A Meditation on Suffering

Buy at AllPosters.com


In the most recent Energy Alert from Karen Bishop, "Surviving the Storm" -- Feb. 23, 2008, she invokes the issue of suffering. Like most of her alerts, the issue felt very timely. I know I'm feeling depleted, exhausted, frustrated, and beset by a sadness and anger that, like so many of the collective experiences that Bishop explains so well, has no nameable source. In the alert she gives her explanation of the higher purpose of suffering.

Suffering is occurring to support individuals into making a change. When we are extremely miserable, we are more inclined to be open to doing things differently, or perhaps inclined to let go of internal patterns that have continued to cause us misery for a very long time. And as most of us know, we are the ones who cause ourselves misery, and in this way, we are then empowered to make change, as changing ourselves is what creates the change on the outside as well, and then the ball is in our own court.

It can be difficult and very challenging to watch all this suffering around us. Our hearts go out to those involved. We deeply care. It can at times seem as though the world has gone mad. But we must also remember that each and every one of us is on our own unique journey, and our journeys are what create the needed changes.

In one of those delightful, little synchronicities of which life is so full, I stumbled on some very useful material, while assembling YouTube videos for my bookstore players. In these segments Pema Chodron explains the practice of tonglen; the use of suffering as a means to awakening.



In this video, from an appearance at The Omega Institute, Chodron offers a tonglen meditation on suffering in a time of war.

Mr. Deity

I only just stumbled on this incredibly brilliant show. It used to appear on YouTube, but now has an exclusive deal with Crackle. This is unfortunate because Crackle's players are not nearly as user-friendly or functional as YouTube. For the second season, though, you have to go here.

Masonic Time Capsule in New Jersey

Buy at AllPosters.com

Lying fallow on the third floor, above shops and a travel agency, is a Masonic Temple built in 1923, but lost in a sheriff's sale in 1953; a sort of archaeological find in the business district of Manasquan NJ.

Standing in the Manasquan temple Friday, Goldstein said the room was designed to be a representation of the temple of King Solomon.

The two columns, one topped with a globe and another with an orb depicting stars, would traditionally be placed on either side of a door that was only used by candidates for Masonry. The candidates would have to walk through the door and between the columns three times during their initiation process, he said.

The Masons use symbols traditionally used by builders, including the square and compass, to teach moral lessons such as to "square your actions," Goldstein said.

The Manasquan temple was used by both the Royal Arch chapter and Wall Lodge 73 of the Masons until the group hit financial hard times during the Great Depression.

The temple's carved mahogany furnishings, Goldstein said, bear the same inscriptions as the temple walls and can now be found in his Spring Lake Heights lodge. Over the years, the lodge has taken in the remnants of Wall Lodge 73 and others from Spring Lake, Ocean Grove and Belmar and now has 300 members.

Rutkowski said the third floor's large room would have been used for regular membership meetings and the conferring of degrees to members.

"It's still well-preserved. It's a beautiful area," he said of the temple.

However, when asked about the meaning of the hieroglyphics on the walls, Rutkowski said, "I really don't know if I can tell you that. Some of that stuff I can't even read. It's the cryptic part of the Masons."

But, he added, "It's all scriptural, it's all out of the Bible."

So is there any hope of restoring this lovely bit of history? Sadly, it doesn't look promising.

There was even some talk a while back of turning the building's third-floor hallway into a Masonic history museum in an attempt to raise funds to restore the temple, all to no avail, she said.

The Masons "would love to restore it, but we don't have the funds," Rutkowski said. "Someday, we might, but at this point it would just be a dream."

The Breathtaking Grandeur of Global Warming

Buy at AllPosters.com


In today's Times a bittersweet contemplation on the Patagonia glaciers as seen from the deck of a disco blasting cruise ship.

The pieces of ice in the water around us are now larger; their shapes are mesmerizing, as are their colors, varying shades of an intense, crystalline blue that I’ve never before seen in nature. As if we were children watching clouds float through the sky, we start pointing out ice in the shapes of whales and giraffes, or fallen columns; the larger icebergs, showing only 15 percent of their incredible mass above water, look like ruined temples and amphitheaters.

We come in sight of the first glacier and it is strange and magnificent, a frozen river of jagged peaks. Water pours off the sides. Glaciers worldwide have been receding for more than a century, but the melting has accelerated catastrophically in the last few decades. The tree line has not had time to advance enough to catch up; the ice has left behind wide scars of bare, hardscrabble earth. All the glaciers in Patagonia save one are shrinking more rapidly every year.

To my teenage niece, who has unplugged herself and joined me on deck, I explain all the science of climate change I can muster. Every once in a while a thundering crack is audible over the human din, as a huge piece of ice breaks off the face of the glacier. By the time you’ve heard it, you’ve missed it, and can see only the widening ripples radiating from the water where the newly calved iceberg has fallen. We watch melting ice cascade off the glacier’s crenelated face. “I guess this gives new meaning to ‘a glacial pace,’” my niece remarks.

I try to imagine what it must have been like to see glaciers looming 19 or 20 stories above, as the guide puts it, from a small, fragile craft, rather than from our three-story-high cruiser, and then I realize how strange it is that we resort to the architectural measurements of skyscrapers to wrap our minds around such grandeur. Getting to the glaciers in a small boat as a backpacker might have done a mere 20 years ago is now a privilege reserved for the very wealthy. Our cruiser cannot get too close for fear of a chunk of ice breaking off and sinking it — in revenge?

So, how rapidly are the glaciers pitching bits of themselves into the ocean? According to NASA research, so quickly that the melt is a significant cause of rising sea levels. It is this "calving" process that makes their melt so rapid and it's impact so great.

The Patagonia Icefields of Chile and Argentina, the largest non-Antarctic ice masses in the Southern Hemisphere, are thinning at an accelerating pace.

They now account for nearly 10 percent of global sea-level change from mountain glaciers, according to a new study by NASA and Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos.

. . .

NASA scientists have concluded that the cause of glacial retreat is climate change, as evidenced by increased air temperatures and decreased precipitation.

Still, those factors alone are not sufficient to explain the rapid thinning. The rest of the story appears to lie primarily in the unique dynamic response of the region's glaciers to climate change.

The Patagonia Icefields are dominated by 'calving' glaciers, that spawn icebergs into the ocean or lakes, and have different dynamics from glaciers that end on land and melt at their front ends.

Calving glaciers are more sensitive to climate change once pushed out of equilibrium, and make the Patagonia region the fastest area of glacial retreat on Earth.

But they sure are beautiful.

Ancient Gnostic Culture on the Brink in Iraq

As I said early on in this fiasco in Iraq, in addition to the pointless waste of human life, we are destroying history itself.

Much as I'd feared, the war resulted in the loss of many archaelogical artifacts. Now I know Donald Rumsfeld will think I'm going all Henny Penny over this trifle, but I do take the loss of history, going back 7,000 years seriously. Although, in fairness, the oil is safe, and it is, technically, much, much older.

In today's New York Times op-ed section, a plea for the protection of the Mandean culture.

The Mandeans are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity, cousins of the people who produced the Nag Hammadi writings like the Gospel of Thomas, a work that sheds invaluable light on the many ways in which Jesus was perceived in the early Christian period. The Mandeans have their own language (Mandaic, a form of Aramaic close to the dialect of the Babylonian Talmud), an impressive body of literature, and a treasury of cultural and religious traditions amassed over two millennia of living in the southern marshes of present-day Iraq and Iran.

Practitioners of a religion at least as old as Christianity, the Mandeans have witnessed the rise of Islam; the Mongol invasion; the arrival of Europeans, who mistakenly identified them as “Christians of St. John,” because of their veneration of John the Baptist; and, most recently, the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, who drained the marshes after the first gulf war, an ecological catastrophe equivalent to destroying the Everglades. They have withstood everything — until now.

This op-ed caught my eye today, in part I think, because I've been reading up on the Gnostics again lately. It's an area of study I keep colliding with because of its overlap with other cosmologies that interest me. A good resource is The Gnosis Archive. (Don't worry. I'll be adding it to the blogroll shortly.)

Because of this damned war, we are on the brink of losing a living link to antiquity. For a little more insight into the relevance of this cultural heritage and the Nag Hammadi scriptures, go here.

An older Counterpunch article, appropriately entitled, "The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans," explains a bit about their belief system.

In the newsmedia, the Mandaeans are sometimes referred to as being devoted "to the teachings of John the Baptist" (7). This is accurate but misleading, not only because Mandaeans insist that theirs is the religion of Adam, but also because they have their own scriptures containing their own account of John the Baptist which disagrees with much of the Christian Bible's depiction of the man. There are, furthermore, many elements of the Mandaean religion which Christians, as well as Muslims and Jews for that matter, would find alien (1, 2).

The Mandaean religion resembles ancient Gnosticism in some respects: God did not create the world directly, but delegated its creation to deputies who made both a superior world of light and an inferior darker world in which humans live, it being impossible to create a world of light without also creating a world of darkness. Salvation is the successful transition to the world of light after death. Many early Christians were Gnostic, but such ideas were also condemned in the early Church as well, and by the time of the Emperor Constantine, Christian Gnosticism was quite marginal. It did not survive very long in the West. It is a testimony to the traditional tolerance of Islam that a Gnostic or quasi-Gnostic religion, in the form of Mandaeanism, was able to survive throughout the medieval Middle East and into modern times, although I do not mean to imply that it was always easy for it do so.

With the ascent of Islamic fundamentalism, in Iraq, Mandeans, like many minority sects there, are being forced to convert, young women forced into marriages with Muslim men. In short, we are witnessing yet another cultural genocide as a result of our imperialism.

Massacre of Buddhist Monks in Burma

The peaceful protest led by Buddhist monks against the regime in Burma (Myanmar) has been suppressed in a violent bloodbath.

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.

In what has been termed the "Saffron Revolution," thousands of Buddhist monks have been leading peaceful marches against the country's military regime.

On September 23, as many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks and nuns marched through Yangon (Rangoon), the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar since 1988. Next day, tens of thousands more monks, joined by civilians, marched peacefully through key areas of several Burmese towns. Indeed, since late August this year, monks and people around Burma have been out on the streets protesting against a sharp hike in fuel prices imposed by the dictatorship on a long suffering people, among the poorest in the world.

The protests were initially triggered by student activists, who, lacking the immunity accorded to monks, were immediately beaten up and detained. Min Ko Naing, a student leader and hero of the 1988 failed uprising against the military regime, who has already spent nearly a decade-and-half in jail, was among those arrested.

Today, reports from inside the country are declaring the uprising over and the military junta in control.

Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared" as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

. . .

There, troops abandoned religious beliefs, propped their rifles against statues of Buddha and began cooking meals on stoves set up in shrines.

Words fail...

Glacial Melt Accelerating

Buy at AllPosters.com

Rapidly accelerating melting of the polar ice caps is causing some climatologists to revise their global warming tables. Catastrophe may be coming sooner rather than later.

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced.

Experts say they are "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.

. . .

The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.

Dr [Mark] Serreze said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our childrens' lifetimes."

But, if you really want to feel an icy chill run down your spine, consider this: What will Dr. Serreze be saying two years from now? Sudden climate change? Anyone?... Anyone?

Legislating Reincarnation

Buy at AllPosters.com

In its continuing effort to crush the influence of Tibetan Buddhism within its borders, China is cracking down on the reincarnation of living Buddhas.

All the reincarnations of living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism must get government approval, otherwise they are "illegal or invalid," China's State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) said in Beijing Friday.

The SARA has issued a set of regulations on reincarnation of Tibetan living Buddhas, which will take effect as of September 1.

"It is an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas," the SARA said in a statement issued Friday.

The regulations require that a temple which applies for reincarnation of a living Buddha must be "legally-registered venues for Tibetan Buddhism activities and are capable of fostering and offering proper means of support for the living Buddha."

I have to admit, this actually struck me funny when I first heard about it; the idea that a government bureaucracy could administrate the comings and goings of souls. But, it's deadly serious.

The 14-part regulation issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs is aimed at limiting the influence of Tibet’s exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, and at preventing the re-incarnation of the 72-year-old monk without approval from Beijing.

It is the latest in a series of measures by the Communist authorities to tighten their grip over Tibet. Reincarnate lamas, known as tulkus, often lead religious communities and oversee the training of monks, giving them enormous influence over religious life in the Himalayan region. Anyone outside China is banned from taking part in the process of seeking and recognising a living Buddha, effectively excluding the Dalai Lama, who traditionally can play an important role in giving recognition to candidate reincarnates.

For the first time China has given the Government the power to ensure that no new living Buddha can be identified, sounding a possible death knell to a mystical system that dates back at least as far as the 12th century.

This continues and expands Chinese policies to wrest control of the Tibetan spiritual practices that largely define the occupied people. Having already decreed that only the government can authorize the appointment of its two most important spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. His holiness the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since 1959, selected the reincarnate of the Panchen Lama in 1995. But, Chinese authorities held their own selection ceremony and the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama has since disappeared.

Last week hundreds of Tibetans were taken into custody for protesting the detention of another Tibetan protester, who seized the microphone at an official Chinese event and called for the return of the Dalai Lama.

The reports said the crowd of hundreds responded with a roaring yes when Runggye Adak asked whether the Dalai Lama should return.

"If we cannot invite the Dalai Lama home, we will not have freedom of religion and happiness in Tibet," Radio Free Asia quoted him as saying in a report filed from neighboring Nepal. Many Tibetans go through Nepal to reach the seat of the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.

Echinacea Prevents Colds: Newest Study

Buy at AllPosters.com

Studies on the effectiveness of echinacea have been decidedly mixed. Like many natural remedies much of the evidence is anecdotal. That's never been a deterrent for me as I have never believed in one size fits all remedies. (I pendulum test everything. Works for me.) However, a new scientific study concluded that echinacea does, in fact, prevent colds, by a substantial percentage, and seems to shorten the duration and severity of colds.

The paper, published in the July issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases, used statistical techniques to combine the results of existing studies and reach conclusions based on the larger sample that resulted. The researchers selected only those trials that used randomized and placebo-controlled techniques: 14 studies involving 1,356 participants for the number of colds and 1,630 for the prevention of colds. The studies varied in the dosages of the herb, the duration it was taken and the species of echinacea used, and the number of participants ranged from 40 to more than 300.

The analysis concluded that echinacea reduced the risk of catching a cold by 58 percent. It also found that the herb significantly shortened the duration of a cold, but there was no general agreement about the magnitude of this effect.

“Our analysis doesn’t say that the stuff works without question,” said Dr. Craig I. Coleman, an assistant professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut, and the senior author of the paper. “But the preponderance of evidence suggests that it does.”

On the subject of herbs, this might be a good time mention that one of my newest affiliates is Mountain Rose Herbs. I don't mean this to be a shameless plug, but a genuine recommendation. I waited for years for these folks to go online and start an affiliate program. I bought from them when all they had was a low-budget, newsprint catalog. Their herbs and oils are top-notch. Highly, highly recommended.

Now This is Just Dumb

Buy at AllPosters.com

As noted here the mummy of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut was recently identified. It's an exciting discovery for archaeologists and Egyptophiles like myself. This morning I opened the Huffington Post to read this idiotic headline: "Mummy Reveals Legendary Egyptian Queen Was Obese, Balding And Bearded." Number 1: Who cares? Number 2: The beard was a false one, and was affected to represent her pharaonic authority. Number 3: Can no woman in history escape objectifying lookism?

Huffington Post is not primarily at fault, here. The headline derives from the source material; an article on Live Science. And it only gets worse from there.

Turns out, Hatshepsut was no Cleopatra. Instead, she was a 50-year-old fat lady; apparently she used her power over the Upper and Lower Nile to eat well and abundantly. Archaeologists also claim that she probably had diabetes, just like many obese women today.

Hatshepsut also suffered from what all women over 40 need—a stylist. She was balding in front but let the hair on the back of her head to grow really long, like an aging female Dead Head with alopecia.

This Queen of Egypt also sported black and red nail polish, a rather Goth look for someone past middle age.

Got it? Hatshepsut was a "Glamour don't." Why this matters roughly 3500 years after the fact is a mystery to me.

Letting alone that Cleopatra's legendary beauty is a subject of some dispute, this article is wrong-headed from the outset. I can't believe it was written by an academic, and female one at that. She does allow that Hatshepsut was extraordinarily successful, but implies that it was in spite of her homeliness. What it was in spite of was a culture that did not allow for female rulers. How ironic that all these years later her memory must still battle a sexist, objectifying standard.

Making the Darkness Conscious

Buy at AllPosters.com

Hat-tip to Unexplained Mysteries for noting this article on brain function and meditation. A recent study concludes that mindful observation of our darker emotions advances our healing process.

If you name your emotions, you can tame them, according to new research that suggests why meditation works.

Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation’s purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to “let them go.”

Psychologists have long believed that people who talk about their feelings have more control over them, but they don't know why it works.

I have written and spoken a good deal about the use of active denial as a spiritual practice. Most recently, in my review of the movie "The Secret," but also here. I have come down hard against "Secret" mania, not because it is the worst offender, but because of the viral nature of the message. It's cleverly packaged pop-spirituality, but the message is a retread of one many of us grew up with: "Don't dwell."

As I wrote in that review:

I nearly fell out my chair when I heard "The Secret's" Bob Proctor advise that when you're feeling bad you should simply put on some music, because it would change your mood, and to "block out everything but that [happy] thought." Try that if you're clinically depressed. Just try it. Or if you are recovering from childhood sexual abuse. Or if you are one of our returning veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even the joyous sounds of Steve Martin's banjo won't make you happy, and to suggest that it's that simple is insulting. And if you could block out all that pain, it would be anything but healthy.

In her appearance on "Oprah," Lisa Nichols explained how she addresses people who want to talk about their personal history or "story." Her response is "I don't want to know it, because you've used it to keep yourself where you are." So word to the wise, if you want someone to help you heal and come complete with your painful history, Lisa Nichols is probably not the appropriate facilitator for you.

Many years ago, as a communications student, I was taught that the most important communication tool is listening. When I started working professionally as a reader and healing facilitator, the importance of well-honed listening skill was really brought home for me. I found that there are readings in which I really say very little, but which facilitate enormous transformation in the client. I allow my guides to direct me in a process of transmitting the messages I receive; then listening, breathing, and experiencing what is happening in a client's body when they speak their truth. In this way I am able to help them process and clear. The longer I do this work, the less I run my suck. People need to be heard, and in most of our daily lives, we are not.

The message of this fascinating bit of brain research is that listening to ourselves -- to the streaming of our own thoughts -- is also crucial to our emotional health. More importantly, we need to acknowledge and name our feelings; even and especially the ones we don't like.

When the participants chose labels for the negative emotions, activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex region—an area associated with thinking in words about emotional experiences—became more active, whereas activity in the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotional processing, was calmed.

. . .

“In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words, you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses,” Lieberman said of his study, which is detailed in the current issue of Psychological Science.

This runs exactly counter to the ideas advanced in "The Secret" and other new age staples on positive thought. For years we all heard that focusing on our negative thoughts and feelings would exacerbate them and cause us to "magnetize" more negative experiences. The suggested remedy was to focus on the positive, thereby "manifesting" positive results. Never mind that our ideas of positive and negative are, not only subjective, but entrenched in a dualistic conception of life and the universe. In other words, this splitting function actually keeps us from experiencing wholeness, or "one-ness."

Suppressing and denying also keeps us from processing and healing our painful emotions, as this study graphically illustrates. Thinking only happy thoughts will not cause our unpleasant emotions to atrophy and disappear. It simply drives them underground. (It can also cause them to play out in our bodies, but that's a subject for another discussion.) It is actually acknowledging the darker feelings rattling around the subconscious, that reduces their effect on our overall emotional state.