American History Can Be Used As A Weapon : NPR

'Lies My Teacher Told Me,' And How American History Can Be Used As A Weapon : NPR



what it does to the high school student. It says you don't need to protest; you don't need to write your congressman; you don't need to do any of the things that citizens do, because everything's getting better all the time.



So it encourages passivity.

These three-way conversations = Trialogues

The Sheldrake / Abraham / McKenna Trialogues

These three-way conversations began in private after their first meeting in 1982. Encouraged by their similar fascinations and complimentary views, and inspired by the synergy of their ideas and styles and the input of differing areas of expertise, the three friends continued to meet and explore new areas of thought. Throughout their public trialogues, which began in 1989, they maintained the spontaneous, playful and intrepid spirit of their private talks, and were thrilled that these explorations inspired further discussions amongst their audiences. Their trialogues and friendship have been a source of great inspiration and stimulation for their own lives and work.

In their first set of public trialogues, held as a workshop at Esalen in 1989

Most of the Meat Americans Eat Is Banned in Other Industrialized Countries

Here's Why Most of the Meat Americans Eat Is Banned in Other Industrialized Countries

Recently, Organic Consumers Association, along with Friends of the Earth and Center for Food Safety filed suit against chicken giant Sanderson Farms for falsely marketing its products as "100% Natural" even though they contain many unnatural and even prohibited substances.

Specifically, Sanderson chicken products tested positive for the antibiotic chloramphenical, banned in food animals, and amoxicillin, not approved for use in poultry production. Sanderson Farms products also tested positive for residues of steroids, hormones, anti-inflammatory drugs—even ketamine, a drug with hallucinogenic effects

Loving-Kindness Meditation | Practice | Greater Good in Action

Loving-Kindness Meditation | Practice | Greater Good in Action

Body Position

Close your eyes. Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and your spine straight. Relax your whole body. Keep your eyes closed throughout the whole visualization and bring your awareness inward. Without straining or concentrating, just relax and gently follow the instructions.

Take a deep breath in. And breathe out.

Receiving Loving-Kindness

Keeping your eyes closed, think of a person close to you who loves you very much. It could be someone from the past or the present; someone still in life or who has passed; it could be a spiritual teacher or guide. Imagine that person standing on your right side, sending you their love. That person is sending you wishes for your safety, for your well-being and happiness. Feel the warm wishes and love coming from that person towards you.

Now bring to mind the same person or another person who cherishes you deeply. Imagine that person standing on your left side, sending you wishes for your wellness, for your health and happiness. Feel the kindness and warmth coming to you from that person.

Now imagine that you are surrounded on all sides by all the people who love you and have loved you. Picture all of your friends and loved ones surrounding you. They are standing sending you wishes for your happiness, well-being, and health. Bask in the warm wishes and love coming from all sides. You are filled, and overflowing with warmth and love.

Sending Loving-Kindness to Loved Ones

Now bring your awareness back to the person standing on your right side. Begin to send the love that you feel back to that person. You and this person are similar. Just like you, this person wishes to be happy. Send all your love and warm wishes to that person.

Repeat the following phrases, silently:

May you live with ease, happiness, and good health 

May you live with ease, happiness, and good health.

May you live with ease, happiness, and good health.

Now focus your awareness on the person standing on your left side. Begin to direct the love within you to that person. Send all your love and warmth to that person. That person and you are alike. Just like you, that person wishes to have a good life. 

Repeat the following phrases, silently:

Just as I wish to, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease and happiness.

Just as I wish to, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease and happiness.

Just as I wish to, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease and happiness.

Now picture another person that you love, perhaps a relative or a friend. This person, like you, wishes to have a happy life. Send warm wishes to that person.

Repeat the following phrases, silently: 

May your life be filled with happiness, health, and well-being.

May your life be filled with happiness, health, and well-being.

May your life be filled with happiness, health, and well-being.

Sending Loving-Kindness to Neutral People

Now think of an acquaintance, someone you don’t know very well and toward whom you do not have any particular feeling. You and this person are alike in your wish to have a good life.

Send all your wishes for well-being to that person, repeating the following phrases, silently:

Just as I wish to, may you also live with ease and happiness.

Just as I wish to, may you also live with ease and happiness.

Just as I wish to, may you also live with ease and happiness.

Now bring to mind another acquaintance toward whom you feel neutral. It could be a neighbor, or a colleague, or someone else that you see around but do not know very well. Like you, this person wishes to experience joy and well-being in his or her life. 

Send all your good wishes to that person, repeating the following phrases, silently:

May you live with ease, happiness, and good health. 

May you live with ease, happiness, and good health. 

May you live with ease, happiness, and good health. . 

Sending Loving-Kindness to All Living Beings

Now expand your awareness and picture the whole globe in front of you as a little ball. 

Send warm wishes to all living beings on the globe, who, like you, want to be happy:

Just as I wish to, may you live with ease, happiness, and good health. 

Just as I wish to, may you live with ease, happiness, and good health.

Just as I wish to, may you live with ease, happiness, and good health.

Take a deep breath in. And breathe out. And another deep breath in and let it go. Notice the state of your mind and how you feel after this meditation. 

When you’re ready, you may open your eyes. 

Priorities and Prospects: Basic decisions over social and economic life are to be kept within institutions with top-down authoritarian control

Priorities and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Hegemony or Survival)

Wilson ‘s own view was that an elite of gentlemen with “elevated ideals” must be empowered to preserve “stability and righteousness”; “stability” is a code word for subordination to existing power systems, and righteousness will be determined by the rulers. Leading public intellectuals agreed. “The public must be put in its place,” Walter Lippmann declared in his progressive essays on democracy. That goal could be achieved in part through “the manufacture of consent,” “a self-conscious art and regular organ of popular government.” This “revolution [in the] practice of democracy” should enable a “specialized class [of] responsible men” to manage the “common interests [that] very largely elude public opinion entirely.” In essence, the Leninist ideal. Lippmann had observed the revolution in the practice of democracy first-hand, as a member of Wilson ‘s Committee on Public Information, which was established to coordinate war-time propaganda and achieved great success in whipping the population into war fever.

The “responsible men” who are the proper decision-makers, Lippmann continued, “have obtained their training… in the law schools and law offices and in business,” and in their “executive action” they must “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd,… ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” who are to be “spectators,” not “participants.” The herd do have a “function”: to trample periodically in support of one or another element of the natural leadership class in an election, then to return to private pursuits. Unstated is that the responsible men gain that status not by virtue of any special talent or knowledge, but by subordination to the systems of actual power and loyalty to their operative principles. Basic decisions over social and economic life are to be kept within institutions with top-down authoritarian control, while within a diminished public arena, the participation of the beast is to be limited.

The Papers – The Poison Papers

The Papers – The Poison Papers

The “Poison Papers” represent a vast trove of rediscovered chemical industry and regulatory agency documents and correspondence stretching back to the 1920s. Taken as a whole, the papers show that both industry and regulators understood the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products and worked together to conceal this information from the public and the press. These papers will transform our understanding of the hazards posed by certain chemicals on the market and the fraudulence of some of the regulatory processes relied upon to protect human health and the environment. Search instructions for the Poison Papers.

Earth Energy / Earth Power

Earth Energy / Earth Power

One way is to go outside, take off your shoes, and stand on the Earth -- not on the concrete or the asphalt, not on the redwood deck, but rather on the Earth itself. Wiggle your toes to get down to the ground. Sure, you can stand on the grass, but if you wiggle your toes you can get in between the blades of grass and down there to the Earth so you're really touching the Earth, the soil.

Then what you do is close your eyes, and sense a ball of light above your head, a wondrous ball of light floating above your head. Take a very deep breath, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling -- filling your lungs as fully as you can. Let your shoulders broaden to fill your entire diaphragm. Now, some of you can't breathe that deeply. Just do what you can. This is not to suffer over. It's to draw in the Earth's energy.

Then as you exhale -- holding that breath until you're ready -- sense that ball of light coming down to the top of your head, moving in through your head, through your neck, down your spinal column to the base of your spine. Then sense that ball of light coming out of your body at that point and -- as you are skewered on this light -- let it plunge into the earth -- still on your exhale. So it's an exhale the whole time as the ball falls through you, out of you, and down into the earth.

Then you hold your exhale -- comfortably, though. Then inhale, and as you inhale sense yourself drawing the energy of the Earth into you. And then exhale, and then inhale again, drawing more of that energy in. And you may find that it takes three or four breaths. The first one may go only to the knees. The second one maybe to the waist. The third one to mid-torso. And the fourth one may be filling you fully and completely. Or you may find it's two breaths or six or whatever. Just let it be what it is. Draw that energy in through that beam of light that you have plunged deep into the earth.

You have grounded and you have held into the Earth to draw that energy into you. That will similarly fill you with that Chi or Ki energy, and make you balanced and aligned with the earth.