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An article I read today in the New York Times that kinda pissed me off. Here are some of the key points. This activated my anti-corporate thoughts. In a world with this many people it seems to me that corporate culture will have to exist, I am trying to come to terms with how that can be done in a positive way. That is when I’m not pissed off at corporations and ultimately my fellow people for being so greedy.

“The food and transport industries say the issue is more complicated. The debate has put some companies on the defensive, including Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, known as a vocal promoter of green initiatives.”

“Some of those companies say that they are working to limit greenhouse gases produced by their businesses but that the question is how to do it. They oppose regulation and new taxes and, partly in an effort to head them off, are advocating consumer education instead.”

“Tesco, for instance, is introducing a labeling system that will let consumers assess a product’s carbon footprint.”

“Mr. Datson of Tesco acknowledged that there were environmental consequences to the increased distances food travels, but he said his company was merely responding to consumer appetites. “The offer and range has been growing because our customers want things like snap peas year round,” Mr. Datson said. “We don’t see our job as consumer choice editing.””

From A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather whatever form the Now takes, that is to say what is or what happens. If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.

Do you want the present moment to be your friend or your enemy? The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you want to have with life.

Time is what the ego lives on. The stronger the ego, the more time takes over your life. Almost every thought you think is then concerned with the past or future, and your sense of self depends on the past for your identity and on the future for its fulfillment. Fear, anxiety, expectation, regret, guilt, anger are the dysfunctions of the time-bound state of consciousness.

There are three ways in which the ego will treat the present moment: as a means to an end, as an obstacle, or as an enemy. When this pattern operates in you, you can recognize it and – decide again.

From A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I am reading this book again with a web class being offered through oprah.com. Each week we read a new chapter, answer leading questions, and participate with other people from all over the world as we explore living more consciously. yum.

Chapter 5 – The Pain Body

Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is the moment it arises doesn’t completely dissolve and lives on in you later coming up as illness, addiction, drama.

In intimate relationships, pain-bodies are often clever enough to lie low until you start living together and preferable have signed a contract committing yourself to be with this person for the rest of your life.

You may wonder whether this is your partner’s real face that you had never seen before and whether you made a dreadful mistake in choosing this person. It is of course not the real face, just the pain-body that has taken possession. It would be hard to find a partner who does not carry a pain-body, but it would perhaps be wise to choose someone whose pain-body is not excessively dense.

Although the body is intelligent it cannot tell the difference between thoughts and reality. Every time you think of something negative or some problem your body will have a response to it.

You cannot expect someone to act beyond their level of consciousness. You must let go and forgive those who’ve hurt you. It’s never on purpose.

It’s all about experiencing negative emotions when they come up. Letting go of the repeated, painful stories we tell ourselves over and over again and make part of our identity.

A deliciously unorthodox approach to igniting your divine spark by Sera Beak.

After all, you’re not merely a human who’s struggling to have a spiritual experience. You are, in truth, a spirit, having a human experience.

Spirituality is not separate and distinct from you and your everyday life. Igniting your divine spark is a simple perspective shift. An internal nod.

Know this: Igniting my divine spark has also kicked my ass five ways from Sunday. My ordinary perceptions are constantly challenged. My limits are made clear and, then broken open. I cannot play safe or dumb or keep myself cocooned or judgmental. My unhealthy patterns, issues, and parts of me that are not in alignment with my divine spark come up for confrontations all the time. In order to learn who I really am, I have to learn who I am not. It’s not always pretty. It’s definitely not always fun. Truth sets me free, but it can sometimes hurt like a thousand bee stings and a bad colonic. I have ended what have felt like good relationships, moved across the country, made risky career moves, gotten pretty ill, changed my lifestyle, and experienced extended periods in which I’ve been lonely as hell and sexually disinterested, all in response to my spiritual path. My sense of self has expanded and contracted like a schizophrenic accordion. I have questioned everything, and I have felt nothing. I have told the universe to fuck off, and I have fallen down weeping at its compassionate response.

Learning how to live my truth, out loud and on purpose with inner authority, is worth it. Merging my humanity with my divinity is worth it.

You know those people you meet whose eyes are sort of vacant and dull, lifeless? Those who are just slumping along life’s crowded highways, not ever really reaching deeper into their soul’s pockets? What about the opposite type, those whose eyes dance and beam and cry and flash? The ones who seem to glow, despite their imperfections, who tend to attract good friends and good happenings like a magnet, who seem to beam out a calm and fearless sense of self? Well, which would you rather be?

An article in Adbusters #76 by Stan Chung. It’s a short story questioning the concept of marriage while telling the story of a couple divorcing after 25 years of marriage.

It’s nothing new to say that men and women can fundamentally misunderstand each other’s needs, but it may be interesting to begin mapping out a new territory for marriage, especially if marriage is to survive beyond children and mortgages and sleek waistlines.

Is it any surprise to you that, according to a recent piece in The Globe and Mail, the majority of divorces above the age of 40 are initiated by women?

Is it any surprise to you that marriage is one factor that statisticians say has proven to increase our life spans? Just as we spurn it, we discover it’s the best thing for us.

As more and more people separate, choose to live alone, or decide not to be married in the first place, marriage becomes the exception not the norm.

Traditional gender roles have changed but many couples are still confused because they don’t know what the new rules are. What does he do? What does she do? Who decides about the position of the toilet seat? How do we find the right balance between our own needs and the needs of our partner?

Baby-boomers are not only facing retirement surrounded by issues such as “the meaning of my life” and the “legacy of my life,” but they also have to pay for the Darn Good Life, and we all know it ain’t cheap.

When people feel a lump on their body, they see a doctor as soon as possible. When people sleep next to what they think is a lump, they’ll wait five, ten, maybe 25 years to do something.

A weekly newsletter on wisdom from Yoga Journal.

It’s important to have a daily meditation practice, to have a developing ability to see thoughts clearly, and to reside in our bodily experience. But having deep experiences during meditation is not enough. If we want to know how we’re doing in our practice, we have to examine our life. Unless we begin to connect it with the rest of our life, our practice—however strong, calm, or enjoyable—ultimately will not be satisfying.

The real measure of practice is whether, little by little, we can find our edge, that place where we’re closed down in fear, and allow ourselves to experience it. This takes courage, but courage isn’t about becoming fearless. Courage is the willingness to experience our fears. And as we experience our fears, courage grows. Noticing our edge and trying to meet it also allows us to develop compassion, not just for ourselves but for the whole human drama. Then, with an increasing sense of lightness and curiosity, we can keep moving toward a more open and genuine life.

Click here for the whole article.

Written by Claire Messud

A book about 3 college friends in their 30’s coming to terms with being grown ups in NYC.

I’m not twenty-one, Mama. We don’t have time in life to start that kind of endless conversation (the “why don’t you like my boyfriend type”). Besides, I don’t know if I want to know. All my life people have been jealous of me for one thing or another, and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t notice, and I’m tired of feeling guilty about it. And the whole point about Danielle was that I never had to pretend before. I don’t want to be pretending.

Seriously. It’s narcissism, to love a wall and resent it for not loving you back. It’s perversity. Love is mutual, it flourishes in reciprocity. You can’t have real love without a return of affection – otherwise, it’s just an obsession, and projection. It’s childish.

Danielle reflected that growing up, coupling was a process of growing away from mirth, as if, like an amphibian, one ceased to breathe in the same way: laughter, once vital sustenance, protean relief and all that made isolation and struggle and fear bearable, was replaced by the stolid matter of stability: nominally content, resigned and unafraid, one grew to fear jokes and their capacity to unsettle. Where there had been laughter thre came a cold breeze. What, after all, was Julius doing shacked up with a golf-loving businessman? A year ago, he would himself guffawed at the notion. All of them, all three of them: a year ago, they’d been still linked, inexorably and, they’d thought, forever. It was supposedly better this way – each of them had found her heart’s desire – but did they laugh as they had done for so many years? Would they ever laugh that way again, or was it over now, in the Realm of Adult Sobriety?

Buy this book on amazon.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

I think the title pretty much sums up this book.

I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get too attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough – but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for a riotous and endless waves of transformation.

“Groceries,” Richard says, “listen to me. Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life waschanging and you were in the best possible place in the world for it – in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out here in India.”
“But I really loved him.”
“Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don’t you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching. I mean you got zapped, kiddo. But that love you felt, that’s just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That’s just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries – you have the capacity to someday love the whole world. It’s your destiny. Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.” I was actually crying. “And please don’t laugh at me now, but I think the reason it’s so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed he was my soul mate.”
“He probably was. Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you will ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is you just can’t let this one go. It’s over Groceries….

By Barbara Kingsolver

What changed your mind about Jax?
When the social worker asked Turtle about her family today, you know what she said? She said she didn’t have one.
Thats not right! She was confused.
Yeah. She’s confused, because I’m confused. I think of Jax and Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray, and of course you, and Mattie, all those people as my family. But when you never put a name on things, you’re just accepting that it’s okay for people to leave when they feel like it.
They leave anyway.
But you don’t have to accept it. That’s what your family is, the people you won’t let go of for anything.
Maybe.
Like, look at Mr. Stillwater. Cash. He’s still aching for Turtle after all this time. I hate to admit it, and I’m not going to say I think he should have her. Turtle is mine now. But he doesn’t accept that she’s gone. You can see it.
Alice has seen it in Cash. She saw it long before she knew what it was. A man who would go out of his way.

Written by Tom Robbins

Logic only gives man what he needs.
Magic gives him what he wants.

She thought of Life, and said to herself, “It’s okay. I want more of it.”
She thought of Death, and said to herself, “If I fall out of this frigging treetop, I’ll soon enough learn it’s secrets.”

History is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.

Those folks who are concerned with freedom, real freedom – not the freedom to say shit in public or criticize their leaders or to worship God in the church of their choice, but the freedom to be free of languages and leaders and gods – well, they must use style to alter content. If our style is masterful, if it is fluid and at the same time complete, then we can recreate ourselves, or rather, we can re-create the Infinite Goof within us. We can live on top of content, float above the predictable responses, social programming and hereditary circuitry, letting the bits of color and electricity and light filter up to us, where we may incorporate them at will into our actions. That’s what the voices said. They said that content is what a man harbors but does not parade. And I love a parade.

As long as it’s done with honesty and grace, John Paul doesn’t mind if I go to bed with other men. Or with other girls, as is sometimes my fancy.
Then why the hell did you get married?
What the hell does marriage got to do with it? I married John Paul because I’m knocked out by his style. Because I love him and respect him and enjoy the transformations that take place as a result of our sharing the same dimensions. But, Marx, marriage is not a synonym for monogamy any more than monogamy is a synonym for ideal love. To live lightly on the earth, lovers and families must be more flexible and relaxed. The ritual of sex releases its magic inside or outside the marital bond. I approach that ritual with as much humility as possible and perform it whenever it seems appropriate. As for John Paul and me, a strange spurt of semen isn’t going to wash our love away.
Then why do you deny me?
Marx, you are as sensitive as you are stubborn. And, you’re well, shall we say – terribly impressionable. You also tend to be possessive. Those are basic characteristics of Cancerians. I know you have no use for astrology but you can’t deny those are your traits. And neither John Paul nor I feel that you could handle a simple, free relationship with me. No sooner would we begin than you’d be in love with me, which is beautiful except that you’d make it so complex. You’d demand more of me. You’d be possessive and play ego games. You’d be jealous of John Paul. Before long you would create tension…between all three of us. Then where would we be? Friction at the Captain Kendrick. No, I don’t think you’re ready.

You people, that fucking magician, I don’t know all it is you’ve got yourselves into. But you wouldn’t if somebody would have raised you with a little guts, if somebody had put the fear of God in you.
You’re talking about the fear of authority.
In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable.
Oh? Our duly constituted authority isn’t respectable enough for you?
The only authority I respect is one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.
You mean God?
Not necessarily.
You can’t possibly question authority, said the agent, ignoring the implications of her last remark. Who are you to question it. You don’t remember the war against fascist aggression back in the forties, when America defended herself against Hitler, you weren’t even born. Young lady, I risked my life in order that you could have freedom and education and all the good things of our society; the authorities of this nation saved it as a free and decent place for you to live in, but you don’t remember that do you? I risked my life…
You risked your life, but what else have you ever risked? Have you ever risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous in risking one’s life. So you lose it, you go to your hero’s heaven and everything is milk and honey ’til the end of time. Right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That’s no courage. Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one’s cliches.
The agent was thoughtful for a moment. Then he spewed, “What the hell do you know? Who are you, one infantile weirdo girl, to make these charges?