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This blog has been pretty quiet the last month, simply because I don’t have anything I wish to share on here.  It’s not easy keeping a blog up for a month, never mind 5 years.  And a blog that doesn’t get much traffic at that.  I feel like I’ve pretty much said a lot about different things, and to keep going on this path would be more of the same, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll take this blog in another direction, at least for awhile, where I post links to comedy and other interesting things, because laughter is the best medicine for an insane society gone off the rails.  Comedy is one of my loves, so it would only make sense that I post some of my favorite comedy videos for awhile, just to sort of bridge the gap between my rantings about society, or some kind of pseudo-spiritual junk I read in a book.  Damn you, Steve Pavlina, for putting thousands of people on a path of personal growth that will most likely lead them to a career in magical thinking and tons of disappointment.  You were the reason i started this blog and now it has become something of an eyesore.

Here is a great Youtube clip of George Carlin talking about people who read Self-Help Books.  See, there’s the comedy.  He also goes into motivation seminars, or something similar and says that we have too much motivation.  The people that are causing all the trouble in this world are highly motivated.  Then he says something to the effect of, “You take a guy sitting at home, watching TV, and stroking his penis, and I’ll show you a guy that’s not going to cause any problems.”  Sure, they’re not causing any problems, but they’re also not solving any.  I just don’t see the point to this self-help movement.  All it is going to do is accelerate the destruction of this planet.  Spiritual development not withstanding.  You can develop your spirit without expending vast amounts of resources, but most people who are into self-help or personal development, or whatever lame thing you wish to call it, are usually in it for money, or success, or some other hollow achievement goals that keep you coming back for more and more, much like a drug.

There are self-help junkies out there, who are addicted to these blogs and seminars, people who like to pretend they are taking control of their life because they’ve been to a Tony Robbins firewalk.  Walking on hot coals is fucking crazy.  I’m sorry, but Tony, you are a fucking sadist if you have your attendees walk on hot coals just to see if they get burned or not.  Or that James Arthur Ray, who put a bunch of people in a sweat lodge and at least one of them died.  These people were not allowed to leave, even if they felt like they were dying.  Ha!  That really rings true to the ideology of taking conscious control of your life.  ”Yeah, just stay in that sweat lodge and we’ll tell you when you can come out.  Somebody bolt the door.”

And even worse, probably the worst of all is this breatharian group, people who actually believe that humans can live without any food or water, and get all their nourishment from the air.  This is lunacy at its very extreme and kind of makes me laugh a little, because someone actually died doing this.  They went off into the woods or something, with a book written by some woman who calls herself Jasmuheen, and died.  I’ll tell you, not eating or drinking for a whole week in an isolated area where nobody is there to help you is a tremendous leap of faith.  I know most people would not do that, but those who have been indoctrinated in the belief system of certain spiritual and self-help circles can do some pretty crazy things.  And these things are entertaining as well.  It keeps the Darwin Awards interesting.

I don’t want to bash Steve Pavlina, mostly because he at least advocates thinking for yourself before you do anything like that.  I find him to be a little airy fairy on some things, but for the most part, he is at least practical and doesn’t have you sweating or starving to death.  He doesn’t force you to live the way he does, or condemn you for living the way you do.  He doesn’t have you drink Kool Aid, but simply shares his experiences and ideas and lets you decide if they resonate with you.  He may seem completely insane to some, but at least he isn’t saying that you should come along for the ride, just that he has had these interesting experiences that he never had before he got involved in personal development.  And he is not about to go into the woods and try to live off of air without taking the necessary precautions.

When it comes to self-help, or personal development, or whatever, go with your common sense, people.  Don’t so something that would put your life or the lives of people you love in jeopardy.  I think self-help has a sinister core, because it has all these success stories of people starting businesses and finding their true passion, but not too many failure stories, or the failures are dressed up as a stepping stone to success, or a temporary hurdle.  But what about those who quit their jobs and became homeless because of a self-help blog or book, or seminar?  Or those who died because of it?

This was a really weird and silly post, but at least I’m still posting.

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Obviously, there is something wrong with humans as a race.  The fact that we take, take, take from the wider world without giving back is the prime example.  We will destroy anything, even ourselves, to get what it is that we want.  We will systematically exterminate subsets of our own species just so we all look alike.  Humans believe they are the crown of creation, the final evolution, God’s chosen species.  But we are not.  That is just something we tell ourselves to justify the evil things that we do to other species and our own species.  Before we save the planet, we first need to save ourselves.  We need to become emotionally healthy and self-sufficient.  If we can’t do that, how are we supposed to get anything else accomplished?

If humans would stop for just one second and look at the desolation and destruction they have caused over the past 10,000 years or so, they would be appalled.  But most humans would rather not look.  Why not?  Because it will reflect in ourselves what we, too, are capable of.  We are all capable of such cruel and unusual behavior, it’s just some people are more prone to commit these kinds of horrendous acts.  It is either nature or nurture in these cases.  It is mostly nurture, I believe, due to this insane world we live in.  But it can also be nature in some cases.  Some people are simply bad seeds.  It is not their fault, nor their parents’ fault.  They are born that way.  But that is the exception, not the rule.

Most people have to be conditioned thoroughly to commit the horrendous acts that are perpetrated daily on a mass and small scale every day.  Some of us aren’t even aware of what we are contributing to.  Others knowingly commit crimes of epic proportions to get ahead in life.  It is not their fault, though.  The system was set up thousands of years ago and it is only recently that it is becoming evident that something is seriously wrong with it.  This civilization is pathological and will never stop, even at the expense of itself.  We will exploit everything and everyone that can be exploited.  I truly cannot see it stopping anytime soon, even when many of our natural resources get scarce.  It will become more frantic then, more cutthroat, more devious.  But why?

I would argue that the human race was traumatized somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago by multiple traumas.  One of them was the magnetic reversal of the poles, and another was the Ice Age.  It is entirely possible we were visited by aliens and they did something to us that traumatized us so badly that we had to invent the ego, which allowed us to get through these tough times.  The truth is that we don’t completely know why we got so fucked up, but the important thing is trying to get better.  Like I said, we need to fix ourselves before we can fix the world.  That is definitely a prerequisite.

There has been this practice called yoga going on for over 5000 years.  Yoga takes many forms, and it is a form of cleansing overall.  The real question here is:  What did we need to be cleansed of in the first place?  There had to be something.  Something terrible.  And something we can only speculate on today, because we truly have no idea.  I’m sure somewhere deep down in our DNA we know, but the attempts at explaining this shift in our behavior for the last 10,000 or 30,000 years sometimes gets crazy, like fourth-dimensional lizards messing with our DNA and breeding with some humans to create shape-shifting lizard people who rule the world.  Is this scenario possible?  Maybe.  Is it likely?  Highly doubtful.  All I know is that this isn’t the life us humans planned for ourselves.  There shouldn’t be so much darkness in us, in the world.

Like I said before, it’s anyone’s best guess what happened to us so many thousands of years ago.  We truly don’t know because we weren’t there.  Our ancestors were there, and they are long dead, and there was no written word when this happened, so how are we to find out?  It would really help a lot to know what went on, but I don’t know how that’s going to happen.  It’s kind of like a repressed memory that we’ll have to dig out of our subconscious at some point down the road in order to begin the healing process.  We used to be one with the Earth, now we are one against the Earth.  Something profound has to happen for an event like that to take place.  There are a ton of theories about what happened, but how can we know for sure what truly took place?  How can we find the origin of the separation from the self and the movement into the ego, which is the cause of all our problems and also what saved us in the beginning?

I’m posing these questions to you.  I don’t have any answers, other than the fact that we’re totally bonkers as a species.  And that whatever spawned civilization had to be pretty dark, as civilization spawned dark emotions in many, many people throughout history, behaving in such a manner that they have no soul, no empathy, and an addiction to power and control.  Why is it that 13 or so bloodlines have most of the power?  Or why do they pass laws that makes it illegal to sell or give away food you grow yourself unless the government has its look at it?   Why do we need government in the first place when no other species needs it?  What the hell made us so selfish in regards to the wider world?  These are all questions that are not easy to answer, and may have no definitive answer that we can discern.  But it is thinking about it, wondering, that gets us moving in the right direction.  And it could possibly lead us to an answer, that would jump-start the healing process to allow for us to finally get over whatever it was that made us this way.  Let us pray.

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