As if the folks at the Gate's Estates don't control enough of our behavior, now MSN is helping China stifle bloggers who use such inciteful language as freedom, democracy and human rights in their blog headings.

Chinese bloggers, even on foreign-sponsored sites, had better choose their words carefully - the censors are watching.

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities - such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

Yeah, thanks guys. That's great. How about a round of Bronx cheers for MSN, your bastion of free trade (warning:Prohibited language in text, please delete) and globalization (warning:Prohibited language in text, please delete) for everyone - except their users.

Does anyone still need a reason to loathe Microsoft?

How ironic is it that a concert aimed at raising awareness of the pitfalls of greed and exploitation on a global scale is now falling prey to...greed and exploitation on a global scale.

Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof has condemned as "sick profiteering" the sale of free charity concert tickets on auction Web site eBay.

Tickets to the star-studded London show, which aims to pressure world leaders into fighting poverty, were given away to the winners of a text lottery. But they immediately started appearing on eBay for hundreds of pounds.

Geldof branded the site an "electronic pimp" and called for a worldwide boycott.

Full article

Yes, it's legal. Yes, we sort of expect it to happen. But come on folks. We can do better than that. This is the same sort of mentality that has people going through their family snapshots looking to see if there's a picture of their sister that they can put up on a pay-per-download site.

Believe it or not, the world will not come to a screetching halt if we as a people do not haul of every last piece of our lives that isn't nailed down to the floor out into our particular yard sale to see if we can make a few bucks off of it.

In other words, just because someone will buy it doesn't mean you have to sell it to them. Just say no.

Update 6.16.05: Bowing to overwhelming pressure and waves of pissed-off fans flooding the site with ridiculously high bids and false offers of tickets (to prevent sales and to confuse ticket buyers) Ebay has canned the sale of Live 8 tickets. Woohoooo!

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."

--Lao Tzu

What's done to children, they will do to society. -Karl A. Menninger,
psychiatrist (1893-1990)

A nugget of wisdom from my inbox today -

"The purpose of life is to stand for something, to have made some difference. So don't ask yourself what does the market need or what skills do I have. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and give yourself to that.

-Mark Albion, Author, Making a Life, Making a Living

One of the coolest downloads I've found to date:

OCEAN - a downloadable, searchable database of over 1000 books of religious literature from 10 world religions that allows you to search for and find out about what the world's various religions have to say on whatever topic you need.

You can download the database to your hard drive and/or create your own CDs, to keep or hand out to your friends, with their easy-to-follow instructions and special CD-creation files (they even have a nice downloadable CD label image you can use) - all for free. Or you can have them mail you the whole shebang already wrapped up on a CD for $5.00 (their cost).

The group that put this together hopes that by giving this generous gift to the world, they can help bring people together as the users discover that...

...the core message of all the world's religious writings is the same: ethical integrity, honesty, sincerity, compassion, tolerance and non-violence.

Kewl.

Enjoy. I know I'm going to.

What I've been reading of a morning - some insightful commentary from one of the deepest and most profound of the old school Hindu mystics, Sri Ramakrishna (1836-18866) -

Mother, Mother, Mother!* Everyone foolishly assumes that his clock alone tells correct time. Christians claim to possess exclusive truth...Countless varieties of Hindus insist that their sect, no matter how small and insignificant, expresses the ultimate position. Devout Muslims maintain that Koranic revelation supersedes all others. The entire world is being driven insane by this single phrase: "My religion alone is true." O Mother, you have shown me that no clock is entirely accurate. Only the transcendent sun of knowledge remains on time. Who can make a system from Divine Mystery? But if any sincere practitioner, within whatever culture or religion, prays and meditates with great devotion and commitment to Truth alone, Your Grace will flood his mind and heart, O Mother. His particular sacred tradition will be opened and illuminated. He will reach the one goal of spiritual evolution. Mother, Mother, Mother! How I long to pray with sincere Christians in their churches and to bow and prostrate with devoted Muslims in their mosques! All religions are glorious!

Obsessive self-awareness, whether collective or individual, is a mere machine, an automatic function. God is the only living presence within us, our only true bliss and freedom. Divine Nature, which alone is our ultimate being, has nothing to do with narrow self-interest or limited self-consciousness. Divine Nature can be realized and fully actualized in daily life by sincerely following any number of revealed paths. All the integral transmissions of sacred wisdom and comtemplative practice that survive the test of time are true - true in the sense that they function authentically and bear the sweet fruit of sanctity.

Place your devotion whole-heartedly at the service of the ideal most natural to your being, but know with unwavering certainty that all spiritual ideals are expressions of the same supreme Presence. Do not allow the slightest trace of malice to enter your mind toward any manifestation of God or toward any practitioner who attempts to live in harmony with that Divine Manifestation. Kali, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Allah - these are all full expressions of the same indivisible Consciousness and Bliss. These are revelatory initiatives of Divine Reality, not manmade notions. Blessed is the soul who has known that all is one, that all jackals howl essentially alike.



*(Ramakrishna referred to the Divine as Mother, much the same way that modern Christians refer to God by the term Father)



From The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions, by Philip Novak

I experienced a big realization this afternoon and that is that coaching is not what I want to do with my life. Now, don't get all het up thinking I'm going to quit my day job - I'm not. Bear with me a bit and I'll try to explain what's going on in my brain.

You see, during my morning ruminations, I realized that what I wanted to do with my life is not coaching - it is to help people live better lives, to make the world a better place and to be part of the process of making that happen in the world around me. Coaching (which I love and hope to continue doing for some time to come) is simply one way in which I am doing what I want to do with my life. At some other time, it may be something else.

Well, you might say, if you're not quitting coaching and this is just a run of the mill "bigger picture" head trip, then what's the big deal? Why blog about it?

Because for me, this is an immensely freeing leap of understanding. It's easy to get caught up in the immediacy of the things we are doing that we can get attached to the individual actions and not recognize when we have reached the point when what we are doing no longer meets our needs or is taking us more in a direction away from our goals than towards them. We get to thinking that our current chosen work is the 'end all, be all' of our purpose, rather than simply a single mode of achieving that purpose. Really getting that distinction has "detatched" me from the job of coaching and opened me up to understanding that at some time I may be called to move on to another mode of achieving my goals, and that that process of moving on is not only okay, it's probably inevitable.

Whew. Glad I flushed that horse-choker out of my energy pipeline. No wonder I couldn't meditate worth a crap this morning.

And I've also realized something else - something I've known for a while but have been terrified to face head on. What I'm doing is not enough, not by a long shot. Some of you may be familiar with my personal life goal of creating a retreat lifestyle in the southern foothills of western NC, a place where I can live a simple, semi-retired life surrounded by beauty, serenity and self-sufficiency. This is what I see when I close my eyes and dream about my future - me, sitting on a deck overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains in a sheet-cotton robe with a cup of steaming tea, a wireless laptop on a nearby table for odds and ends of work and an overwhelming sense of peace and richness and rightness.

But there's another vision there, too, a big one that makes me turn away quickly lest my eyes be burnt out, as if I have had the hubris to look upon the face of God uninvited. And that is an image of me, (in a freakin business suit, of all things) leading, advising and working along side great men and women who are in the process of changing the world by changing the way in which it is governed. I am not running for office in this dream, but I am a respected, listened to and integral part of the process of changing the way we live, interact and do business with ourselves and with others in the world. I am part of the process of deep, abiding change in government, moving us to a better way of being.

This, ladies and dudes, scares the lily-white piss out of me. We're talking puddles like a Great Dane puts out. Why? Well for one thing, I hate politics, and this is definitely getting involved in politics. I don't want to get involved in politics. I'm quite good with letting Jon Stewart provide me with all my political information, thank you very much. But this is undeniably a political situation. You can't change public policy if you don't get involved in politics. Crud.

And for another, these are really powerful people I'm seeing - governing members, thought leaders, heads of state. And in my vision they are listening to me, or at least inviting me into the process of change creation as a valued member of the group. Gulp.

And thirdly, I am in a position to make great change - or inadvertently cause great harm if I get it wrong. Holy hot crap in a bucket.

Thoughts I hear in my head range from the old favorite "Who do you think you are, miss too-big-for-your-britches" and such classics as "as if" and "yeah right" and "uhm, you're just little old you, remember?" to "this is stupid, you know - you are out of your freaking gourd."

What a playlist, eh. Recognize any of your own favorites in there?

But I can't ignore the pull to this calling anymore. It hurts to much to keep walking the other way, whistling as loud as I can so I can't hear my conscience screaming at me that "waiting for others to get the ball rolling so you can pick up a sign and slip in behind them once it's safe is a hypocrisy beyond all abiding, young lady, and by the way would it hurt you to call your mother once in a while?" Shaking like a leaf I may be. Sick to my stomach from thinking about it I may feel. But I've got to turn back and face that dreadful light anyway. Because I can no longer live with myself in integrity if I don't.

So what's this mean in terms of cold, hard action? It means finding a way to work toward making this happen. Even if I never get to where I'm dreaming of being, as long as I am walking in that general direction, I am living in integrity. So I guess I need to find a way to get involved with some people who are working hard to make the differences in the world around them that I want to support. People like the US Peace Government (formerly the Natural Law Party), the Restorative Justice folks, the Department of Peace initiative and so on. Not sure just how I'm going to swing this and how it will look once I get it in motion. But I guess that's just part of the fun.

Yeah. Fun. Like a ride on a rip-your-heart-out stand-up rollercoaster first thing in the morning before coffee fun.

Wheeeee....

God. There's never an airsick bag around when you need one.

Tired of second-hand propaganda and pre-chewed information about Islam and the words of the prophet? Get a free copy of the Koran from The Council on American-Islamic Relations and do your own inside investigation.

And remember, boys and girls - The Koran is a sacred and holy text believed to be the direct words of the Divine Itself and at least in part responsible for civilizing a large part of the eastern world. It is not a drain cleaner. Please do not flush the Koran down the toilet, or insert it into any plumbing orifice, for that matter. Try to show it at least the respect you would show the Judeo-Christian texts. You know, if Jesus was looking or something.

Don't make me come out there.

My first day of attempting to go complaint free and I think I did okay. I did fall prey to one outburst while I was fixing dinner, however, and it's a telling one. Like the majority of my complaints these days, it had to do with living in my grandmother's house.

Don't get me wrong - I love the old bird. But she has that fatal Depression-survivor tic of keeping everything that she comes in contact with "in case someone can use it." Like old keys, the locks for which were probably in houses that have long since gone the way of the industrial waste dump. Like bendy straws the great-grandkids brought home from Sonic - last year (and which I doubt they ever use again). Like my Uncle Freddy's old game board pieces (he's over 50) and...well, you get the picture.

It's frustratiing to live and work around the clutter, especially when you prefer rather Zen-like aesthetics like I do, and I got fed up with trying to cook while the gravitationally-challenged mounds of stuff that hold down the kitchen in summer storms kept falling, sliding and catching on whatever I was doing. And before you can say "head's up for a flying bendy straw with 6 months of dust on it" I'm spouting anger and frustration like an ADHD stock trader on line at the DMV.

So what have I learned? That this subject is probably going to be my Achilles heel in this whole exercise. On the conscious level I know I should be very grateful to have a loving family who is willing to put me up (for free, no less, other than my own bills and whatever I can spare for the family larder). And I am, really. I mean, God, how can you not be?

But there is a layer of hair-trigger frustration just under the surface that probably has less to do with the actual booby-trapped clutter piles (although that's plenty by itself, believe me) and more to do with the fact that I don't really want to be here (in Missouri, specifically - nothing to do with gran herself) and I feel rather trapped - as if the mouldering detritus of a good number of lifetimes that surround me are a physical metaphor for this whole geographical-emotional place.

Lots of baggage here. Lots of memories, unfinished business and snippets of a past life I keep trying to get away from and never quite seem to manage to do so on any permanent basis. And all of which is has just been piled up inthe corners waiting for a fire or a really good round of twisters to clear it out of my head.

Stuff to think about. So far, I'd count that as a success.