The Greatest Gift (2)

The video from my last post got me thinking about personal futures. We are under so much pressure from society to conform to dominant ideas about what an ideal life should look like. A recent book by Maggies Hamilton, called What’s Happening to Our Boys , suggests that boys as young as eight years of age are obsessing about their image, and advertising, consumerism and IT culture lie behind the problem. There are primary school students who are worried about what they were wearing to school, while some teenagers are scared to take their shirts off at the beach because they don't have abs. The problem is thus more acute than ever.

Here’s what the Sydney Morning Herald story noted about the problem.

Some of this is because marketers are recognising boys as the last great untapped market.

"Parents are very worried about not looking cool," she (Maggie Hamilton) says." Advertisers have ... done an effective job in undermining parents' confidence, leaving them constantly worried they're inadequate and/or uncool unless they are buying this or that," she says in her book.

Australian parents spend around $1000 per child per year on toys and related products for kids aged zero to three, Hamilton says.

Her book quotes James McNeal, a Texas-based professor who has published books on children and marketing, as saying that consumer behaviour patterns start at 16 weeks of age.

Meanwhile, the former president of children's clothing retailer Kids-R-Us, Mike Searle, is quoted as saying "if you win this child at an early age, you own this child for years to come".

Kids are basically growing up in rooms full of branded junk watching DVDS over and over," Hamilton says.

"The kids associate (branded toys) with the character they have seen in the DVD ... they don't even have an imaginative repertoire around those characters. What they do is replay the stories they have seen over and over on the DVDS."

Boys' natural attraction to computer games and gadgets means that many are missing out important interaction with not only other people, but the outside world, Hamilton says.

"Our kids are becoming like battery hens, they rush home and it is into the bedroom, onto the computer, iPod in the ears and all that wonderful activity that was going on outside is now happening on the screen," she says.

The Greatest Gift

A beautiful expression of three geniuses:

The Simple Tools of David Hawkins... and more

David R. Hawkins is a modern mystic and spiritual teacher. I have referred to him many times on my blog, because I believe that there are no more profound spiritual teachings around today, than his. One of their greatest strengths lies in the teachings' practical simplicity.

It is easy to misread what Hawkins writes, especially if you don’t have much experience in doing spiritual self-work. But anyone who has explored the spiritual dimensions of mind with a true intention will readily recognise many of the truths contained in them. 

Some people get caught up in arguing the merits of Hawkins’ claims to be able to calibrate (measure) levels of consciousness. He says that by using muscle kinesiology he can give a numerical value to any given teaching, teacher or concept. Scientific testing fails to back up this claim, but I believe that it would be a mistake to dismiss Hawkins’ writings based purely upon this single issue. There is simply so much profound wisdom contained in his writings that any genuine spiritual devotee will deride great benefit from them.

In Transcending the Levels of Consciousness there is a very simple but profound summary of the qualities and attitudes required to make spiritual “progress” (progress is something of a misnomer, but I won’t go into that here). Hawkins points out that what is required on the journey is really very simple. One can be led astray by constantly learning more, becoming more knowledgeable, becoming more clever, more full. However, genuine transcendence requires an emptying, a letting go. This is where we tend to run into trouble, as the mind prefers to stay in control.

Here are the ten tools which Hawkins refers to:

1.       Be kind to everything and everyone, including oneself, all the time, with no exception.

The Ghosts of Tiananmen

Take a look at this photo. What is happening? Now, take a closer look at the man in the background, the small figure just to the left of the tree. Recognise him? No? Here’s a hint. He is captured here just moments before he is about to commit an act of such unfeasible courage, that it will lead to his being named one the 100 most influential people of the twentieth century by Time magazine.

Here's a little more help. Turn your attention to what is rolling down the road, just a few hundred metres away from the man. Perhaps now you’ve got it. This fascinating image was taken just moments before the man confronted the advancing tanks, shopping bags and all. This video will help jog your memory.

Transcending the Rational Mind

It is commonly believed in many circles - particularly those dizzying circles one finds oneself in within academic and educational institutions – that the rational mind is the highest cognitive set currently available to human beings. The rational mind is higher than the emotional mind, it is assumed, because the emotional and unreflective mind led us into mass superstition during the dark ages. Then science, with its empirically founded scientific method, led us out from the darkness and into Enlightenment. Thereafter came massive progress in science and social science; and the benefits to society are obvious. Just look at all those clean hospitals, computers on office desks and airplanes that can whisk us around the world in a matter of hours.

In the dark ages of prehistory people pretty much believed whatever Mum or the village idiot told them. Most people couldn’t read or write for a start. It was said that there was only one literate man, a clergyman, in all of Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire. Now almost everyone in Britain can read and write; and you take your capacity to make sense of the black squiggles on this page for granted. Thank about that for progress!

People haven’t always employed the critical/rational mind the way we do today.

The Aboriginal Shaman Woman

"Gathering Bush Tucker", a painting by Aboriginal artist

June Sultan Napanga

It may come as a surprise to some readers, but there was a time when I was a skeptic of anything remotely spiritual or "psychic". In fact in my early twenties I was an avowed atheist and empiricist. I was quite hostile to any reference to such things. Yet over time my attitude relaxed slowly. I have previously mentioned one or two formative experiences which led to this shift. Many of them occurred at around the age of 26-27 (I'm now 44 years old). One other such event also occurred at this time, and involved an Aboriginal shaman woman. At the time I was living in Coffs Harbour, in northern New South Wales, Australia, and I had no conscious awareness of any innate intuitive ability I might possess. I was also happily free of any academic responsibilities. I had no intention of pursuing any higher education.

I sat down one day to read the local paper, and noticed a small ad for psychic readings in the classifieds section. I was then becoming interested in the psychic realm.  That evening I dialed the number and found myself speaking to a woman named Maria. The very next day I  walked over to her home for a reading (Coff Harbour is not a big town).

There was nothing special about Maria on the surface. She was quite down to earth, and although I was open to the possibility that she might offer something useful or even profound, I found myself quite skeptical. She didn’t appear to be particularly spiritual in the way I thought “spiritual” was supposed to be. Her house was far from tidy and was run-down. There was renovation being carried out as she spoke to me, with workmen coming and going. She also smoked, a strong dislike of mine.

“Put your paw up here,” she said. She took my hand, and began to “read.”

Go West!

 The peak behind Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, today

I live in a very beautiful part of Hong Kong – Discovery Bay, on Lantau Island. Lantau is the biggest island in the territory, apart from Hong Kong Island itself. It’s great to be able to come back here and relax after a long day of work (or blog writing!)

But I didn’t always live in this part of Hong Kong. I Hope that the story of how I came to live here will be instructive for anyone who wishes to follow their Integrated Intelligence to live their Bliss.

I have only lived in Discovery Bay for less than six months. Before then I was living on the 50^th floor of a high-rise in the eastern side of Hong Kong. I found the experience less than blissful! Being so far from the earth was very ungrounding. At times I felt almost soulless. Still, the place was close to my workplace, so I endured it.

Then one night a song came to me as I was sleeping, as so often happens to me. It was a line from Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Digging Deeper For Oil: A Futurist's Perspective

Click on "read more" to see the Midnight Oil Youtube clip - it doesn't come out on the home page for some reason.

Australian band Midnight Oil:  Never more relevant

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been making headlines for the past few weeks. I have been thinking of writing about this for some time, and it has now dawned on me that this issue is a perfect opportunity to invoke one of the very best analytical methods of Futures Studies. Futurists like me are not merely interested in predicting the future. In fact many of us have little or no interest in prediction. Above all, futurists also like to analyse futures, and because the future does not exist yet, the best way to do this is by taking a deep look at the major issues that are effecting the world now. The oil spill is a perfect opportunity to introduce one powerful method by my favourite futurist, Sohail Inayatullah (www.metafuture.org).

 Sohail Inayatullah

Now, I admit I am slightly biased here. Sohail was the supervisor for my doctoral thesis, which I did through the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Sohail has worked with numerous governments across the world with a process called Causal layered Analysis, or CLA.

CLA is very simple. It involves taking an issue and breaking it down into four levels. These are the litany, the social/system, the worldview/paradigm, and the myth/metaphor levels. When I use the process, I add a fifth level, the Consciousness Level. This is because I feel that the deeper workings of the human mind and the spiritual context of our lives requires a level all on its own. This obviously reflects my own interests as a person and a researcher, and my personal biases come into play at that level.

Taking a look at the Louisiana oil spill using Causal Layered Analysis, some very interesting things emerge.

Entanglement: The Next Big Thing?

Just a few months ago on his blog, parapsychologist Dean Radin boldly claimed that the idea of entanglement will soon become taken for granted in biology. Entanglement is the idea that all things are connected at a deep level, and that this connectivity transcends the currently understood limits of space and time, as held in mainstream science. In the post, titled “Quantum biology now. Quantum psychology next?”, Radin suggests that psychology will quickly follow suit, taking on entanglement as a founding principle of mind.

 Dean Radin

Radin has long held the belief that entanglement will eventually be embraced in science, but his confidence received a boost at the beginning of the year because of a paper published in the prestigious science journal, Nature by Elisabetta Collini and colleagues.

The Terror and the People

Beijing journalists bravely soldier up to the task of spreading panic amongst the people during the SARS period

Your mind is connected to an intelligence that transcends your individual mind. I call this Integrated Intelligence. This gives you the capacity to draw upon a kind of universal mind to make wise choices. Integrated Intelligence can help us to sense which way to go when things get tough. The following little tale took place in China, and is taken from a time when a few thousand people died from a nasty little bug they called SARS, demonstrates the point. It was a time of widespread panic.

But not for some…

 

During the SARS crisis of 2003 I was living in Beijing, one of the cities hardest hit by the disease. I was working at an international school while also writing my doctoral thesis. By that time I had spent more than a decade working at a practical level with Integrated Intelligence, both with others and on my own, so my own intuitive capacities were then highly developed. My experience during the SARS “epidemic” also suggests how Integrated Intelligence potentially shifts power relations between the individual and the State and the mass media.

The following is an extract from Light and Shadow at the Edge of Mind, basically an autobiography, which I have never gotten round to publishing.