It snowed along the East Coast of the United States today (October 29, 2011), making it the first time in more than 30 years the white stuff appeared this early outside my Conshohocken, PA, window.
I remember the last time because it was so life-changing, and I wonder if today’s gift from above will have the same effect on me and my world.  Continue reading
I never thought I’d be thankful for a stuffy nose, but it helped me to meditate without really trying. It all started on a day I was off from work, and I stayed in bed as ten thousand thoughts ran through my mind. I noticed a clogged nostril and focused all of my attention on trying to reopen it.  Continue reading
Try it on.
See if it fits and whether you’d be comfortable in adopting it when the Occupation of Wall Street and the protest at a thousand other locations worldwide come to an end.
And end it will, with nothing to commemorate it save historians remembering in their books the greatest mass demonstration since Abraham protested the Tower of Babel. 
And just like Babel, this rising up will fall into ashes, unless we harness the spirit from this “cry in the wilderness” and put it into action. An action that is both “for” and “against” the economic system we work in, if we’re lucky enough to have a decent job to work.
———–
————
The wealthiest and most powerful nations understand that you cannot neglect basic human values. The Ninety-Nine Percenters are reminding them they need to change. They should accept a universal responsibility for the common good and the social contract they have with not only the less fortunate, but those of us with some economic security, who know deep inside what the One Percent is doing must end.
Once recommendations are made, the Committee would send its ideas to splinter groups of like-minded persons in each city, state, and country whose citizens could benefit from implementations. Publicize the names of banks, savings and loans and institutions that begin to comply with the voluntary suggestions. Let those with capital decide where to put their investments to perhaps take in less profit but give much more back to those who helped us with our gains.
L.O.V.E. — that and good old-fashioned compassion will help in the pursuit of happiness, while relieving suffering for others.
I looked into the other side of the political spectrum, and I saw something I hardly recognized.
I saw myself.
How did this come about, this kinship I felt develop with those I meant to separate from? 
And then I saw him as someone I could try to understand from my own perspective from within.
I too place the highest esteem on rugged individualism. I don’t want any handouts and I think persons grow stronger when they must conquer adversities in their lives including economic, social and physical ones.
I like the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and believe that a man has a right to defend himself — and more importantly his family — if he truly believes they’re threatened by serious bodily harm and taking another’s life is the only way to prevent deadly force.
I never want to hear that someone got an abortion or learn that a woman would ever find herself in such a desperate situation where the only option left to her was to choose such an irreparable action.
Government should stay out of my private affairs and require “means testing” for recipients of any programs the US and other industrial nations have created as safety nets. I would include America’s Social Security and Medicare programs in those categories.
I would do away with all wasteful regulations and give bonuses to government workers who devise plans to cut spending, even if it meant savings by trimming their own department’s annual budget.
I want someone to invoke the goodness and compassion of a higher force when someone opens public meetings, but it doesn’t have to be the One I believe in.
You know, I ain’t so much different from those guys “over there.” Now that I see how alike we are, perhaps we can whittle away at the differences we believe keep us so far apart. I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.(youtube.com)
(“We have met the enemy and he is us”
—from the old Pogo Comic Strip)
The phone rang, and Henry Rushing answered it, hoping the call would not delay his weekly trip to church services Sunday morning. The pastor of his Presbyterian Church was on the line. “Henry, you’ve got to prepare yourself,” the cleric said in his most comforting voice. “There are demonstrators outside our building protesting. Their signs have your name on them, and they’re not too charitable with what they’re alleging.” Continue reading
When I read the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were unfocused and without a coherent message, I took a closer look at them in Philadelphia, and discovered some were disheveled street persons looking for handouts, and one was a graduate school political science major spouting Marxist teaching.
The greatest protest of our generation is seeking change in all shapes and sizes. You can see it in the signs the demonstrators carry, writing the letters out really big with magic markers so that passersby need not squint to get the messages.
There is not just one message, but many, which all have one thing in common: a belief that our world can do better for all and not just the few, the ninety-nine percent making $55,000 a year (per family) or less, as opposed to the one percent controlling some 40 percent of the wealth in the United States of America.
They don’t want your money, Mr. Entrepreneur, only your attention for a moral and ethical way of life that takes into consideration more than the Almighty Dollar.  Continue reading
It’s so wonderful to welcome you to visit. You return when I least expect you, embracing me and bringing peace and calm just when I still myself and end needless thoughts.
Are any thoughts actually needed when I go within? I need but seek a quiet moment with no thought save the intent to be free of the past and the future, thus ensuring I will rest “In the Now.”
Eight Tibetan Buddhist monks set themselves on fire to protest the Chinese occupation of their country. They took their own lives when soldiers of the army set up quarters in Tibetan monasteries.
They must have been in intense pain. Or they were offering overwhelming love.  Continue reading
As my world started to close in on me, demanding its immediate attention toward responsibilities, affairs of work, and needs in my house, I found an oasis inside of myself and in the thoughts of friends in my group.
Now, this ain’t just any ordinary group. It’s one where members have placed the concerns and desires of others above their own. It is a group of men and women, old and young, rich and poor, who have made altruism their guiding principle.
They — myself included when I can pick myself off the mat where I feel I’ve been beaten to time and again — give no advice but simply listen deeply to the concerns of another.
By opening our hearts, we let another pour out what may seem an insurmountable problem that somehow develops a miraculous solution once it is aired in the light of day. Some say it is the light that shines on our suffering that causes most predicaments to shrink in size, to be placed into a larger picture, and thus become more manageable.
But you don’t know that when walloped to the side of your head by something that you did not see coming and want to fight against in the only way you know how: ferociously with no concern who you end up hurting. In most cases, the worst victim of your rage becomes yourself.
- That is why silence and a retreat from those worldly battlements are needed for replenishment. It is when I close my eyes to the chaos and uncompromising world that I begin to see hope and a cure for such destructive powers. I focus on naught but my breathing, mindfully nudging out thoughts of the moment until I can rest “in the moment” with no intrusions, save the golden silence broken only by breathing in and breathing out.
Then I visualize a friend or two from the group, a friend whose mere touch had lifted my spirits, one whose soft smile eased my heart and guaranteed — a mutual guarantee — that life is better than what our limited five senses can sort out.
Tone it down, America. You are cutting off your nose to spite your face. The face of the body politic, that is, we are creating needless hurt for the countrymen we’d like to lead to our mutual goal: the pursuit of happiness.  Continue reading
Contoveros 