Harmony and Love

Harmony 

is one phase of the law 

whose spiritual 

expression is 

love. 

 James Allen

Image: "The Bug And The Wild Rose... In Perfect Harmony" by Dominique Teng©2016

Modern Culture and It's Discontents

 Jean-Michel Basquiat - Self Portrait as a Heel, Part Two 1982

By Robert Beaudine

Most of my conservative friends are fighting political battles heroically, but they continue to ignore the cultural wars – which began over two hundred years ago, first over religion, then over education, then over the media, and much later over modern art.

Progressives knew if they won the cultural battles, they would eventually win the political front by default. During the 19th Century, conservatives were engaged in these cultural battles, but they kept losing ground. When they ultimately retreated from the battle over education, all was lost. Their progeny became less and less educated and lost interest in the cultural wars. 

Many decades later, during the 1950's and 1960's, a confused and apathetic generation of conservatives accepted our culture as a natural development and immersed themselves in the newest art forms including modern music, movies, and television – without a clue that these were progressive productions that influenced their thinking. Later, their progeny retreated from the political front and merely cast votes. 

Finally in 2008, a nation of slumbering conservatives awoke to the danger of our political situation and realized they better engage and fight back or else. But they lacked any understanding of history, which is vital to understand the modern day. Because of their government schooling, they didn't understand culture and never conceived that it was captured by progressives long ago. 

This is why political victories will not restore our Republic. We certainly need a paradigm shift in politics, but more importantly, we need a spiritual awakening. We must restore our cultural heritage based on Christianity – not today's watered down version, but its original Apostolic form.

***

By Dominique Allmon

Mr. Baudine has touched here such a vast and complex subject. Without education and knowledge there is no understanding of history and the processes that govern a civil society, its literature and art. 

"Progress" seems to be a natural quality to humanity, or we would still dwell in caves if this was not so. New technology opens new, undreamed of, possibilities and always makes an impression on the human mind. It creates, directly or indirectly, the need for new ways of aesthetic expression. Conventions are broken and new styles appear to meet the persistent need for self-expression, self-knowledge and discovery.

With each generation, societies became more "permissive" and "daring." For an artist to break with the past became a way of life somewhere around 1870s when the old masters and their schools were finally relegated to the dark rooms of art history and made space for the new, daring, light-caring, scandalizing, "image-distorting" Impressionists. 

When Impressionism appeared on the cultural scene the society was also in a state of turmoil. And yet, for the most part, despite their divorce from the tyranny of artistic conventions of the past, Impressionists created masterpieces of such beauty that we cannot even imagine that some of the artists died in poverty. 

Things changed drastically, for the worse, in the beginning of the 20th century, especially after the incredibly bloody revolution in Russia. I remember a whole semester of the early 20th century European art and literature with the Soviets and the French leading the trends. Poets employed onomatopoeia to bring the sound of machinery; painters broke with the past completely and either deconstructed the human image or glorified the machine. Destroy the old, create the new! Movements such as Dadaism sprung in Europe like mushrooms after the rain. 

Soviet revolution not only uprooted wealthy tyrants, it destroyed their Christian values and their "decadent" love for beauty. A so called "Soviet Person" was created and this, of course, found reflection in artistic expression and literature. By force if necessary. Soviet censors made sure that art, literature, and film propagated their idea of the world. 

Elsewhere, intellectuals insisted that their was the desired way of life and broke off with ancient conventions. In 1950s France, for instance, the cool "cafe society" glorified the Soviet tyranny. Intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre were infatuated with Marxism and communism while at the same time countless people suffered unimaginable horrors in Russian gulags and Chinese re-education camps.

When we look back, the technology of the early 20th opened the doors to mass media. The whole process actually started much earlier, in France and Prussia even before the Industrial Revolution, but was perfected later to the point that the Y generation of today resembles spineless, ignorant zombies. 

We are at a turning point, but the future looks rather bleak. Art, music, cinema, and literature became incredibly permissive and allow for violence and ugliness of unheard proportions. If you do not understand or do not appreciate depravity you are not sophisticated enough. But is a butter stain on the wall or a crucifix immersed in the artist's urine really an art? It definitely is an artistic expression of the "rebellious" artist, but has little aesthetic value to a disturbed human soul constantly seeking solace in the urban jungle. Social alienation, depravity, mental illness, substance abuse and addiction are often the unexpected consequences of modern society. We are definitely free to do as we please, but often also completely alone in our struggle for sanity in the ever more complex world. Art, literature, and the media are not helping, unless we consider self-destruction to be the ultimate goal.  

So much more can be said and written on this subject, but I will end here and leave you, dear reader, to your own reflection. Change is inevitable, but how much of it we allow depends on our "capital" of knowledge. Unfortunately, when the educational system is distorted and schools are dominated by Fabian social engineers, our future is more than uncertain.

By Dominique Allmon
 

Dominique Allmon©2016

Cyborg Buddha

Is what we are born with enough or could we use a little help? - A Conversation with Professor James Hughes

As a former Buddhist monk, Professor James Hughes is concerned with realization. And as a Transhumanist - someone who believes that we will eventually merge with technology and transcend our human limitations - he endorses radical technological enhancements to humanity to help achieve it. He describes himself as an “agnostic Buddhist” trying to unite the European Enlightenment with Buddhist enlightenment.

Sidestepping the word “happiness,” Hughes’ prefers to speak of “human flourishing,” avoiding the hedonism that “happiness” can imply.

“I’m a cautious forecaster,” says Hughes, a bio-ethicist and sociologist, “but I think the next couple of decades will probably be determined by our growing ability to control matter at the molecular level, by genetic engineering, and by advances in chemistry and tissue-engineering. Life expectancy will increase in almost all countries as we slow down the aging process and eliminate many diseases.” Not squeamish about the prospect of enhancing - or, plainly put, overhauling- the human being, Hughes thinks our lives may be changed most by neuro-technologies - stimulant drugs, “smart” drugs, and psychoactive substances that suppress mental illness.

“I’m pretty optimistic that, barring giant asteroids or Godzilla or whatever,” he speculates, “we’ll make a lot of progress.”

Hughes is a professor at Trinity College in Connecticut. He is also Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics in Emerging Technologies and leads the “Cyborg Buddha” project with two of the Institute’s board members, one of whom is a Zen priest. The project’s mission is to “promote discussion of the impact that neuroscience and emerging neuro-technologies will have on happiness, spirituality, cognitive liberty, moral behavior and the exploration of meditational and ecstatic states of mind.”

I caught up with Hughes by telephone last summer and engaged him in a conversation on topics ranging from neurotechnology to psychopharmacology, from environmental degradation to the possibility that the cosmos itself could become conscious, from beauty pageants to a future full of mind-bending eventualities. 

By Richard Eskow

So we might someday live for hundreds of years? Is that good?  Accepting the inevitability of death doesn’t mean accepting death at any given moment. So if there’s some medicine that allows you to live longer, that’s up to us. I want to live until I’m so enlightened I don’t really care about continuing my life. And that’s probably going to take me a long time.

But isn’t it greedy to want to live so long?

The Australian philosopher Peter Singer suggested that every dollar you spend - beyond the absolute minimum you need to survive - instead of sending it to starving people is a greedy dollar. But if we don’t shoot ourselves and send the money to the Third World, we’ve decided to live and spend. Then why not another year? And if you’re committed to serving others, why not live another hundred years to serve them even more?

What about altering our brains to induce meditative states?

You could say that the Fifth Precept against intoxicants applies, that you shouldn’t do anything to your brain except sit with it. But all the different lay and monastic proscriptions, dietary and otherwise, are means for constructing an environment that supports mindfulness. One thing that supports mindfulness is what you put in your brain. Couldn’t it also be true that all of us might benefit from adjustments that would let us meditate better, pay better attention, not be as distracted by our crises?

What if we could just take a pill or receive a patterned electrical charge to the brain and become enlightened?

I asked the neurologist and author James Austin, who has meditated in the Rinzai tradition for fifty years, about that. He didn’t really like the idea. I think many Buddhists wouldn’t consider it authentic if you could just pop a pill. But even within the Buddhist tradition we have methods, like Dzogchen, that argue for rapid enlightenment, while others say it has to be a long process of maturation and moral purification through many lifetimes.

Part of the answer is: What would that pill or electrode do to you? Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation temporarily suppresses proprioception, our self-monitoring of where our body parts are. It can happen in meditation, too—a wonderful experience of oneness with your environment, a centerlessness and spaciousness.

It’s not enlightenment. It doesn’t change your moral behavior. It doesn’t make it easier to relate to your kids. It’s just a nice experience that gives you a glimpse of the fact that you may be creating the self-centeredness of your world. It might let you glimpse the fact that you were constructing your own misery.

Many Buddhist Pure Land writings describe a world that seems almost futuristic, with beautiful buildings and long lives and great powers, creating favorable circumstances for enlightenment.

I sometimes describe the Buddhist Transhumanist project as a “Pure Land effort.” We want to build an environment that maximizes our capacity for spiritual growth and understanding, or, to use a more secular term, for more flourishing. Our effort would have a purpose different from simple self-gratification.

Last year, on the popular television show Britain’s Got Talent, contestant Susan Boyle emerged from village life in Scotland to become an overnight worldwide singing sensation. A plain woman by conventional standards, she reportedly wanted a beauty makeover. Many objected, fearing she’d become “inauthentic.” Yet isn’t this a metaphor for Transhumanism? Why shouldn’t Susan Boyle look however she wants to look? Or do you think something “authentic” is lost? 

This is one contribution Buddhism can make to the debate. Buddhism rejects the notion of “authenticity.” The core idea of anatta is that there is no permanent and abiding or “authentic” self. There is only change and your own conscious process of self-creation. The Abrahamic faiths believe in a soul, which is carried into secular ideas of “authentic self.” But Buddhism doesn’t.

A lot of people don’t want to take psychiatric medications because they don’t think they are “themselves” on drugs. But when we talk to people who have severe depression or ADD, many of them say, “I’m not my true self until I take the drug.” A Buddhist perspective might be “Well, I’m glad you feel that way, but in fact you’re not your ‘true self’ either time.”

There’s research that suggests cosmetic surgery has a more lasting positive effect on subjective well-being and day-to-day happiness than almost any other intervention. And it turns out to be quite lasting.

Isn’t this really a Transhumanist question playing out in the culture?

Yes. A Western Buddhist may have complete disdain for plastic surgery, and they have a point. There are better ways to be happy than having plastic surgery or tweaking your brain chemistry. But at the same time, too often we’ve carried this concern to a Puritan extreme.

It was understandably celebrated when two people got face transplants after being terribly disfigured. But cosmetic surgery is often considered frivolous. Help us think through what’s frivolous and what’s isn’t. 

It’s a Buddhist Middle Way problem. On the one hand, we have to be compassionate with people and their suffering, their need to become comfortable enough to work on life’s problems. If that means taking Prozac or having their face done, we need to acknowledge that. On the other hand, we live in a materialist, patriarchal, “lookist” culture. Part of achieving serenity is becoming comfortable with who you are and the fact of your embodiment, however it appears.

Many people feel we need to be more skeptical about technology. They’re afraid of a techno-boosterism that advances the notion that it can solve all our problems, when in fact, technology has caused so many of them.

There’s the undeniable hubris in many of the ideas that emerged during the European Enlightenment. We can master everything, understand everything, we don’t need to take any precautions because we’re so smart. But there’s also the notion that somehow we’re going to fix environmental devastation by withdrawing from nature. We’ve been profoundly affecting the ecosystem for five to ten thousand years. We can’t just “withdraw.” Some deep ecologists want to see us get back to a world population of one hundred million people, but this is not tenable short of genocide. We need to think about a sustainable, abundant future for our children. There’s a responsible, sustainable, abundant technology path that is ethical. Some call the approach “Techno-gaian.”

I’ll confess to a certain attachment to the pastoral view. I imagine a premodern landscape with twenty-first century medicine and communications.

The problem with a lot of affluent pastoralists is that they think a lot of people around the world should just embrace their voluntary simplicity. But it’s not voluntary. They would love to get off the farm as quickly as possible. They vote with their feet as soon as they can. Yes, pastoralism has its appeal. We’re driving ourselves crazy with our pace of life. But this was true twenty-five hundred years ago. There is a reason Buddhism arose with India’s increasingly complex societies. The problems of materialism and life’s distractions are ancient.

Isn’t there a clinging quality to some aspects of Transhumanism? Isn’t it just ego trying to perpetuate itself? Transhumanists speak of “the Singularity,” an envisioned time when technology makes people so godlike that they’d be incomprehensible to today’s humans. We want to extend ourselves into our physical and computational environment. We want to lengthen our life span and amplify our brain power. Isn’t there a lot of me in Transhumanism?

In seeking to expand ourselves, some people think we could destroy our “selves.” A colleague of mine, Susan Schneider, recently wrote a paper that asks, “If you believe, as many Transhumanists say they do, that the self is a pattern, then doesn’t a radical transformation of that pattern mean that you destroy yourself? Isn’t it therefore contradictory to say that you’re striving to become a ‘radically enhanced person’? In fact, you’re expressing a suicidal intention.”

But there is a way out of that, which is to adopt the Buddhist view of nonself, or self as process, not essence. If you want to be immortal, you may not understand what “you” really are. If you see yourself dancing at the heat-death of the universe in your artificial adamantine body, you haven’t yet grappled with this fundamental problem.

There seems to be a kind of cognitive imperialism among Transhumanists that says the intellect alone is “self.” Doesn’t saying “mind” is who we are exclude elements like body, emotion, culture, and our environment? Buddhism and neuroscience both suggest that identity is a process in which many elements co-arise to create the individual experience on a moment-by-moment basis. The Transhumanists seem to say, “I am separate, like a data capsule that can be uploaded or moved here and there.”

You’re right. A lot of our Transhumanist subculture comes out of computer science - male computer science - so a lot of them have that traditional “intelligence is everything” view. As soon as you start thinking about the ability to embed a couple of million trillion nanobots in your brain and back up your personality and memory onto a chip, or about advanced artificial intelligence deeply wedded with your own mind, or sharing your thoughts and dreams and feelings with other people, you begin to see the breakdown of the notion of discrete and continuous self. What happens if I can back up all my memories and share them with my wife? If she can remember my life as well as I can, has she become me? Am I her?

The Tibetan teacher Gelek Rimpoche has suggested that sufficiently developed artificial intelligence could be a reincarnated being. In other words, a former being has taken up residence in a machine.

The Dalai Lama said that too, I think offhandedly. There are Christian theologians who argue for an almost Buddhist understanding of the self as an embodied experience of relationship to the divine.

And there’s the notion of Corpus Christi: we’re all organs in the body of Christ, digits on his fingers. That gets pretty close to the Borg [the alien collective from Star Trek that absorbs entire races, turning its individuals into elements of a mechanical hive identity.

Right. The idea that there is not necessarily an eternal existence to the self as a separate entity.

Not too long ago, you posed this question in a survey on your website: “Does your ethical code advocate the well-being of all sentient beings, whether in artificial intellects, humans, post-humans, or non-human animals?” That sounds like the metta (loving-kindness) prayer, calling for the happiness of all sentient beings without exception.

It’s what we call non-anthropocentric personhood theory. Some people don’t see personhood in viruses or bacteria or even fish or chickens, but we think that wherever there is personhood - if it’s in any of these platforms - it should be equally respected.

The early Jains described little “life lights” or “soul lights” in everything—animals have a lot of them, trees or grass have a few, even a rock has a couple. And people have the most twinkling lights of all.

It turns out that quite a few Transhumanists are “pan-psychics,” who believe the whole universe is alive in some sense. People asked Ben Goertzel, a wellknown Artificial Intelligence researcher and writer, “How will I know if a computer really becomes alive?” He answered, “That’s hard for me, because I think everything’s alive.” If you start thinking about the fact that intelligence is just patterns of energy engaging in complex behaviors, then a certain way of thinking leads you to a very spiritual understanding of the universe.

Here’s my fear: I’ll merge with machines and live forever. Our minds will be networked. We’ll communicate telepathically. And the result will be explosive growth in the power of … the advertising industry. [Laughter] They’ll project ads into my thoughts, my dreams. My greatest dystopian fear is that all human existence will become a vehicle for reproducing spam.

Ray Kurzweil, the inventor and Transhumanist author, said, “you would know the Singularity was here when you had a million emails in your inbox.” And yes, they might all be spam.

Are there dystopian possibilities? Sure. Early Transhumanists were naively Utopian, but few are anymore. The turning point came when a ‘blueprint’ of the 1918 influenza virus was put up on the Web. Most people now accept that new technologies bring catastrophic possibilities. Someone could make a terrible virus with a DNA printer and wipe us all out.

There will always be people with amoral goals. We can’t be naive. But it’s all a part of the tapestry of creating a just, responsible world order that can deal with the presence of greed, hatred, and ignorance. Then we can try to reduce it and make it a slightly happier world for everybody.


Article source here

Navigating Changes and Challenges

By Gina Lake

Change feels like tossing a coin up in the air - you don't know which way it will land, good or bad for the ego? The ego is deeply concerned it will turn out badly. The ego considers the worst case scenarios and fears the worst. It attaches a story to what's going on: "My life is going downhill." 

But good and bad are concepts, not realities. In reality, everything that happens is a mixture of what we (the ego) would consider good and bad. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages, its hidden blessings and hidden costs. Even in every day, both what we like and don't like show up. Every moment has this same mixture of what we would consider good and bad. If we stay in the moment in the midst of something that is changing that we don't like (e.g., a divorce, a move, unemployment, a health problem), we see that the actual experience of life in each moment is constantly shifting. Even in the worst of times, our bad feelings come and go and we are capable of laughter, happiness, and certainly love.

The story we bring into this moment about our "problem" makes the moment seem more difficult and stressful than it actually is. How challenging life is, is largely a matter of how much we are just in life without the story of our problem and how much we are not in real life but in our story. We carry our problems around with us mentally and bring them into the moment, spoiling it. Our problems have no objective existence, but exist only as an idea of a problem. We define something as a problem, and that creates the experience of having a problem.

No situation or circumstance is unmanageable, but we make it so by thinking about our problem, complaining about it, trying to figure out what can't be figured out, feeling bad, being angry or afraid, worrying, rehashing the past, and wishing things were different. These thoughts make whatever we're experiencing more challenging, much more than any particular situation actually is. When a challenging time or situation is stripped of these thoughts, all that's left is what to do or not do in this moment about it or anything else. Often what's required of us in a particular moment has nothing to do with our "problem." And yet, we may carry the idea of this problem into such ordinary and potentially pleasant moments.

I challenge you to stay depressed or unhappy constantly. It's impossible! Like a fist that is clenched too long, the contracted state must let go at a certain point. Eventually, we experience relief from it. That relief usually comes as a result of putting our mind and attention on something other than our problem - getting lost in some experience we are having. Getting lost in what is real rather than what is unreal - our problem.

The trouble is our ego actually loves the idea of a problem and all the worries and plans that go with that problem. The ego is also what hates the problem, while at the same time it enjoys hating it! You can sense this when you notice the complete experience of your suffering. Within that suffering is enjoyment of suffering! That's the ego. Suffering keeps the ego alive and gives it an identity: "I am someone who is suffering. And I have a problem that needs a solution." A problem gives us not only an identity, but also something to do.

The ego defines something as a problem, generates unpleasant feelings around it, and seeks solutions. This problem-creation and solution-seeking is how the ego is maintained. Without a "problem" and the suffering caused by that, there wouldn't be anything to think about. Without thought, you would drop into Essence and be happy, and the ego would be out of a job. The ego has a racket going that keeps it in power, and the ego doesn't want you to catch on to that.

The beauty is that change isn't like a coin that is tossed in the air; it just feels like that to the ego. Change isn't like a coin because a coin has only two sides - one considered good and one considered bad. From the standpoint of Essence, any change that is happening is just as it is meant to be. In other words, the flip of the coin always ends up in your favor. That is actually the truth about life. It isn't like a coin for two reasons: It doesn't have two sides: It is neither good nor bad, but just what it is. And it is always a mixture of what the ego would consider good and bad. Life is often like a coin tossed, however, in its unpredictability. We just don't have to be afraid of how it will land.

Something very wise is behind every experience that feels like a coin toss. We may not be aware of it, but we can trust that it will bring us the experience we need. And if we don't bring worries, fears, judgments, resistance, victimization, anger, confusion, or other negativity to that experience, we will discover that it serves our growth and evolution toward becoming a more loving and wiser human being. Life is wise, and it is bringing us Home. Change and challenges are a natural and necessary part of life. When we trust and listen to the wisdom that we are instead of to the false self that we are not, we find that any change or challenge can be navigated gracefully and without too much suffering.

About the author

Gina Lake has a masters degree in counseling psychology and over twenty years experience as an astrologer and a channel, with a focus on helping people understand themselves and whatever programming interferes with awakening to their true nature and living the life they were meant to live. Visit her website at www.radicalhappiness.com.

Article source here 

Image: Sacred Geometry Unfolding in Romana Lettuce by Dominique Allmon©2016

Mystery and Wonder

Mystery creates wonder

and wonder is the basis

of man's desire to understand.

Neil Armstrong

Image: Mystery of the Roswell Space Walk by James W. Allmon©2016 featuring James himself and the old Roswell Space Walk by Larry Welz.