto -- "Philosophy is not popular culture – not an artifact or subject of mass interest and appreciation: but it could be. At various times in the past indeed it was. Arguably rocketry and the space program were also elements of popular culture for a time in America, as dinosaurs and the internet are now. Astronomy and computer programming clearly could become popular culture. So could philosophy. Freud and Einstein were among the People/VH-1 top two hundred popular culture icons. Why not Russell and Sartre?" William Irwin is a noted anti-Wilberian integralist.
~ Socialism vs classical liberalism -- "Recently, a fun little debate over universal health care went down on the ~C4Chaos blog, and it got me to thinking about how one’s beliefs about human intelligence affect one’s political outlook."
~ Review: Alan Wallace - Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness -- "There is a quiet revolution afoot. The last century has witnessed Buddhists and quantum physicists quietly moving into perigee, however unwittingly until the last twenty years. In Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Cloth, 176 Pages), B. Alan Wallace gives an incisive portrayal of this merging of minds and argues that these two paths are not just complementary—they are intimately related."
~ Insomnia -- "I normally sleep very well, and if I don’t get enough sleep it is usually by choice, because something else seems more interesting or important. But there are times when I have trouble falling asleep as well. (Although that too is usually self-afflicted, through not having questioned beliefs coming up for me, resisting experience, lack of physical activity, and so on.)"
~ I’m already there… -- "I’ve posted this quotation by Honen before, but it bears repeating all by itself. Honen, who was Shinran’s teacher, and started the whole Pure Land Buddhist movement, once was quoted as saying: Where one is to receive something from another, which is better, to have already received, or not yet to have received? I, Genkū*, repeat the nembutsu as if I had already received [birth in the Pure Land of Amida]."
~ The Tragedy of the Panchen Lama -- Reuters reports that thousands of Buddhist monks and villagers gathered in northwest China over the weekend to commemorate the birthday of the 10th Panchen Lama of Tibet, Choekyi Gyaltsen."
~ Busting the Myths of Canadian Health Care -- "I've been recently riffing on the issue of universal health care on this blog. My post, Is Universal Health Care Totalitarian Coercion, had generated insightful and heated discussions on the subject. As usual, most of the discussions are driven by ideological differences. Nothing wrong with that. More often than not, we take sides on issues based on our ideology."
~ Sufi Universal Worship Service -- "Today I attended a Universal Worship service with members of the Sufi Order International in New York. It was a wonderful and rejuvenating service, where candles were lit for all the major religious traditions in the world — Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Native American traditions, the Goddess traditions, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — with a view to viewing them all as valid streams from the same Ocean." Sounds cool.

Integral Theory Conference (ITC)

The website is now up for the first Integral Theory Conference this summer at JFK University. Get all the information you need to attend this groundbreaking conference on Integral Theory in Action: Serving Self, Other, and Kosmos.

Here is the text from the main page:

In August 2008, John F. Kennedy University and Integral Institute will host a historic event: the inaugural, biennial Integral Theory Conference (ITC), the first major academic conference devoted to the field of Integral Theory.
The theme of the conference is Integral Theory in Action: Serving Self, Other, and Kosmos. The conference will showcase how scholars and professionals are using Integral Theory to impact the lives of individuals and communities. The conference will also highlight emerging lines of Integral scholarship and research, with the goal of further establishing Integral Theory as a dynamic academic discipline.

Attendees will have an unprecedented opportunity to network with other Integral scholar-practitioners and pioneering Integral thinkers. Throughout the conference there will be a focus on community, discourse, and dialogue. There will be multiple forums in which to engage in critical reflection and debate the current state of the Integral field. A major focus of the conference will also be application; participants will leave with a deepened capacity to apply Integral principles in their own lives and professional work.

Integral Theory in Action will be a global gathering and will showcase 100 individual presentations, 12 panel discussions, and 30 poster presentations. Presenters will hail from 9 different countries, including Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Africa, Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, and all regions of the United States. Topics will include:

Psychotherapy and Coaching

Community Development and Activism

Global Warming and Sustainabilty

Spirituality and Religious Pluralism

Business and Economic Development

Cultural Diversity

Politics

Health and Embodiment

Feminism

Gay and Lesbian Issues

Theoretical Challenges and Modifications to the AQAL Approach

Come join us for this historic opportunity to participate to in the growth of Integral Theory and its application!

Daily Dharma: We Are of the Same Nature

[image source]

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:

We Are of the Same Nature

After you wake up you probably open the curtains and look outside. You may even like to open the window and feel the cool morning air with the dew still on the grass. But is what you see really "outside"? In fact, it is your own mind. As the sun sends its rays through the window, you are not just yourself. You are also the beautiful view from your window. You are the Dharmakaya.

Dharmakaya literally means the “body” (kaya) of the Buddha's teachings (Dharma), the way of understanding and love. Before passing away, the Buddha told his disciples, "Only my physical body will pass away. My Dharma body will remain with you forever." In Mahayana Buddhism, the word has come to mean "the essence of all that exists." All phenomena--the song of a bird, the warm rays of the sun, a cup of hot tea--are manifestations of the Dharmakaya. We, too, are of the same nature as these wonders of the universe.

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book.

Rush - Time Stand Still

Really lame video, but the lyrics to this song are cool. Man, I'm glad the 80's are long gone.

via videosift.com

Break the Science Barrier - Richard Dawkins

An old Richard Dawkins video, from the 1990s.

SCIENCE is useful but that is not all it is. Science can be uplifting, thrilling, life-enhancing. Originally broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 in 1996, Break the Science Barrier follows the Oxford Biologist Richard Dawkins as he meets with people who have experienced the wonders of science first-hand. We meet the astronomer who first discovered pulsars, the geneticist who invented DNA fingerprinting, a scientist who discovered a protein that causes cancer, and others. Dawkins interviews famous admirers of science such as Douglas Adams and David Attenborough, and asks them why science means so much to them. We also see how dangerous ignorance of science can be in classrooms, courts, and beyond.

With so many expressing paranormal beliefs and ignorance of science, Dawkins encourages viewers to contrast these ancient superstitions with the power and beauty of our scientific achievements and understanding.

via videosift.com

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Daily Dharma: Beginningness

[image source]

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:

Beginningness

Most people think of enlightenment as a kind of magical attainment, a state of being close to perfection. At this level, one can perform amazing feats, see past and future lives of others, and tune in to the inner workings of the universe. This may be possible for a number of special beings, but for most of us enlightenment is much more in line with what Suzuki Roshi describes. It means having a quality of "beginningness," a fresh, simple, unsophisticated view of things. To have "beginner's mind" in how we approach things is a major teaching. In many ways, the process of enlightenment is clearing away the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that cloud our ability to see things as they really are in their pristine form.

- David A. Cooper, Silence, Simplicity and Solitude; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book.

hang drum and hammered dulcimer jam

Nice jam -- reminds me of my, uh, "herbal" days back in my youth.

via videosift.com

Obama as the Front Runner?

Barack Obama swept three more states last night, by bigger margins than expected.

Obama's winning margins ranged from substantial to crushing.
He won roughly two-thirds of the vote in Washington state and Nebraska, and almost 90 percent in the Virgin Islands.
With returns counted from nearly two-thirds of the Louisiana precincts, he was gaining 53 percent of the vote, to 39 percent for the former first lady. As in his earlier Southern triumphs in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, Obama, a black man, rode a wave of African-American support to victory in Louisiana.

The interesting twist of late is that Clinton is casting herself as the underdog. Huh? How did the presumptive nominee a few weeks ago suddenly become the underdog?

That sound you hear is all the whinging and spinning going on at the Hillary Clinton pity party.
Negative spin — which is to say lowering expectations — has become an integral part of any smart political campaign, but the hankie wringing on behalf of a candidate who supposedly had the nomination wrapped up before the first primary vote was cast is extraordinary.

This is because she is so not out of the race at this point that it’s sheer folly to suggest that she is.

Clinton’s handlers said that she expected to lose the caucuses in Washington state and Nebraska, as well as the Louisiana primary, to Barack Obama yesterday, which she indeed did although by larger margins than expected, as Obama further closed the delegate gap.

But now those handlers are saying that the rest of the February primaries — including the 238-delegate Potomac Primary on Tuesday involving Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia — all favor Obama.

There could actually be a scenario where Obama wins a slim margin in the delegate count and loses to Hillary because of Super Delegates.

Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, says flatly about the Super Delegates, “If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party. I feel very strongly about this.”

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, a Clinton supporter, predicts a “potential train wreck” over disputed delegates from Florida and Michigan, states that were stripped of them by the Democratic Party for scheduling their primaries too early.

Candidates were honor-bound not to stump in the states, but the Clinton campaign did not stop operating in Florida, according to the Obama people, and while Obama withdrew his name from the Michigan ballot, Clinton did not. She won the outlaw vote in both and immediately began efforts to seat their 366 delegates.

If one or the other candidates had a clear lead before the late August convention, none of this would matter. But that is not going to happen.

As a result, generations of younger Americans who think of political conventions as boring talkathons that the networks refuse to cover in full may get a taste of what they used to be like–with floor fights, accusations, recriminations, walkouts, parliamentary maneuvering and lots of overheated language.

The TV networks and the Republicans will love it.

It's also possible Obama will win the popular vote and lose to Clinton in the delegate race. Something like this will destroy the youth vote that is showing up for the first time, thinking that their voice actually means something. Such a scenario would confirm for many of us that our votes do not really matter.

That would be a shame.