2007 September | En Route to Mastery

Archive for September, 2007

W(h)ither Europe?

September 17th, 2007 / Feeds

Lately there has been a line of social science research that has been very positive for the egos of secularists. This tends to point out that religious belief is correlated with social insecurity, and that a high proportion of nonbelief in societies goes together with indicators of societal health. (See, for example, Phil Zuckerman’s “Is Faith Good for Us?”.) Very secular societies such as those of Western and Northern Europe and Japan do much better than countries where faith is riding high; the US falls somewhere in the middle.

Conservatives who favor religion, however, need not be bothered too much by such research, even if it were all to turn out to be correct. After all, if strong faiths are vital for human societies, the problem with falling away from religion may most clearly present itself in the long term. They suspect that a highly secular society cannot successfully reproduce its way of life in the long run, regardless of indicators of immediate societal health. After all, such indicators do not address cultural reproduction.

Hence the anti-Europe arguments that have become so popular in US right wing circles. To many American conservatives, secular Europe may be a relatively pleasant place where lives of hedonism appear attractive, but Europe is also being overrun by fundamentalist Muslims, approaching demographic collapse, and suffering from economic stagnation. Without Christianity, these societies have no common purpose beyond individual hedonism or the well-meaning but ineffectual morality of secular humanism. Europeans have lost the will to reproduce their culture, most directly because they reproduce well below the population replacement level. They may be able to afford bloated welfare states that boost indicators of “societal health” for a short period, but especially as their populations age and have to be supported by an imported underclass of resentful Muslims, all of this will very quickly become unsustainable.

Now, much of the conservative literature that argues this way is dripping with American or Israeli nationalism, not to mention the hypercapitalism that is the real established religion in the US. They probably tell me more about the demonology of our right wing than about Europe, so I don’t trust them.

Nonetheless, I also think there are some grains of truth there. The European Union project appears to have stalled, and no one really knows what’s going to happen. European economies depend on achieving growth, and their social security systems depend on a larger number of workers coming up to pay for the aged, so in the usual shortsighted economic terms, their low and falling birthrates are worrisome. Europe does have a Muslim problem—even if we reject the bigoted and alarmist views of “Eurabia,” it’s very clear that Europe’s large and rapidly growing Muslim minorities have not been integrated and don’t display a lot of interest in becoming more integrated. And it’s perfectly legitimate to ask whether Europe—the closest thing we have to actually existing secular humanist societies—presents an attractive enough ideal to either outsiders or insiders to be able to secure allegiances and reproduce itself.

I don’t know. I am, however, willing to say that the long-term sustainability of fully secular societies is still an open question.

(I could also add that since exponential growth in the numbers of wealthy Westerners would just rapidly add to the probably already unbearable strain on the environment, declining European populations is probably a good thing. But that doesn’t matter. All we’ll get is the secular humanists being demographically swamped by highly religious, high birth-rate societies. If then civilization collapses, the fundamentalists can be happy with that version of Armageddon, and start slaughtering the remaining few godless people around who obviously must be to blame for all the troubles.)

Political Compass, For What It’s Worth

September 16th, 2007 / Feeds

(I’m working on a bunch of different things right now, including the rest of my Summit commentary — which is taking forever — but figured I’d post this in the meantime).

My Political Compass results:

Economic Left/Right: -4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.26

I’ve noticed that most of the people whose blogs I read tend to fall along either extreme left/democrat/socialist lines, or along libertarian lines. (I have no idea why that is, it’s just the way things seem to have worked out — but still, I am very surprised that I don’t get more comments along the lines of, “Why do you bother with anything so-and-so says? They’re one of them!”) And all of them occasionally say things I agree with, as well as things I disagree with.

The thing that frustrates me most about politics is the fact that you’re almost expected to (a) choose a side, and (b) think of the “other side” as entirely consisting of clueless people. There’s almost a kind of alarmism among the strongly partisan, as if somehow, the Other Side is going to destroy the universe with their ideology if it isn’t kept in check. I honestly don’t know if any particular party is “dangerous” — I know that there are dangerous ideas, and dangerous precedents, but it’s very difficult for me to fully embrace or write off any particular system without understanding it deeply.

I sometimes feel guilty about this, especially since some people are so emphatically convinced of how damaging Viewpoint A is, but until I’ve fully grokked why, it’s difficult for me to get fired up. (And I do get fired up about certain things — people who think that old people should be denied lifesaving medicine just because they are old, or who think that autistics “lack the essential features of being human”, or who are Nazis, will be spared no vitriol from me!)

Whatever my “compass score” says about me, I definitely plan to keep doing things as I have been all along: that is, considering individual issues as they come up and weighing them not in reference to some pre-fab party template, but against the ethical framework I’ve been developing ever since I started thinking about the world outside my own head. While I do understand the need to take “big picture” views and occasionally align with groups I may not agree with 100% in order to accomplish certain goals, overall, I find most pre-existing systems extremely limiting.

And not only are they limiting, they tend to have these huge, gaping holes that it’s difficult to get anyone to acknowledge. Like disability rights — where does that fit in? Most liberals ignore disability issues, despite being generally supportive of civil rights as they apply to women, minorities, and LGBT individuals. And though conservatives might occasionally pay lip service to “disability rights”, the arguments they use (and the bizarro agendas they tie in — “human exceptionalism” comes to mind) are often simplistic, offensive, and downright embarrassing.

This is one primary reason that the only “isms” I’ve lately found some utility in are “transhumanism” and “technoprogressivism”, because it has been through the study of the topic-space surrounding these terms that I’ve discovered useful principles like morphological freedom. It’s just amusing (and slightly scary) to have people hear some of my views on morphological freedom and assume that I’m either a pro-life wingnut or a product of some lazy, overly permissive, hippie mentality (and obviously a communist).

Granted, this doesn’t happen too often anymore, but still, one reason I focus more on specific issues than on partisan stuff is because it’s exhausting to have to constantly anticipate (and put forth disclaimers) for every possible little thing that might swing someone’s assumption-o-meter in some extreme direction that has practically nothing to do with what I actually think. If you want to know what I actually think, you’re probably in for a lot of reading, but hopefully you can at least manage to check your assumptions on the way in!

EDIT: Speaking of politics, I’ve been greatly enjoying listening to Prof. Courtney Brown’s course on ‘Science Fiction and Politics lately, which is available at the link in MP3 format (or you can subscribe using iTunes). Though some of the student comments are pretty ridiculous, it’s still a decent listen overall.

Current State of the Economy

September 15th, 2007 / 2007 Liquidity Crisis, Geopolitics, Wealth Creation

I recently witnessed first-hand a bank run in the UK. While I’ve long believed the global economy cannot continue the way it is, I never thought I’d see a real life bank run.

A bank run is when customers withdraw their savings en masse because of fear a lender will become insolvent, which can cause it to go bankrupt.

A similar thing happened with Countrywide Bank in California on Friday 17 August. This after they were forced to draw the entire $11.5 billion line of credit available to them. Since then, Bank of America has bought $2 billion of Countrywide stock, effectively saving them. Continue reading

Richard Dawkins Foundation now a charity in both the US and the UK

September 15th, 2007 / Feeds

Richard Dawkins: Richard Dawkins Foundation now officially a charitable organizationWhile I have my quibbles with Richard Dawkins' every now and then I was extremely pleased to read at Richard Dawkins' site that after a year has passed the Richard Dawkins Foundation For Reason And Science is now recognized as a charitable, tax exempt organization in both the US and UK. While every now and then I find the way Dawkins' chooses to phrase something in regards to atheism, religion or (more recently) pseudoscience and the paranormal cringe inducing I can not help but think that he is fulfilling a vital role. Sometimes I'm just not sure what that role is.

However, the Richard Dawkins Foundation does have a clearly defined role and goals and the very first one mentioned is something that I believe to be of the utmost importanceread more »

Liberal Muslims

September 14th, 2007 / Feeds

I often complain about the scarcity and relative lack of influence of liberal Muslim groups. Nevertheless, they exist, and secularists and infidels should hope that they get stronger. They are natural allies. For example, the mission statement of the Muslim Canadian Congress expresses liberal-minded convictions that any secularist can celebrate.

I point out such organizations especially because lately I have often run into the sentiment that liberal religion is merely a weak-kneed cover for more fundamentalist faiths. Well, not really. Life is complicated, so sometimes liberal religion does excuse the nastier variety of faith-based attitudes. But by and large, liberal religious people are politically closer to nonbelievers.

Note that I do not say that liberal supernatural belief is intellectually respectable. Gentle gods are as fictional as the celestial tyrants of fundamentalists. Humane reintepretations of scriptures do not lessen the absurdity of the notion of revealed truths. But in the end, liberals are content to leave our disagreements over the gods as intellectual disagreements. They don’t want everyone to live under religious laws, they don’t want to silence me because criticism insults religion, and they prefer confessional matters not to directly affect public life. They do not want to live under the thumb of priests and mullahs any more than I do. For a political alliance, that is more than enough.

Spiritual Awareness: Too Many Words About Silence

September 14th, 2007 / Feeds, Musings

People often show me books and ask ‘what do you think about this book?” And I say “Not worth reading.” And then they say “Kip is very opiniated about most books.” But didn’t they ask my opinion?

Words are only here to point. So much said about absolutely nothing. A whole book written about nothing and how I attained nothing. Still, spritual teachers keep writing them and spiritual seekers keep reading them. Looking to get something, learn something, attain something. Discuss it with their friends about the latest path to enlightenment.

I am going to write a spiritual book. I will give you the whole print of it right now for free. And I am not making fun of these books. But here’s my book. The title is “Shut up.”

When you open it up it says “Sit down, close your eyes and shut up.”

Then that’s it. You pay 15 bucks. If you want more you can read the second book, it’s called “Why haven’t You Shut Up?”

Because you exist as mind. And so you try to seek freedom from mind from the perspective of mind. But it is mind you are trying to be free from. You are trying to get out of the constant noise that you keep identifying with. At some point, you have to simply close your eyes and be still. Then the journey starts. It starts here and ends here.

Truly, it is not about shutting up. But that is what eventually happens. Your only move is to be still and experience what is here, without getting caught up in mind. Thoughts can arise, visions can arise, sounds can arise, emotions can arise, sensations can arise,

yet you remain here, in this moment, as this moment. You remain as awareness itself.

First you might be able to stay here for half a second.

Then 2 seconds and three seconds.

Then you will see, here is what you are. That all of this coming and going chasing this thought and that feeling is just stress, insanity. Waste of energy. Yet here, there is the constant flow of energy.

That is why I make music with the shaktipat sound technology to awaken this in you. Because with music, you aren’t learning anything. It is a tool to help you awaken, not more words to talk about awakening but to give you a direct experience of awakening.

I am not here claim anything. I am nothing. God is everything. Consciousness is everything. I rest as the divine flow. I can’t read books. Simply too many words about what cannot be understood by the mind.

I simply want to point. Sit down, close your eyes, shut up and experience what is here in this moment. Be aware of whatever is here in this moment. Listen to the Calling www.bliss-music.com/thecalling.htm if you don’t have it already. It will awaken this awareness in you. Not that you are not that already. But there is so much noise on top of it, awareness must be awaken, shaken up.

I wish you much peace and silence.

Blessings,

Kip

Mysticism and Religion

September 13th, 2007 / Feeds

To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.’… But widom is proved right by her actions.—Jesus, Matthew 11:16-17

There’s an interesting discussion at Zoecarnate […]

Singularity Summit 2007 - Impressions, Part I

September 12th, 2007 / Feeds

AI isn’t a weird idea. Most people are familiar with robots via science fiction and popular culture. Most people, I’m sure, don’t find the notion of a “thinking machine” all that farfetched; as one presenter at the Second Singularity Summit pointed out, humans are capable of anthropomorphizing rocks, at least on a sentimental level. But regardless of how easy it is to imagine human-type intelligence (or “general intelligence”) in something that isn’t actually human, we humans still haven’t figured out how to create anything like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, or even Hal from 2001. Continue reading

Dear Madeleine

September 10th, 2007 / Books, Feeds

Madeleine L’Engle has passed on. Although really the most appropriate thing to say would be "Congrats!", I do find my eyes getting a bit moist thinking about it. Why? Well, that’s a long story, but I’ve got plenty of time.
Let’s wrinkle back in time to about nine years ago. I was still a new convert […]

Blog Deeksha

September 10th, 2007 / Feeds, Musings

Deeksha, on the web is turning into exactly what is was meant not to be. It is basically a form of shaktipat, to move you beyond your mind and allow you to experience a greater truth of what is.

Yet, it seems everyone on the web is trading insults, defending and offending, being holier than though or cynical and negative about deeksha. For some people, deeksha changes their lives, for others, it does nothing. But more so, everyone has an opinion about it and this has taken away the truth of what it is all about. It is about getting you beyond your opinions, beyond your mind to experience your true nature.

And if you experience that, you won’t have an opinion any longer.

For any of you that are confused and are looking for some personal experience with deeksha, here I go.

Most of you know that I create music that washes you in enlightened energetic, helping you to move quickly into high states of meditation. I am always doing more and more research in how to make this sound technology more powerful, more effective, so eventually, you can put on the CD and dissappear into oneness and be done with all of it!

Well I was doing research and came upon this man named Sri Kalki. There was a free video of him and his wife to download so I downloaded it. In watching the video I was amazed. I had never experienced someone with such a powerful enlightened energetic from a video. I kept playing the video over and over and was dumfounded.

I read more, heard about this thing called deeksha which I had no belief in whatsoever. But still, this guy on the video talking was blowing me away energetically. So I searched around and found someone about an hour away from me that gave deeksha. I wrote them and asked if I could have a private one, as I had no interest in doing a workshop, I just wanted to experience this deeksha thing. They agreed to give me one.

It was a nice suburbian couple sitting there in room in their house. They spoke a lot of stuff which I ignored for the most part, as I was more amazed at the enlightened presence in this room.

I don’t care about words, or teachings, I go by energetic. And sitting in this room with this couple, there was quite a presence there. Whether it came from them or the room I do not know.

They made me do these meditations, which were more exercises than meditations, but if that was what I had to do to find out what this deeksha was, I was happy to do it.

When they finally got to the deeksha part, I experienced an intense kriya just before. My body went into convulsions and weird sounds were coming out of my throat mouth. After about 10 minutes, they subsided.

They put their hands on my head one at a time. And it did not feel like they gave me something like shaktipat, but rather, took a heaviness away off the top of my head. And I was instantly in a sublime state of bliss, I felt weightless, full of love.

I had been with many enlightened masters, had attained high states of awareness, realized the self, yet, these 2 people could do wonders just putting their hands on my head.

I had another a few days later. And then had a phone deeksha with Raniji in the US. I wrote to her afterwards

“Thank you so much for the incredible Phone Diksha. I love you with all my heart. I never knew there could be so much divine love over a phone call. Jane and Theo from New Zealand asked me to tell them how the phone Diksha was. Here is the best I could say:

This has been one of the most blissful days in my entire life. But even
that does not say anything. You asked if I would email you how the
phone diksha was. The best description I could give is to cry and smile and
tell you how much I love you. Even that does not do it but you know it
anyway, what I cannot say, what is always said and I am saying now.”

It was then I signed up to go to the 21 day course.

The first day of the course, we walked in to the hall and they splashed blessed water on my head and I was instantly crying because I was overflowing in love. Yet I had no idea why.

Most of the 21 day course, I didn’t enjoy myself. I just wanted to go home. I found myself annoyed with everyone around me, I missed my dog. Yet there were certain things that happened that were quite profound, which I won’t go into here.

I will say when I had darshan with Amma, I have never experienced sitting with someone with such presence. It was as though I was sitting with God. And I have sat with many fully enlightened masters, but this was something completely different. I cannot begin to describe the experience.

It wasn’t really until about a month after I returned that I really noticed the impact the 21 day course had. Experiencing visions of the divine mother, experiencing the presence of the divine mother that would make me cry and laugh, energy so strong I couldn’t stand up. And then intense catharsis, purification. Most of the time just sitting and the energy blowing through me with such force I could not say anything or do anything.

The 10 day course was the opposite of the 21 day course. I went into extraordinary states which you can read about here. www.bliss-music.com/cosmic-consciousness.htm

I love Amma and Bhagavan in a way that I cannot make someone else understand. It is not an egotistical love, it is not their bodies, not their teachings, nor what they do, nor their organization that I love. It is the essence of what they are and what I am. This essence is here all of the time. It is this essence that I call Amma and Bhagavan or any other name that is what I love. It consumes me, it purifies me, it takes care of me. It is this essence that I serve, that I live for, it is that which I am in truth. It is that which destroys the untruth, that breaks down the illusion of separateness in every moment . It burns away hate and fear so that the essence as love and peace remains.

It has made me a better person to others, more loving and decent. At the same time, I dissappear more and more into this essence. It is challenging and blissful and it leaves me without anything to define or judge. Just immersion and decency and loving.

Such essence has no politics, no beliefs, no members, no teachings. It cannot be argued about or judged. It is beyond all such things. It is beyond any sense of “I.” I do not consider myself part of the Deeksha organization nor against their organization. I do not consider myself a deeksha giver nor not a deeksha giver. I give deeksha to those that want it. Not by doing but it happens.

I have no interest in recommending you do the 21 day course or not. For everything said about all of it is all opinion, useless opinion. Whether you believe it is a scam or it is the second coming, it is a belief. Whether you want to save the world or damn it in cynisism it is all nonsense. I do not believe that deeksha will save the world nor do I disbelieve it. It is a nice goal, a nice intention and I hope they succeed.

It is the essence that everyone misses in their hatred or self righteousness. It is the essence you miss by having an opinion, by taking a side. It is the essence you miss by trying to create it to be an organization or a cult. None of it is true. There is no organization, there is no Amma and Bhagavan separate from you. If you go to the 21 day course, that happens. It is not about getting anything, it is about it being part of your journey.

The most I can tell you is I am happy I did the 21 day course and the 10 day course. The Calling CDs are a part of a result of this new power and they are already taking hundreds of people into deeper states of consciousness. You can check out this link for more info www.bliss-music.com/thecalling.htm

But what the 21 day course did and the 10 day course did was take away more of what was not real. Most of the people that say “I am already enlightened, I cannot go any deeper, there is nowhere to go” are stuck in their concept about enlightenment, stuck in their roles as being a teacher, as being enlightened. I know I was.

In my experience, there is always more purification. Someone once sent me a list of definitions about enlightenment. There was one from a zen master that stated enlightenment is when there is a permanant connection to God. And in that connection there is forever a constant purification, a constant flow of the divine destroying any sense of individual existance so all that remains is God.

The moment you think you know something, figured it out, discovered the truth, have something to agree or disagree, know you are stuck in the mind.

So many opinions and judgments, arguments. All of them distracting you from this moment, distracting you from what deeksha can do, and that is remove the false and reveal the truth of what you are.

Amma and Bhagavan are you. You are Amma and Bhagavan. You judge them because you judge yourself. It is all one. The sooner you give up the idea that opinion matters, the sooner you will find joy.

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