Sunday
Bagful of Beliefs
As you get out into the world,
or into new relationships,
there are others who want your agreement.
or into new relationships,
there are others who want your agreement.
And so, you find yourselves
(bless your hearts)
upside down and all around
as you are trying to conform
to the primary stream of thought,
relative to subjects:
You want to do what’s
socially acceptable,
for you do not want to be
an outcast.
socially acceptable,
for you do not want to be
an outcast.
And, you want to do what’s politically correct,
because you do not want to be an outcast.
And, you want to do what your family expects of you,
because you don’t want to be disinherited.
because you don’t want to be disinherited.
And, you want to do what your religion says,
because you don’t want to be disavowed or go to hell
because you don’t want to be disavowed or go to hell
—which is far worse than any of the other things. (Fun)
Most of you have been using standards
or measurements
that are outside of you
and that have nothing
to do with you
in order to try to formulate
your thoughts or opinions
or attitudes, or actions.
or measurements
that are outside of you
and that have nothing
to do with you
in order to try to formulate
your thoughts or opinions
or attitudes, or actions.
And in the process,
what has happened is,
you have picked up an incredible hodgepodge of beliefs,
some of which serve you—some of which do not.
what has happened is,
you have picked up an incredible hodgepodge of beliefs,
some of which serve you—some of which do not.
Most ... feel powerless in what comes to them
because they’ve been practicing this vibration
and practicing that vibration, and practicing that vibration,
and picking up thoughts and beliefs based upon the evidence
that the society produces around them.
because they’ve been practicing this vibration
and practicing that vibration, and practicing that vibration,
and picking up thoughts and beliefs based upon the evidence
that the society produces around them.
And so now, you find yourselves often with a whole bagful of beliefs that are not serving you.
The thing that is
most hindering
is when you look
at what people
are living
and you gather your evidence or statistics,
and then you claim it
as true.
most hindering
is when you look
at what people
are living
and you gather your evidence or statistics,
and then you claim it
as true.
You say,
-
“It must be true.
“It must be true.
They warned me about that, and sure enough, it happened.”
And what we are wanting so much for you to hear is:
What anyone is living...
-
your culture, your environment, your society,
your city, your family, your person
-
what anybody is living...
-
The truth, or the evidence that you are producing
is only the truth that manifests in response
to the habit of vibration that you offer.
So, when you look out into your society and you see something,
wanted or unwanted,
and
you proclaim it as true,
—
wanted or unwanted,
and
you proclaim it as true,
—
which is the reason that you give
that others should think about it,
write about it, talk about it, understand,
and accept it as truth,
—
do you feel how screwy that is?
That’s like saying,
“There’s something out there that I do not want,
but because somebody else created it in their experience
and it became their truth, now I must beat the drum of it,
and make it my truth, too.”
“There’s something out there that I do not want,
but because somebody else created it in their experience
and it became their truth, now I must beat the drum of it,
and make it my truth, too.”
And we say, fortunately there are a variety of truths for you to pick from.
Fortunately, you are the creator of your own truth.
No one can write a book;
no one can start a movement;
no one can organize a religion.
no one can start a movement;
no one can organize a religion.
No one can say,
“These are the things that are important for you to do,
and these are the things that
you must not do,”
-
and these are the things that
you must not do,”
-
because no one knows the mix of intentions
and the mix of beliefs that you hold.
and the mix of beliefs that you hold.
You get to choose all of it.
-Abraham-Hicks-
Friday
"You're Not People," Sotomayor Tells Corporations
Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s newly installed Supreme Court Justice, has a few words for corporations seeking protection under law.
You’re not people.
During arguments in a recent campaign-finance case
-
that may upend campaign finance law
to allow more spending by corporations,
-
Sotomayor suggested that the core underpinning of protecting corporations’ rights was flawed.
Judges “created corporations as persons;
gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said,
the Wall Street Journal noted Friday.
“There could be an argument made that
that was the court’s error to start with…
[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”
Corporations were first afforded the rights of persons under United States law in the 1800s, allowing them wide protections under federal code.
Development of the law mushroomed as corporations — which were originally chartered by and in single states — began to grow larger and cross state lines.
Eventually, courts ruled that states didn’t have the right to revoke contracts made by the corporations themselves.
They also ruled that states didn’t have the unhindered right to revoke corporate charters.
Corporate personhood emerged
from the 1886 Supreme Court Case,
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
Those seeking to gut campaign finance regulations use this argument when positing that the ability for firms to spend lavishly on political campaigns is tantamount to their right to free speech.
Sotomayor’s comment, while limited in scope, could mark a shift in judicial thought on the bench.Supreme Court Justice Roberts, installed by President George W. Bush, was seen by critics and fans alike as a strong defender of corporate rights.
“Progressives who think that corporations already have an unduly large influence on policy in the United States have to feel reassured that this was one of [her] first questions,” Douglas Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, was quoted in the Journal as saying.
On the other side of the fence, the pro-corporate Heritage Foundation said they found Sotomayor’s remark problematic.
“I don’t want to draw too much from one comment,” Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said.
But it “doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded.”
Wednesday
The Field Project
An Educational Forum for Joyful Awareness
Our Story
The Field Center, established in 1993 during a typically stormy Central Florida summer, is an educational forum offering a unique curriculum for practicing joyful awareness, conscious creating, and shifting into more aligned states of identity.
During the four years following the Center's birth, our founder and director, Philip Golabuk, “witnessed a lifetime of study, formal training, and investigation gathering like a storm into a remarkable curriculum,” and in the fall of 1997, we offered the Course for the first time to a small group of students.
Our aim was to correct the oversimplifications, confusions, and misconceptions pervasive in the New Age literature about how personal consciousness “creates reality” in the world, particularly with respect to the whole notion of "manifestation," as we recognized that these errors in thinking and practice had cost many people dearly.
Enrollment grew rapidly, and today we are proud to support students, Certified Facilitators, and blog subscribers in some 75 countries.
How We're Different
Field training is arguably the most thorough and precise model available on the subject of how our consciousness becomes the events and conditions of our experience both inwardly and outwardly.
Unlike even sophisticated approaches such as Ernest Holmes’s Science of Mind and the work of Neville Goddard, Field training recognizes the element of paradox inherent in conscious creating, and most importantly, incorporates this element into its practice. This alone would set it apart.
In addition, however, Field training is unique in its assertions that "creation follows identity," that "the aim of practice is alignment, not manifestation," based directly on its handling of paradox, and rooted in a practice that begins where the so-called New Age methods of visualization and affirmation leave off.
Finally, no other approach brings together elements as seemingly diverse as the wisdom of the world’s major spiritual traditions, the new physics, ontology (the study of Being), and phenomenology (the study of phenomena as events in consciousness).
Why People Study with Us
Many come to the Field Center after years of following some spiritual path or other, because they have a deep sense that something’s still missing.
It may be showing up in one or more staging areas of life that remain unfulfilled, a general feeling of incompletion, or even homesickness.
Often, they’ve studied Seth, A Course in Miracles, Science of Mind, Abraham, Neville, Chopra—the list goes on—but they still feel a “divine discontent.” They know there’s more.
All of these models miss what Field training understands as the essential gesture of deliberate creatorship—namely, a wholehearted and undistracted immersion in the creative moment for its own sake, an unconditional giving of self to the ideal.
The techniques and methods they offer invariably aim at creating a desired outer fact, e.g., prosperity, romantic partnership, improved health, and so on.
In short, the focus is always on changing the world.
Field training, on the other hand, recognizes that conscious creating is first and last about the self, about identity, and not about worldly conditions at all.
It begins with a longing, not to have more, but to be more.
Further, changing consciousness in order to change the world implicates us in a contradiction that all but ensures failure.
Field practice is a path of wholeheartedness.
It calls for a certain virtuosity of creative authority, so that we remain poised in a stance of inner friendship and agreement, and the war between desire and belief finally can end.
Our Story
The Field Center, established in 1993 during a typically stormy Central Florida summer, is an educational forum offering a unique curriculum for practicing joyful awareness, conscious creating, and shifting into more aligned states of identity.
During the four years following the Center's birth, our founder and director, Philip Golabuk, “witnessed a lifetime of study, formal training, and investigation gathering like a storm into a remarkable curriculum,” and in the fall of 1997, we offered the Course for the first time to a small group of students.
Our aim was to correct the oversimplifications, confusions, and misconceptions pervasive in the New Age literature about how personal consciousness “creates reality” in the world, particularly with respect to the whole notion of "manifestation," as we recognized that these errors in thinking and practice had cost many people dearly.
Enrollment grew rapidly, and today we are proud to support students, Certified Facilitators, and blog subscribers in some 75 countries.
How We're Different
Field training is arguably the most thorough and precise model available on the subject of how our consciousness becomes the events and conditions of our experience both inwardly and outwardly.
Unlike even sophisticated approaches such as Ernest Holmes’s Science of Mind and the work of Neville Goddard, Field training recognizes the element of paradox inherent in conscious creating, and most importantly, incorporates this element into its practice. This alone would set it apart.
In addition, however, Field training is unique in its assertions that "creation follows identity," that "the aim of practice is alignment, not manifestation," based directly on its handling of paradox, and rooted in a practice that begins where the so-called New Age methods of visualization and affirmation leave off.
Finally, no other approach brings together elements as seemingly diverse as the wisdom of the world’s major spiritual traditions, the new physics, ontology (the study of Being), and phenomenology (the study of phenomena as events in consciousness).
Why People Study with Us
Many come to the Field Center after years of following some spiritual path or other, because they have a deep sense that something’s still missing.
It may be showing up in one or more staging areas of life that remain unfulfilled, a general feeling of incompletion, or even homesickness.
Often, they’ve studied Seth, A Course in Miracles, Science of Mind, Abraham, Neville, Chopra—the list goes on—but they still feel a “divine discontent.” They know there’s more.
All of these models miss what Field training understands as the essential gesture of deliberate creatorship—namely, a wholehearted and undistracted immersion in the creative moment for its own sake, an unconditional giving of self to the ideal.
The techniques and methods they offer invariably aim at creating a desired outer fact, e.g., prosperity, romantic partnership, improved health, and so on.
In short, the focus is always on changing the world.
Field training, on the other hand, recognizes that conscious creating is first and last about the self, about identity, and not about worldly conditions at all.
It begins with a longing, not to have more, but to be more.
Further, changing consciousness in order to change the world implicates us in a contradiction that all but ensures failure.
Field practice is a path of wholeheartedness.
It calls for a certain virtuosity of creative authority, so that we remain poised in a stance of inner friendship and agreement, and the war between desire and belief finally can end.
'Financial Risk' Mathematical Model Under Fire
This Thursday September the 10th marks a historic development for both Washington and the financial markets.
The US Congress' Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing on the responsibility of mathematical model Value at Risk for the credit crisis.
As HuffPost readers know full well, I have long blamed VaR for the mayhem (remember: VaR allowed banks to build the toxic leverage that sunk them and the world).
To my knowledge this is the first time that a financial theory is put on the spot like that, the inevitable consequence of having endured a theory-caused meltdown of biblical proportions.
-
My friend Nassim Taleb has been invited as expert witness by the Committee. That's a wise choice. Taleb has not only been a real derivatives trader for decades, but crucially has been warning about VaR's potential for destruction for at least 15 years.As I told HuffPost readers not long ago, he alone predicted what has just happened, including the term "bail out". Frankly, it was only a matter of time before VaR killed us.
While I don't doubt that Taleb will kick ass in the nation's capital, I would like to contribute to the crusade (hey, the Committee also contacted me and apparently began to wonder about VaR's role in the crisis after reading my stuff) by making some suggestions to the author of The Black Swan.Nassim, if I may, here are some things that I would like you to ask at the hearing:
- Why did regulators embrace and enforce a tool that is built on obviously flawed foundations?
Didn't they understand that a broken tool should not be given the power to set capital charges for trading activities?
Didn't they understand that VaR would tend to generate lethal leverage and to hide risk given its tendency to be unrealistically low? - Why did they continue to peddle VaR even after it had failed dramatically during the Asian and LTCM crises of 1997-98?
Don't regulators care that their models fail? - Why did the SEC finally succumb to the VaR siren songs emanating from Wall Street and in 2004 allow broker-dealers to use the model to set their capital requirements?
- Why did they find it acceptable that some banks would, courtesy of VaR, run 100-to-1 and even 1000-to-1 leverage on their trading positions, as they did in the run-up to the crisis, especially when a lot of that trading stuff was super nasty?
- Why don't regulators just abandon VaR altogether rather than try to hastily fix what is not fixable?
- Why not use the crisis as an opportunity to erase demonstrably flawed mathematical models from financeland once and for all?
Finance theory has been responsible for the worst market meltdowns since 1929, isn't it time we protect ourselves from the delterious math and its quantitative promoters?
-
It's great that the "beware of models" debate has moved to Washington. Let's not waste the chance. We can't allow a repeat of the latest malaise.I am not sure how close the hearing's venue is to the White House, but if Barack Obama is available and not busy with other things he could do worse than stop by.
Perhaps unbeknownst to him and the rest of the political class, the theme under discussion on that Thursday is as relevant to our economic welfare and social stability as almost any other thing.
I'm sure that should he eventually stop by, the new leader of the free world would be seduced by Taleb's argumentation and, if that's not too much to hope, prompted to take remedial action.
As I also said in a past HuffPost rumination, it is time for President Obama to help us kill the tool that killed us.
Medicare Part E: Everybody
by Thom Hartmann
The President this morning admitted on national television that he lost control of the message with health care. It's time to reboot - and use a very, very, very simple message so all Americans can understand it.
The President this morning admitted on national television that he lost control of the message with health care. It's time to reboot - and use a very, very, very simple message so all Americans can understand it.
Let's use Medicare, which nearly every American understands. Just create "Medicare Part E" where the "E" represents "everybody." Just let any citizen in the US buy into Medicare.
It would be so easy. No need to reinvent the wheel with this so-called "public option" that's a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won't - just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy the President is so comfortable with.
Just pass a simple bill - it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people - that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.
Thus, Medicare Part E would be revenue neutral!
To make it available to people of low income, Congress could raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.
This blows up all the rumors about death panels and grandma and everything else: everybody knows what Medicare is. Those who scorn it can go with United Healthcare and it's $100 million/year CEO. Those who like Medicare can buy into Part E. Simplicity itself.
Of course, we'd like a few fixes, like letting negotiate drug prices, and fill some of the other holes Republicans and AARP and the big insurance lobbyists have drilled into Medicare so people have to buy "supplemental" insurance, but that can wait for the second round. Let's get this done first.
Simple stuff. Medicare for anybody who wants it. Private health insurance for those who don't. Easy message. Even Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley can understand it. Sarah Palin can buy into it, or ignore it. No death panels, no granny plugs, nothing. Just a few sentences.
Replace the "you must be disabled or 65" with "here's what it'll cost if you want to buy in, and here's the sliding scale of subsidies we'll give you if you're poor, paid for by everybody else who's buying in." This creates Part E.
And if this fails - if the Congress can't get out from under their corporate overlords - at the very least pass the Kucinich amendment that will allow individual states to create their own single-payer systems, as was done in Canada a generation ago.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program The Thom Hartmann Show. http://www.thomhartmann.com/
His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It," and "Cracking The Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion." His newest book is Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)