What Kind of Hypocrite are You?

HypoQuiz

Let’s be honest, we’re all hypocrites on some level. What level is the question?

The Hipster – Level 10

Your disease has gone as viral as an incurable STD, which is why no one wants to admit they have it. Meek kitschy music is your religion and your god is the Biblical one, due to his beard. You eat at deck new restaurants called Meat & Bread, because eating vegetables would give you too much energy and you might use it. You’re sure that the revolution will happen with or without you, and when it does, you’ll be watching it on your Ipad on mute listening to a band you’d prefer not to name, in case they get overplayed. Look what happened to Foster the People. You fear the collapse of mainstream culture, because then your parasitic identity would have nothing to be superior to.

The Meat Eating Hippie – Level 9

You call yourself a Buddhist and lift bugs to safety in the palm of your hand saying: “there you go, little fella.” You tell people that ground beef makes you feel grounded without batting a dreadlock at the irony. You wear factory farmed rooster feathers in your hair to make you look like a forest goddess. You go to expensive retreats to restore the well-being of your sacred marriage, eating for breakfast eggs that came to your plate via garburating 99% of the males at the hatchery.

The Easy Going Guy – Level 8A

You love your friends and family. You like music, and other stuff, too. You get emo when your hockey team loses. You say you hate Nickleback but sing along to it when alone in your truck. You know you should want a woman with an airbrushed Maxim ass, but secretly know that you’d have to spend too much time at the gym to keep up with her so you settle on the hot mess who’s drunk 5 nights a week. You’ll change the world, if it’s what everyone else feels like doing that night.

The Gal Pal – Level 8B

You have a great spray tan that you tell yourself isn’t too orange. You’d do anything for your BFF, unless she got weird and complicated. You love all the things you should: Jennifer Aniston, Coach bags, Ugg boots. You hate all the thing you should: Mondays, gaining weight, and ugh – PMS. You’re offended by the phrase: first world problems. You dress your dog up and accessorize yourself to match with your fave parka with the real dog fur trim.

The Babyboomer – Level 7

You are a committed recycling underachiever. You are appalled by slutty pop singers these days, and yet you know who is in rehab, who has breast implants, and who smoked out of a bong last weekend. You were so emotionally damaged from hiding under your desk during the cold war bomb threats that a part of you is still hiding there.

The Libertarian Capitalist – Level 6

You believe there is a ‘pure’ capitalism that could exist, but can’t figure out how to transform the greedy, wasteful capitalism of today to get there. You spread anti-government links through capitalism-affirming social media platforms, occasionally #hashtag acknowledging that selling your personal information for profit is #notcool. You think the only alternative to capitalism is communism – and they tried that already and it didn’t work. You think that competition is healthy, because otherwise people are lazy; you would know.

The Realist – Level 5

You’re too smart to be an optimist. Koni, climate change, the Wall Street bailouts—history repeats itself and you can’t do anything to change that; and if you could – nah, you probably wouldn’t, realistically. You have a hunch that 911 was an inside job, but you’ll never know exactly what happened, so no point forming an opinion. You call people sheeple, and sometimes eat lamb.  You don’t use question marks #whybother

The Vegetarian – Level 4

You refuse to eat disgusting animal flesh, but crave animal secretions because they’re “comfort food”. You don’t feel the need to cut out ALL animal products because you’re already doing so much. You drink organic milk and eat free range eggs because these foods don’t involve killing the animal… right away. You think veganism may weave  your hair into dreadlocks, lock by lock. Switzerland is your favourite country; waffles your favourite food.

The Enviro Fundamentalist – Level 3

You live off the grid in a forest commune and hunt small rodents to stay alive. You place yourself too far away from technology to change the world. You are at one with nature; it is literally wedged in your every orifice. You exchange a modern diet of nonviolence for a Paleolithic diet of violence because it’s more “natural”. You past-urbate to loincloths and wooden clubs. You let MTV film your journey towards enlightenment for $20,000.

The Vegan – Level 2

You’re against animal cruelty but own a cat or dog, so your fridge is full of factory farmed meat. You fly across the world attending animal rights conferences pumping tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. You waive your right to have children and use the extra time to blog about #breeders. You are as offended by a pregnant woman as a slaughterhouse. Nonviolence is your religion, but you seem to frequently want to slap fur bitches upside the head. You walk on the pavement crushing millions of innocent bugs with each step.

The Fruitarian – Level 1

You eat as low on the food chain as possible to be gentle, while traveling the planet with celebrity frequency; you prefer the term “nomad”. You believe in voluntary extinction – that humans should sacrifice their full existence to sustain the environment, but sometimes you  wonder if humans aren’t part of the environment. You plan to live off the land, as long as there is an internet connection – high speed.

Christmas Among Meateaters

How Can Vegans Remain True to Themselves at Christmas?

I’m not writing this post as a prescriptive because I truly don’t know how a vegan can glide through the holidays when celebrating them with meateaters. When I look at the Christmas cacaphony of bacon fryers and leather handbags and turkeys, I see the places they came from and this doesn’t make me feel like celebrating.

Instead I will post a conversation between myself and a family member about our attempts to reconcile the lifestyle clash. When meateaters argue with vegans, it can be exhausting, especially for the vegan because they’ve probably had this convo a million times before. Ring any (jingle) bells?

Meateater VS Vegan – Conflict @ Christmas

M = Meateater

V = Vegan

V = I appreciate the efforts you make to provide vegan options and gifts, but please realize that when you gift everyone else twice as much of the opposite kinds of gifts, and feed everyone else ten times the amount of non-vegan food, I feel upset because I see all the violence it took to obtain those products.

M = Well, those are your beliefs. I don’t get why you have to ‘push’ your ‘beliefs’ on the rest of us.

V = The nature of and prevalence of factory farming is statistically documented. It has nothing to do with a belief – this is what’s happening in our world right now. I’m speaking the truth and being myself.

M = You are making me feel bad when you say something about gifts such as the PiggyWiggy bacon fryer.

V = I am not ‘making’ you feel anything, but I am drawing attention to the violence behind this gift.

M = Well why do you have to do it in an attacking way?

V = The slaughter of pigs is the ultimate act of attack. If you perceive someone mentioning this as an attack, then maybe you are creating that experience out of your own inclination to defend this consumer choice.

M = How do you know that the animals suffer?

V = Would you suffer if you were strapped to the floor of a gestation crate and raped over and over until your innards spilled out of your body?

M = Well have you gone and actually witnessed this yourself? You just watch these videos and assume it’s true.

V = I could go into the factory farms but then I could be prosecuted as a terrorist according to new U.S. law.

M = Why do you need to try to change us? We don’t force you to eat meat.

V = I am not trying to change you. I am simply sharing my experience with you and the essence of who I am. Changing you would be a waste of my time, if you choose to grow for yourself that’s great.

Also, me reminding you of the violence in animal products is very different from you pressuring me to support violence.

M = What if we don’t want to change?

V = We are always changing no matter what – the only question is in what way. On a personal note, if you learn about animal agriculture and simply don’t care – I don’t get that.

M = I care about other things that you don’t care about: poverty, homelessness, various charities, etc.

V = I care about those things, too. If I was doing something directly to cause these things and I had other choices, I would choose the least harmful options.

M = So you really don’t want to change us?

V = Would I love to live in a non-violent world? Yes. Am I going to go around begging individuals to change? No.

M = Can’t you just be pleasant?

V = I can be a lot of positive things. But I’m not willing to silence myself.

I’m going to stop there because it’s excruciating. I would like to point out though that it’s not the veganism that tears families apart – it’s the violence behind the animal products. Just like it wasn’t women’s rights that tore families apart, it was the sexist laws of that time. Just because an animal based diet is currently more popular, doesn’t mean it’s natural or normal.

Christmas can be a difficult time for those who have seen the truth behind the animal products the ‘mainstream’ chooses to purchase because we are simply unable to appreciate or celebrate them.

Vegan Xmas Options

a) celebrate Xmas among meateaters and shut up, feeling as though you are a  phony

b) celebrate Xmas among meateaters and speak out, probably causing defensive responses from others

c) spend Xmas with vegans (but be guilt tripped by meateating friends and family who you’re ignoring)

d) volunteer at a homless shelter and serve people… turkey

So it’s kind of a no-win sitch. But it’s all good, because it’s not about us anyway in that our feelings of exclusion and alienation pale in comparison to the atrocities faced every day by animal slaves.

Foster Gamble’s ‘Thrive’ – WIN or FAIL?

Where the Movie ‘Thrive’ Fails to Thrive

Foster Gamble, renegade heir of the animal-torturing Procter & Gamble corp, has made his own version of the Zeitgeist trilogy with an extraterrestrial spin.

Below are a list of WINS and FAILS that I’ve compiled to gauge the overall success of the film. Generally, the first 3/4 of this film is a win, and the last quarter is a fail. Not an F, but a D-.

The end of Thrive is reminiscent to that of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, except in that film the solutions came rolling down like credits in a tiptoeing, whistling, thumb twiddling don’t-ask-me slink away.

WIN

• Names are named. Thrive pinpoints the main elites causing the global fear-based decision making structure in what is labeled the Global Domintation Agenda: the Rockfellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and their buddies. The film explains how this small group of people control money, food, water (trying to), education, media, healthcare, etc. Well done Thrive for not being afraid to call the hoarders out.
• Blame is diffused through explanation. Any time people lean on the concept of ‘evil’ as an explanation for violence, whether economic, physical, or other, we regress back to the polarity of the US government, the bible, or a Star Wars movie. Truth is far more complicated than simply: some people are just evil. Thrive explains that those hoarding power are doing so out of fear. Fear of freedom, scarcity, and change.
• Exposing the appropriation of the term ‘conspiracy theory’. It seems as though anyone who commits to dissent these days is termed a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorist is the new terrorist. So I’m glad that Thrive exposes the negative connotations this term has garnered so people can feel more comfortable about thinking critically. Remember critical thinking? That skill we were taught in school that gets us fired from jobs in the real world?
• Thrive has a fact checking page on their website. Point.
• Thrive does make one or two good points in its otherwise weak attempt to solve the world’s problems, with statements such as this: “It doesn’t work to build an healthy system on top of an unhealthy one.” True that. (So why does Thrive go on to try to bandaid job the system we’ve got now?)

FAIL

• Thrive’s main failure is in its proposed solutions. While the Gambles’ hearts are in the right place, they lack the vision to picture actual economic alternatives and therefore they aim low, telling viewers to work within the monetary system, when the monetary system IS the problem. Bank locally? Vote for better people? These systems are already corrupted – time to start fresh.
• No mention of the Venus Project. Hello! There is already a much more cutting edge solution out there for all the problems Thrive presents. Could Thrive not even comment on a resource based economy? Even to say why it isn’t feasible? If Gamble missed this biggie, what other essentials did he omit from his ambitious film?
• After showing numerous shots of people starving and living in poverty, the makers of Thrive warn that watching the film without paying for it is immoral. Isn’t it more important to get their message out than to expect immediate reward? The filmmakers seem to be stuck in a place of rich kid entitlement on this issue.
• Thrive’s golden rule is to practice non-violation… but what exactly does this mean? What about violating the wealth of the elite hoarders and redistributing it? And don’t we have to violate current laws in order to exercise free speech these days? What about the people who pay more for water than Coke who might violate the copyright laws to watch this movie? Gamble then tries to interchange the term with non-aggression. Let me help, you Thrive – the term you’re reaching for is: non-violence. But to be fair, for humans to practice non-violence, this requires a shift from animal agriculture, the violence-based system that nourishes most of the people on the planet.
• Fail squared: the soundtrack. Please make it stop.

All in all, Thrive is well organized and accurate on many points but its main flaw is that it has an economic blind spot.

Instead of spending a bit longer to search for solutions to the problems it presents, Thrive rushes the project and instructs viewers to follow a list of biblical commandments that basically amount to recycling to attempt to save the environment.

In my humble opinion, the film would have been more cohesive if it had spent longer examining its main breakthrough concept: the torus, explaining what direct solutions a functioning torus could offer.

May the torus be with you.

Jerry Hicks Dies of Leukemia

What the Death of Jerry Hicks Means for ‘Abraham’

I recently learned that Jerry Hicks, of the infamous Abraham-Hicks empire, was suffering from an advanced form of leukemia and on November 18, 2011 he passed. He was 89 years old, to the best of my knowledge, and his wife, Esther, is 30 years younger.

In the most honest eulogy I have heard from Esther, she admits that she has not fully grasped the idea of death. Normally Esther, speaking through Abraham, refuses to admit that she doesn’t know anything and it can be painful to listen to.

When the public discovered that Jerry Hicks had leukemia, Esther would not talk about it, stating that she did not want to draw negative energy to the circumstance, and that is where I have always believed that Esther was getting it a little wrong: in order to move beyond the difficult, one must acknowledge the problem first to manifest otherwise – articulate to dissipate. Esther often silences people who come to her with problems, and has been doing so more in her later years.

Esther and Jerry Hicks have presented themselves to the world as highly spiritually evolved, ‘the happiest people you’ve ever met’. And so when Jerry Hicks began to suffer from leukemia, many questioned if the couple were really who they said they were.

Esther teaches that those who contract illness think illness and radiate illness, and therefore attract it – so why would Jerry have invited this illness? Could they not apply the law of attraction to heal Jerry, as they so often instructed others to do? Where was their best buddy Abraham? *Esther has since interpreted this to mean that the drawn out experience of dying by sickness was so their goodbye process could be elongated and therefore diluted for an easier transition.

(*The image above is, of course, not the entity of beings Abraham but the biblical Abraham, although it suits the situation in question perfectly.)

Is Abraham a Scam?

Many feel that Jerry’s final illness was the demise of the Abraham-Hicks empire – a fatal flaw in the product they’ve been pushing. I’ve known for a long time that Esther and Jerry’s personal agendas were getting meddled with their comprehension of the material. I have written several articles about their misinterpretation of animal suffering not to point fingers, but because Esther’s callous attitude about animals as beasts (alternately referring to them as friends when convenient) is damaging on a large scale level to listeners who elevate Esther to God-like.

But my intention here is not to bash Esther in her time of grieving (and Esther is about to discover that sadness and depression when experienced with consciousness can actually feel really good, defying her proposed linear scale of emotions).

My intention is to clarify that despite the inaccuracies in Esther/Abraham’s teachings (does it really matter who is who?), despite her recent lack of patience with followers, and her detachment from other sentient creatures on this planet, Esther has a gift and girlfriend makes a lot of sense a lot of the time. And the fact that the invincible Jerry died of leukemia does not falsify any of the the Abraham-Hicks teachings – it simply reminds people that he was human, just as Esther is.

Some have accused Esther of being trained by Jerry on what to say, or suggest that Esther bases all her material on the former Seth books (they’re completely different), but while Esther did not invent the law of attraction just as Newton did not invent gravity, she breaks down the law of attraction in a comprehensive, focused way that helps people learn (remember) the logistics behind deliberate creation. She is extremely articulate and accurate, and while not the most touchy-feely-lovey person, she shows up and offers the knowledge inside her in a clear and concise way which many are able to connect with.

Does it matter where she gets the knowledge from? Only if you follow it on blind faith. I never accept knowledge unless I’ve given it a spin for myself, and you are free to test out any one of Esther’s gems of wisdom, which couldn’t be summarized in one article.

Law of Attraction Points that Remain Solid

• We live in a vibrational universe.
• Focus on what you want and the rest will fall away.
• Feel the new reality. Emotion creates pathways.
• Go to a positive vibration (the Vortex) and THEN create.
• Play with general and specific manifestations based on which creates a more positive emotion.
• Negative emotion indicates resistance.
• Deliberate co-creation is the essence of our true identities.
• Why? Why do anything? Joy. (*I believe joy can be present in many emotions. I can be thoroughly satisfied and in awe looking at something intriguingly dark.)

I value the mental work outs that Esther offers. It is one thing to know these handy tricks, but quite another to remember them, and just as our muscles must remember how to be strong through perpetual exercise, so does our spiritual compass if we want to use it with precision.

It is entirely possible to be disappointed in Esther for her unwillingness to examine her highly destructive relationship with animal souls, and to also be completely in tune with other material she presents. If we throw out the baby with the bathwater (reaching for an updated metaphor… if we throw out the email with the spam, if we throw out the show with the commercials – never mind) then we are shooting the messenger without hearing out the message.

Just as people want to discredit former CIA asset, Susan Lindauer, for her nervous (some think hysterical) laugh and her inappropriate jubilation when discussing serious matters (which she explains as a form of  being reborn after a year of imprisonment by the US government), then we are missing out on the testimony of an insider of the US government who admits high-level government involvement. Likewise, if we discredit Esther Hicks for her animal cruelty, being a jerk, and not always knowing when to admit that she doesn’t know, we are missing out on her valuable bag of tricks – that can essentially be used to fix all of Esther’s flaws – in ourselves, others, and the world.

*I also wanted to add that while this post focuses on the living half of Jerry and Esther’s unit, when I read that Jerry passed, I felt a moment of loss.

Veganism and Mental Health

How Does Our Mental Health Affect our Attitudes Towards Veganism?

I’ve already touched on the subject of whether veganism promotes mental health. I think it does. But I wanted to examine the topic from the other angle: how does mental health relate to BECOMING vegan?

I would define good mental health as stability – one neither falls into depressions, or loses one’s temper, but also has the ability to feel their feelings to the extent they want to. Mental health is resilience – an ability to look at situations straight on, bounce back from failures, and learn how to achieve emotional balance. But mental health goes beyond emotional health, to intellectual health – the ability to allow new ideas to enter the mind and jostle our pre-conceived notions as we strive to be completely honest with ourselves.

I would argue that poor mental health makes it much more difficult for people to become vegan. Follow this train of thought:

Life sucks.

My life sucks.

I am not connected to people.

My relationships can’t fulfill me.

All I have are my creature comforts.

My creature comforts are what I know.

I know what I like.

I don’t want to not like these things anymore or I would have nothing.

Please stop trying to take away these creature comforts – they are all I have.

VS

Life is good.

My life is continually expanding and progressing.

I have dynamic connections with people.

I’m learning and growing with others in my life.

I have so much abundance and so many thing I love to do.

My creature comforts are just bonuses.

I know what I like so far, but since I’m learning and growing these things may develop over time, too.

I have so much to give. I want to share myself in the most positive ways possible.

I want everyone to experience the joy I feel.

Please show me how I can live to my maximum ability. I am open to change.

Depression

When I was depressed, I had given up on people. No one could understand my pain and so I couldn’t be myself around anyone. All I had were the small things. Milk chocolate, ice cream, etc. If I had been able to maintain a healthy connection to others and to my creativity, those things would have stayed small things and not taken on more weight to relieve me of my sadness. When you truly have a life, your habits fade away as details that can be changed.

Cravings

When you don’t know your inner power, you don’t know the extent to which you can exert it. You believe that people and objects have power over you. You might go back to a dysfunctional ex over and over again. You might refer to meat as ‘my meat’, indicating an inseparable intimate relationship with the meat you’ve been eating – it’s yours, but it also ‘has you’.

Cravings are what your mind thinks of to soothe it based on neural pathways that you have created. If you think over and over again: sad>milk chocolate, then your brain will reach for the milk chocolate unless you reset the habit. As for chocolate itself, we’re SOL, it’s imprinted in our brain coding.

But just as people in Japan eat things that North Americans may find disgusting (eg. soft boiled fetal duck), we often love what we know and when we understand that we have the power to transcend tastes we were trained to have, then we are free to make ethical choices.

The BodyMind Connection

When our minds are sound, we want the best for our bodies because we see them as one. When in our minds we want to cause no harm, our bodies will carry out this desire and will refuse to be nourished by violence. Clarity of mind leaves no room for inaccuracies in our ethical choices.

I know many spiritual people who radiate positive energy and who devote themselves to living purely, but when it comes to their diets they throw up their hands as victims of a system where everything is made by slaves anyway.

We can’t always control who is indirectly harmed by our purchases, but we can control purchases in which people and animals are directly harmed.

Animal Products as an Addiction

Most of my formerly craved animal products are now pretty gross to me: red meat – haven’t touched it since I was a teenager and I imagine it would be hard to chew and hard to digest. Chicken? All I think of is biting down on a vein in a McNugget, which happened to me several times during my McCruel youth. Milk – sexist animal secretions, eggs – don’t necessarily have to be ‘cruel’ (say for instance if you rescued a chicken from a hatchery) but they can be pretty gross in a multitude of ways.

However some products in which milk is only an ingredient can be hard to forget about. There’s something about a Snickers bar that gives me a brain rush. This could be so easily solved in vegan chocoate bars were easier to get our hands on, like at Nice Shoes.

Vegan Chocolate Bars

An addiction is a perceived dependence of something outside our ourselves to achieve a positive inner state. Once we realize how to get the same effect from within, the pattern usually ceases. I used to do ecstasy, acid, coke, smoke weed, drink, etc. but I feel so good on a day to day basis now that I don’t have the need to. I’m not judging drugs at all as they can be useful tools, but for me, I have outgrown them.

It is not the animal products in themselves that give us the feelings of pleasure or satisfaction, it is ourselves. So as we gain self-awareness, and open our minds to revising all that we’ve been told about food pyramids and food chains, our mental and physical health inevitably become stronger.

Whether you choose to go vegan to get happy, or get happy to help yourself go vegan doesn’t really matter.

Happy Meateaters?

Many people will argue that they have wonderful lives and consider themselves happy carnivores. I know many smiley, happy, rather amazing people who aren’t bothered about their animal-based diets. But, when you reveal to them the behind-the-scenes of their diets they are not so happy to hear it. They become excusatarians – defensive and unwilling to learn more. The information you’re sharing doesn’t fit with their happy lives, so they reject it.

True happiness can’ t be tipped so easily. I think someone strong and confident would be concerned that their happiness was coming at the expense of others. And they would want to iron out this area of friction so they could get back to enjoying whatever happiness they could.

When it comes to those who support animal agriculture – ignorance is bliss, but true bliss – bliss that can not be exposed as causing suffering – comes only from learning of the damage being done and then choosing otherwise.

ExtraTerrestrial

The Aliens are Coming

And going. They’ve been around for years.

Not the really bad Katy Perry song with original ultra-douche, Kanye, rapping about alien probes.

Intelligent life beyond this planet.

As a down-to-Earth person (not the greatest attribute when you consider it), I have been taught that aliens are where rational people draw the line. The line between the crazy and the sane. But what are UFOs but unidentified flying objects? And what is an alien but a life form from another planet?

The new movie Thrive, discusses a perpetual motion machine called a torus, which is basically a self-sustaining vortex of energy. The film suggests that this model of energy is present and functioning in civilizations beyond Earth, and that clues throughout Earth’s history have offered evidence of this 64 node Gollum-coveted ring of fire.

A friend also recently showed me The Disclosure Project, which features 400 testimonies of former officials who have had encounters with UFOs or related, formally gathering to approach congress about the de-weaponization of space (because you know humans like to say hi by setting things on fire). Some of these witnesses discuss watching nuclear weapons become dismantled by hovering UFOs and report seeing UFO crashes with passengers inside (some humanoid, others humanoid but taller).

Perspective 1:  Hallucinating attention-seeking yokels.

Perspective 2: Only 1 of the 10 000 + sightings in question needs to be real to demonstrate that intelligent life beyond this planet has beat us to making contact.

How egocentric would we have to be to assume that if alien contact is made we will be the ones to make it?

The Disclosure Project explains that the suppression of numerous eyewitness accounts of UFO sightings are due  to the military industrial complex—that sustaining the current trillion dollar systems of energy in place is why the public is not made privy to this information.

So let’s assume that other life forms have been in contact with Earthlings. If that’s the case, then it’s probably happened more than once in our 4.54 billion years. And if it’s happened more than once, then, I don’t mean to creep you out, but is it so far fetched that aliens are watching us right now?

And if this torus technology that potentially exists is more non-physical than physical, then couldn’t life from other planets also be more non-physical than physical? What are the barriers between human and alien thought? Esther and Jerry Hicks’ translation of ‘Abraham’ is one such example. A plane of thought comprised of non-physical beings who communicate to humans. I mean… where ARE all these ideas coming from?

Our mental barriers could be the main thing blocking us from communication with extra terrestrial life forms. Is the future of our planet really based on the simple “if you build it they will come” paradigm? Wouldn’t that be laughably cliche?

Is there a collective human yearning to make contact with life from other planets, just like how a lonely individual yearns for company? Then why aren’t we attempting to better connect with the other life forms we have on this planet now?

The Vegan Elite: The Other 1%

Are Vegans the Human 2.0?

There is much ado about vegans thinking they’re better than everyone else due to the astute attention they pay to food systems and the environment. But are vegans really ‘better’ than everyone else? (As in the ‘other’ 99%— not the hardworking, low-balled taxpayers, but the 99% of the population who eats animals?)

Let’s take a look at evolution. Evolution is the concept of more desirable traits gradually being carried on as useless traits are left to disappear. Its essence lies in change. Vegans change themselves by exchanging dominant animal-based dietary patterns for new plant-based ones. But is this a more desirable trait in terms of survival? Will vegans eventually replace meateaters?

If you research the environmental impact of a vegan diet versus an animal-based diet – veganism makes environmental sense. If the world made a collective change to a vegan diet, humans would have less environmental impact and be able to feed more of ourselves  (not even touching on the subject of how animals are treated). But until society collectively sees the effects of the environmental impact of animal industries, those who are short-sighted may not choose to change.

Health-wise, Forks Over Knives effectively shows how most diseases can be linked to an animal-based diet. So you could envision animal consumers dying out as their vegan counterpart thrive, but as long as animal-based consumers live long enough to procreate, this in no way dictates that vegans will evolve past those who choose to eat animals and their secretions.

Will the human race naturally evolve into a plant-based diet when resources start running out, land is scarce, and we are collectively suffering from diseases of over-consumption? Sure, it’s possible. May take a while, though. The current economic system is designed to perpetuate itself, not to constantly update to seek new, more desirable ways to implicate human participation and lessen environmental waste. In other words: the system exists to sustain your suffering – it does not update itself unless it is forced to.

Now, let’s take a look at technology. Technology exists to make things easier. To automate systems to free up time so that we are able to spend it doing things we actually want to do. Although sometimes, it works backwards, making us a slave to it.

Good technology simplifies. If you have a MacBook Pro or similar, you may like it because its battery lasts longer and it’s generally more efficient than the sloppy, choppy PC.

So… so far we’ve figured out that:

• Vegan require less resources to live. (*see above)
• Vegans require (collectively) less health care as they avoid diseases linked to cholesterol and excess animal proteins.

So therefore vegans function on less and need less maintenance, but do they also function better? What is better anyway?

Let’s recklessly define BETTER as:

• Happier
• More productive
• More conscious (of ourselves, the human race, and the planet)

Well, I can tell you from personal experience that adjusting my diet to not including suffering animals feels amazing. It keeps me pretty karmically clear. Sure, I have small obstalces here and there to face, but in the big picture, I’m not the one requesting these huge sick systems of human and animal exploitation into existence and that feels GOOD. This clears up room for me to apply that positive self-esteem to daily challenges. What guilt are animal consumers stifling and projecting onto others?

What about other vegan people I know? Honestly, opening your eyes to the bright truth can sting, so a lot of vegan people I know have challenging lives that involve a lot of direct action and therefore conflict, but I can also tell you that ignoring these oppressive sick systems would be a lot more difficult than speaking out and fighting back.

Are vegans more productive? Everyone defines productivity differently. At times I think vegan people get caught up in defining themselves by their diets or their causes and forget that they have other flavors of creativity – that they are more than just their ethics, but generally, vegan people are active. They don’t lie at home and hide (well, sometimes we all do), they don’t bite their tongues much, and while they may be carefully productive (trying not to cause harm in the process) they are certainly as productive as ‘normal’ people, if not more.

More conscious… ? Well this one’s simple. One diet reflects a desire to live as non-violently as possible, the other diet reflects violence (that strives to dissociate itself from its violent nature). I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but I think we can all agree that if those with animal product based diets could continue to eat how they’re eating and not harm any animals in the process – they would.

Ideally none of us really want to cause pain, suffering, mutilation, isolation, confinement, rape, bloodshed, and death. One diet allows us to live in line with these values, the other doesn’t.

So in conclusion, are the 1% of the population that consists of vegans ‘better’ that their animal product consuming counterparts?

Yes.

But vegans don’t want to be the 1%. They want to be the 100%!

Great, I’ll see you in the comments section.

Ignorance and the Law of Attraction: Addendum

Where Ignorance and ‘Positivity’ Collide

Deconstructing sad love stories...in the name of the LOA

In further considering my last post about the Law of Attraction & Ignorance, I thought of a perfect example to show the difference between getting into the LOA flow and getting caught in a tornado of ignorance.

Unfortunately, I have to get semi-personal to explain. I’ll keep the emotional-ick factor on the low.

When I was 24, I was dating this guy – we’ll call him Vortek because whenever I think about him to this day I fall into a vortex – an unproductive one, and basically I thought he set the stars. Every time I looked at him, a magic wand was waved and I would drift into Vortek land.

Anyway, after a few very strange paradoxical events that I interpreted as fate (but would probably interpret now as the LOA), I went to visit Vortek where he lived in Nelson (long distance relationship – space sure can make things pretty). And well, Vortek, being a commitmentphobe just like I like ‘em, was overwhelmed with all this – us sharing a room for the weekend, getting closer, me meeting his friends, being his new girlfriend when he was just out of a relationship. But did I register Vortek’s fears? Yesandno… They terrified me because I never wanted to lose him – ever.

So I told myself everything was fine – that I would make it fine. And if he was going to act like a jerk and hurt me, well then he could just see how much his actions hurt me and then he would fall even more deeply in love with me when he saw how much I cared. It was fine that our connection was super intense. It was fine that he was pulling away because I would ‘be there’ for him to remind him why were were good together. It was fine that he was ignoring me… right?

Say it with me: ignorance. His, sure, but more importantly – mine.

Though I was seemingly practising positivity, really I was pouring pink paint over a huge mess that was very real and in ignoring the real situation – that Vortek needed time and space – at the very least. I was trying to ‘make fetch happen’ and have enough love for both of us. I was trying (however bravely) to stifle the fear of us not working out by being the bubbly girlfriend I thought he wanted. Creepy, you said it.

NOW, you could argue that if I’d really believed in my heart of hearts that we’d be together in the end, the energy of my actions would have been totally different – not fear-based and creepy, and Vortek wouldn’t have lost attraction for me. BUT, in order for me to get to a place where I really trusted that we’d both be happy in the end, I had to get to a place where I let go of the end result (ie. whether we’d be happy together) and this was not an easy place to get to. What I needed to do was go deep into my mind and soul and challenge myself to reveal where I wasn’t being honest with myself. It took me years.

So what would the right way to practise the law of attraction in this situation have been? To use the art of allowing to let Vortek experience whatever he was needing to experience that weekend, and to let myself be upset and disillusioned, and take the physical space to feel that way in the hopes of getting to a place where I could ask to feel differently. I needed to acknowledge that I was miserable in order to fix it. I could have left and taken a breather; my absence in this situation would have been attractive to Vortek, who needed to breathe and think himself.

At the time, I was trying my hardest to think positive thoughts, but sometimes positive thoughts are not enough. They do not work instantaneously (well, they work faster if you understand the law of attraction), and they definitely don’t work if you’re not feeling what you’re thinking about.

NOW, when you understand the power of the law of attraction,  your thoughts become even more powerful because you know their weight. But I didn’t at that time. And the best thing in that situation would have been to let go of my Elmyra-like grip on the situation (I want to loove you and squeeeze you, etc.) and replenish my self love instead of using false-positivity  to try to muscle back into place the crumbling walls of my relationship.

What I’m saying is: the law of attraction should never be used in place of questions, even if those questions evoke feelings of fear or sadness. The LOA can however be used to guide you towards asking effective questions. This requires getting very familiar with the art of allowing. (Google it.)

If you’re curious (about life, yourself, others), there’s a good chance you’re working the LOA.

Did Vortek and I continue down a long, messy, complicated path of I-love-you-I-love-you-nots? Of course. But no need to get personal unless it’s for a good reason.

Ignorance and the Law of Attraction

The law of attraction is based on reaching for the best feeling thoughts. But without understanding it in a very specific way, it can come across as sheer ignorance.

A rather traditional loved one once told me that we should only believe that which makes us feel good. To some extent, this is true because according to the LOA, a belief is just a thought you keep thinking. But what if you alter your beliefs according to things that you think make you feel good, with a fear of getting stuck in the critical negative stuff along the way?

For example:

“It makes me sad to think that milk comes from a grieving mother, so I think about the cows as being happy.”

I don’t know much about Esther and Jerry Hicks’ personal lives, but I do know that they refer to animals as ‘beasts’ and think that animals ask to ‘play the game’ of confinement and slaughter with humans. These thoughts probably feel good to them on some level because they allow them to keep on living a life they’re comfortable with.

Jerry Hicks feels uncomfortable that he owns a traffic jam of luxury cars, so he tells himself that the making of the cars is supplying people with jobs. BUT, if he had stretched his mind over into some potentially uncomfortable territory, he may have come up with different positive thoughts to make himself feel better about being rich, such as lobbying for a higher minimum wage, auctioning off a few of his cars for charity, or becoming involved with the Venus Project to ensure that all transportation is better quality and safer in the future. See the difference? The latter positive thoughts actually require action. Jerry’s positive spin on his guilt about hoarding acquiring luxury cars is somewhat lazy.

A big part of the law of attraction is about not turning our attention to that which we cannot fix, such as the actions of others. But, if the actions of others are hurting us, then those actions are no longer that person’s personal business.

To each his own – people say who want to wear fur. The fur is soft and looks expensive, so it makes them feel good, they argue. But knowing the statistics of how many animals die horrific deaths in the fur industry each year, this level of suffering directly impacts MY life experience. In order to know these truths, I had to “go there” into some pretty horrific territory. See what I’m saying? You could reach for the easy positive thought and come up with some self-propaganda like: “well, fur is green”, or you could challenge yourself to look at the footage of animals being skinned alive and reach further for a positive thought like: “I’m going to educate people on what they’re wearing so this doesn’t happen anymore, and knowing my power feels good.”

Another example of where Esther and Jerry get just a little too carried away with the (singing) *think-happy-thoughts-hmm-hmm-hmm-doo-doo-dooo* is when Esther/Abraham states that it is NEVER of value to talk about problems with a friend.

“There is no reason to deliberately stir up problems in order to stir up solution.”

“It is detrimental to you and to whomever you draw into your negative conversation.”

(The Vortex)

I think Marianne Williamson explains it best by suggesting you approach hardship with a statement like:

eg. “I’m fucking pissed, but I’m willing not to be.”

Acknowledging you’re suffering in order to learn how to ease the pain.

She suggests not to try to purify yourself, but to go to your Source to be purified.

If I was hurting and couldn’t see a way out of it, I would hope that a friend would let me into their mental space for a moment to hear me out, allow me to be where I’m at, and then show me a more positive spin on things as an option. That’s how I see my role as a friend.

I’ve had a few friends who I’ve mentioned sticky situations to in the past who have said things like: “I don’t want to hear about it”, or “oh well, (change the subject)”.

I don’t see this as a refusal to be caught in negative energy, but as individuals acting on judgment for whatever reason (they don’t think they’re strong enough to take on your problem/they’re holding themselves above you/they’re emotionally unavailable  – whatever).

Bottom line: it is indifference, not hate which is the opposite of love.To care about people, sometimes you must accompany them on their journeys to difficult places.

Misery loves company could be reworded – humans love company.

In order to not fall into ignorance when attempting to use the law of attraction, I’d suggest:

• don’t reach for the easy positive thought, reach for the active solution
• don’t cram sunshine and rainbows down the throats of depressed friends
• don’t be afraid to go into the darkness to learn what light is to you

Z III

The Zeitgeist Movement:

The Switch to a Resource-Based Economy

The third Zeitgeist film, Moving Forward, premiered today at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver. A second showing will be on the 29th at UBC with Q & A period to follow.

Two Highlights & Two Critiques of Z III:

*Highlights*

1) What is freedom?

Many associate capitalism with a “free market” (which is now not even based on the exchange of good and services, but on the trading of debt on Wall Street). Z III pulverizes the concept of freedom as ‘freedom to have and hoard as much as possible’ and points out that most people in the system are a slave to the dollar and don’t even understand the loopholes of economics.

(Isla Side Thought: We aren’t taught finance studies in school, except for those who choose/pay to study it in university. In order to understand it, they basically have to dedicate their lives to it.)

Z III questions what wealth is: numbers, or quality of life?

2) A Resource Based Economy is not a political movement

It is not communist to take a tally of the Earth’s resources in order to think into the future of mankind and gage how we can sustain ourselves for as long as possible. Whether you’re a capitalist or a Marxist, you still need to eat and drink and breathe.

*Critiques*

1) Sausage Fest

There was only one female speaker in the film, Roxanne Meadows. If the resource-based economy is still a patriarchy, it will be doomed to failure. A sassy female viewer heard me make this comment upon exiting the theatre and said: “well it’s the men who created the problems so they’re responsible for cleaning it up.” Cute.

2) Not enough Bloodshed…

In all the mentions of the advanced agriculture that will take place in the Venus Project, there was no talk of whether or not there will still be slaughterhouses, and no footage of what a technologically advanced slaughterhouse might look like. Whenever the film mentioned food, it only showed images of vegetables. If this was on purpose, a vegan with an agenda behind these images, then that vegan needs to step forward and be heard on a conscious, not subconscious level.

If there will still be violence towards animals in the future, then we should show the whole picture. Not keep it behind closed doors.

It is not simply economic disparity and abusive childhoods that are causing human-to-human violence in our society, but the current reality that most people derive their nourishment through a process of taking by force.

This is a great video LINK for a quickie education (some pertinent videos linked to the themes behind the Zeitgeist Movement).

**Spoiler**

On a personal note, at the end when they were throwing away the money, I had a distinct reaction of unconscious discomfort. Noticed my own attachment to money and the freedom that I believe it holds: I have a deep-rooted belief of money as a ticket to set me apart from others.

In a resource-based economy, we could still have personal freedom. We could have more, while knowing that no one is suffering at our expense.

In Case There Was Any Doubt Who’s Driving This Pleasure Cruise

Capitalism Is…

• traveling to a far off land to find… the same stores and restaurants you had back home.
• having to sit down, shut up, and stare straight ahead for eight hours a day… the same thing that was punishment when you were a kid.
• paying your landlords before the month begins, and getting paid after you’ve done your work.
• used tampons in your broccoli – the non-organic brilliance of using raw sewage as fertilizer.
• driving home after a hard day at work and reaching for some tunes on your radio to get bombarded with commercials for a car, a phone, and a sex drive that’s better than yours.
• having to keep your voices low at work when discussing where food really comes from.
• the supposed edgiest pop star alive featuring 8 product placements in her “epic” new video.
• working as hard as your boss but getting paid a fraction of the salary because she’s “in charge”.
• your country owing billions in debt, yet giving billions to another country (cough*Israel*cough) as long as they spend it to buy weapons manufactured by your country.
• the world peace keeping coalition being run by the largest arms dealers.

Parecon

What Comes After Capitalism?

Participatory Economics

After watching  “The Corporation” we learned that a corporate world is a sociopathic world. One in which we put our best interests above those of our neighbor and pretend this doesn’t affect the collective unconscious. A world in which we keep score apart from the resources actually available to us, and in our race to hoard as many materials as possible (before anyone else gets their hands on them), we tip the balance of our planet and thwart the potential thriving of future generations, all the while keeping a suspicious eye on our neighbors in case they might be as ambitious as ourselves.

So how do we create a sociable world?

Following the law of attraction, if we want a new era we must shift our focus from anti-capitalism, anti-globilization, and anti-poverty to pro something. Pro what is the question. What will the world look like after capitalism?

This?

When I discuss the idea that there are alternatives to capitalism, many immediately respond by stating: ” but communism didn’t work”. Firstly, communism is not the only alternative to capitalism, and secondly, you can’t have an authentic communist country in a capitalist world.

Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century cuts through the ambiguous dreams of dreamers to propose actual improvements to our current government. Here is the synopsis:

“What if we had direct control over our daily lives? What if society’s defining institutions—those encompassing economics, politics, kinship, culture, community, and ecology—were based not on competition, individual ownership, and coercion, but on self-management, equity, solidarity, and diversity? Real Utopia identifies and obliterates the barriers to an egalitarian, bottom-up society, while convincingly outlining how to build it. Instead of simply declaring “another world is possible,” the writers in this collection engage with what that world would look like, how it would function, and how our commitments to just outcomes is related to the sort of institutions we maintain. Topics include: participatory economics, political vision, education, architecture, artists in a free society, environmentalism, work after capitalism, and poly-culturalism. The catchall phrase here is “participatory society”—one that is directly democratic and seeks institutional solutions to complex sociological and economic questions.”

I’ll discuss the content of the book in more detail in another post, but in the mean time, check it out.

I personally think that having watched Zeitgeist: Addendum, the first thing that must go is our monetary system. We need a blank slate, terrifying as that seems. Zeitgeist explains how the bank has more power than the government because the banks determine the money flow. Not vice versa. The co-first thing that must go is religion. No more pre-packaged thought systems – every (wo)man for his/herself.

A Newwwww Building!

Bob Barker donates 2.5 mil to PETA

The guy is pretty rad. First he spread the word about pet overpopulation, and now he’s helping to end the fur trade.

With the monays, the “Bob Barker Building” is being built, which will open on Wednesday on the corner of Sunset and Alvarado in LA; it will be a headquarters for marketing and youth outreach where they think up brilliant ideas like this:

Show me what the dawn of a new era looks like…

Vegas Billboard

This is what the dawn of a new era looks like.

Mercy for Animals, the creator of these billboards was founded by the adorable and amazing, Nathan Runkle.

Photos from www.vegansoapbox.com

Do You Believe?

The slogan for the Olympics this year is strangely similar to the old McDonald’s jingle: “Do you believe in magic?” (then something about always having a friend wearing big red shoes), the main quality I seek in friends. Anyway, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics somehow requires our belief for it to take place. But although the city is abuzz as expected with red-clad bandwagon riders who jump at the chance to celebrate drink, the city has also been in a state of perpetual protest, thousands gathering to express dissent about the two week party for the rich and the  corrupt society that Canada has sunken into.

Why Resist 2010?

• Ecological Destruction

Despite claims to be the “greenest Olympics” ever, and PR statements about ‘sustainability’, the 2010 Olympics will be among the most environmentally destructive in history, with tens of thousands of trees cut down & mountainsides blasted for Olympic venues in the Callaghan Valley (near Whistler) & the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion. In the summer of 2007, a record number of black bears were hit on the Sea-to-Sky Highway, with at least 11 dying (attributed to loss of habitat). Massive amounts of concrete used in construction have also caused millions of Salmon to die in the Fraser River, where tons of gravel are being mined to make concrete.

• Homelessness

Since winning the 2010 Winter Games in 2003, Vancouver has lost over 850 units of low-income housing; during the same period, homelessness has increased from 1,000 to over 2,500. It is estimated by 2010, the number of homeless may be as high as 6,000. Since the 1980s, Olympic Games have caused the displacement of over 2 million people (Fair Play for Housing Rights report, 2007). In Seoul 1988, some 750,000 poor were displaced, in Atlanta 1996, over 30,000, and for Beijing in 2008, an estimated 1.5 million have been displaced. Yet still today Olympic officials talk about ‘sustainability’ and ‘Olympic legacies’! To ‘clean out’ the poor and undesirables, Olympic host cities routinely begin a campaign to criminalize the poor. In Vancouver, the city has launched Project Civil City and new by-laws to criminalize begging for money, sleeping outdoors, etc. It has also included hundreds of thousands of dollars for increased private security (i.e., the Downtown Ambassadors). New garbage canisters on streets make it more difficult for the poor to gather recyclables, and new benches make it impossible to lay down.

• 2010 Police State

Some 12,500 police, military and security personnel are to be deployed for 2010, including Emergency Response Teams, riot cops, helicopters, armoured vehicles, etc. The RCMP plan on erecting 40 km of crowd-control fencing along with CCTV video surveillance cameras. Special security zones will be established to control entry near Olympic venues. For 3 weeks, Vancouver will be an occupied Police State! And once the Olympics are over, there is no guarantee many of these security measures will not remain (i.e., CCTV).
Repression also involves attacks on anti-Olympic groups & individuals, including arrests of protesters, raids of offices, surveillance, media smear campaigns, cuts to funding programs, etc., all in an effort to undermine anti-2010 resistance. This repression has already been used against anti-poverty & housing groups, environmentalists and Natives, in Vancouver.

• Public Debt

VANOC and government officials claim the 2010 Games will cost some $2 billion. However, this amount doesn’t include the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion, the Canada Line Skytrain to the airport, the Vancouver Convention Center, or the lower mainland Gateway Project. Including these costs, since they were necessary to win the bid and had to be completed by 2010, makes the true cost of the Games some $6 billion, which must be paid for through public debt, money that could have been spent on social services, housing, drug treatment, healthcare, etc.

• Corporate Invasion

Governments and businesses use the Olympics as a means to attract corporate investment. In BC, the Liberal government has ‘streamlined’ application processes, cut taxes, and offered other incentives to increase certain industries such as mining, oil & gas drilling, and ski resorts. This includes large increases in transport systems, including new ports, bridges, expanded highways & rail-lines. This is all part of their Investment to 2010 Strategy. The results have been dramatic, record-breaking increases in these industries, resulting in greater environmental destruction and more corporate power & influence over our daily lives. Many of the main corporate sponsors of the Olympics are themselves responsible for massive ecological destruction and human rights violations, including McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Petro-Canada, TransCanada, Dow, Teck Cominco, etc., while others are major arms manufacturers (General Electric & General Motors).

On February 15th, a tent village was erected on an empty lot on East Hastings owned by an Olympic sponsor. Watch below what Canada was become:

That evening, several hundred gathered for a moving spectacle against globalization, poverty, and war on the downtown streets, ending at the tent village to show support.

Sticker left suprisingly not by myself

And NOW for your daily dose of propaganda:

(Meanwhile back at the ranch in Calgary, anarchists smashed up a McDonald’s in solidarity.)

Here are my points of contention with CTV’s spin on the protest, and yes – it was a protest:

• You call the protesters violent, yet make no mention of anyone they hurt, although I know from participants that protesters were beaten in the street with batons.
• Why were police so terrified of protesters blocking the Lion’s Gate Bridge when they close it bi-weekly at the drop of a hat based on “police business”? It was partially blocked this morning for an hour.
• I’ve got news for you, the black bloc is not a small group, it is not even a group – it could be anyone behind those masks at any time. The same way that you hide behind your riot gear.
• Police claim the anarchists are from Central Canada and the U.S.. There are anarchists in Vancouver, in every city. Anyone who has felt poverty, violence, and oppression is an excellent candidate for anarchy.
• We must remember that the largest theft happens on a scale too massive to see, made legal by jargon and loopholes.

But the anarchist movement had this to say of Saturday’s protests:

The San Francisco-area blog, entitled “Beneath the snow: covering the resistance to the 2010 Olympics,” said the group of masked protesters, members of the “black bloc contingent,” have been a strong force of resistance since the Games opened in Vancouver Friday.

“What’s especially striking here… is how disciplined and strategically — even politically — effective they’ve been, and how much respect they’ve earned through their organizing efforts leading up to this point as well as their actions on the streets,” the author, who remained anonymous, wrote. The blog is produced by three writers involved in the social justice movement.

Rockets of Desire

…and the Velcro of Creative Thought

The Attractive Power of Creative Thought

You are a Vibrational Being living in a Vibrational Universe. As you give your attention to something: an idea, a memory, a situation you are observing, a dream or fantasy that you are visualizing… you are actually activating vibration. And as your focus causes that activation, that vibrational content now becomes your point of attraction. Whenever you think about anything its vibrational content becomes an active part of your vibrational essence – and the subject of your attention begins to move towards you. Consciously realize that thinking about something is inviting the essence of that something into your experience.

Knowledge of the vibrational nature of your Universe is both comforting and exhilarating: comforting in the sense that you know that you have nothing to fear because nothing can come to you without your invitation of it, and exhilarating in the sense that you know you can draw anything that you desire close to you. When you realize that you are the vibrational attractor of all things that come to you, your world opens. There is no need to limit your experience in a guarded or protective stance, for no unwanted thing can force itself into your experience. You are the creator of your own experience, and no one else has power within your experience.

The Universal Law of Attraction

In the same way that the law of gravity consistently responds to the physical matter of the planet, the Law of Attraction consistently responds to all vibrations. Every projection of thought, whether you are focused on the past, present, or future, is vibration and has attraction power. This powerful, consistent Law of Attraction (that which is like unto itself is drawn) offers consistent results in response to the vibrations that you offer. There are no arbitrary inconsistent responses that would make the Law of Attraction impossible to understand. It is consistent; it is fair; it is always responsive; it is powerful – it is a Deliberate Creator’s best friend. Your awareness of the powerful consistency of the Law of Attraction and your understanding of how it works coupled with the conscious utilization of your Emotional Guidance System* – put you in the powerful position of creating joy in your life.

Choosing your objects of attention deliberately, and refining the specifics of your focus by using your Emotional Guidance System renders you a powerful Deliberate Creator who is fulfilling your intention for this physical life experience.

Rockets of Desire

Although you may know others who seem to be having similar experiences, you are living a unique life experience. As you move about your world interacting with the components of your time-space reality, experiencing  the variety and contrast that surrounds you, you automatically and constantly clarify personal preferences. And as you stand in your unique Leading-Edge perspective, Rockets of Desire erupt within you and cause vibrational signals to emanate from you. And as those vibrations, through the Law of Attraction, summon vibrational matches unto themselves, everything that you are – and everything that your Inner Being or Source is – experiences the expansion of that summoning.

From a state of balanced energy (aligning your physical self with your non-physical self) clarity will emerge.

You get what you think about, but more specifically – you get what you feel about what you think about.

What has already materialized into your experience: you call it reality, fact, evidence, proof, history is only what has already happened. These are not the NOW.

Focus on the sensation of creating your own reality rather than giving so much attention to the reality that you have created.

Contrast produces desire, and all desire is answered.

*So if this is correct, then anyone who desires anything should be the swift receiver of that desire. However, when you launch a desire with equally strong feelings about whether or not that desire will manifest (whether you deserve it, whether it is realistic…) then the exact balance of energy you are projecting will boomerang towards you. If you project contrast, this is what you will receive.

*Scale of Emotions, Revamped

(I played with this for awhile and reformulated a more accurate list of which emotions can relieve which)

1. Happiness/Vision/Freedom

2. Allowance

3. Knowledge

4. Possibility

5. Curiosity

6. Contentment

7. Acceptance

8. Resistance

9. Overwhelmed Sensation

10. Dead Inside

11. Release

12. Anxiety

13. Guilt/Blame

14. Desperation

15. Blocked Sensation

16. Conflicting Desire/Confusion

17. Anger

18. Lack/Confinement

19. Pain

20. Depression/Immobility

Why Face Reality When You Can Create Reality?

The Law of Attraction & Animal Suffering

In Ask and It Is Given, there is a passage discussing how it is that babies are capable of suffering, since they are technically free of negative thought:

“They (the little ones) have been exposed to vibrations that disallow the Well-Being that would have been there otherwise.”

So we could infer that animals, being pure of mind and heart but emotionally vulnerable, absorb the ill intent of the humans who use and abuse them. This is a bit of a mind bender, because although animals are not necessarily capable of complex logic, they are powerful in their ability to maintain a sort of emotional buoyancy. But apparently this is not strong enough to prevent them from being held captive, mutilated, slaughtered… I have always considered the animal consciousness to be an extension of human consciousness, and therefore the collective animal spirit allows the human will to act through them. In extension of this, one could propose the theory that, as it is human consciousness that essentially guides animal consciousness, if humanity would evolve to non-violence, these changes could in time transfer to the animal kingdom. If human nature is only human habit, then animal nature is only animal habit.

These animals are being used to test your toothpaste. Please do not buy Crest or Colgate toothpaste. Help a bunny out.

Need more rabbit empathy?

And for any suffering animals reading, the book also states:

“A sensation of pain is a wonderful indicator that help is on the way.”

The sensation of pain calls for a cellular request of healing energy.

*****

Can Those Who Cause Harm Be Enlightened?

The book says quite clearly:

“No one connected to Source Energy would ever cause harm to another.”

Now, in our current society “harm” has become convoluted. We shop at big box stores for things we need to survive that capitalize on sweat shop workers without understanding if  people in developing countries essentially suffer more or benefit more from having these jobs. And most of us are raised in families that consume animal products and are not able to put together the full story of what we are eating until we can build enough courage and curiosity to find out (at which point we are often hooked on the foods that have made us feel comfortable in the past). I know several individuals who define themselves as conscious, who go to India and meditate and volunteer and endlessly question and work on themselves without facing the violence of their dietary impact. But the truth is: no one connected to Source Energy would ever cause harm to another. (Being – animal or human, directly or indirectly.)

“They lash out in their defensiveness, or in their disconnectedness, but never in their state of connection.”

And you can substitute “lash out” for deceive, take advantage of, act blindly…

While the Law of Attraction does teach a certain selfishness – placing one’s own desires above the desires of anyone else, it strongly insinuates that one’s true desire in its purest form causes no harm to another. Therefore those who enslave people and animals are acting in discord with their ultimate source of energy and only sustaining these oppressive systems with great effort, and because their disconnected thoughts have spread among humanity like a contagious disease.

Howevs….

As we are the creators of our own destiny, we are not bound to these hurtful decisions made by others (eg. Harper’s strange attachment to the Commercial Seal Hunt, Procter & Gamble’s sick twisted animal mutilation in the name of “science”). We do not have to torture ourselves with these “realities” (as I have spent a lot of time doing in the past), because these realities are only paths chosen by others. We need not include them in our reality. This is NOT to say that we must plug our ears, it is to say that we must acknowledge these happenings only to the level that we realize they are strongly unwanted, and then we must create alternatives. We must focus on the ways that we would like these violent patterns to change.

I have spent a lot of time living in a world that I can only describe as hell, as it has seemed unbearable to live somewhere in which, while I am slipping into various states of having fun, animals of all species (including humans) are being harmed. But the more that we focus on these atrocities the more we are calling them into being, when we do have the choice for complete animal (including human) liberation.

“All those statistics that are gathered about your own experiences and about others – are only about how somebody has already flowed Energy. They are not about the hard-and-fast now reality.”

When you find a thought that provides some relief from whatever negative state you have entered, you have regained creative control of your own experience.

1) Ask

2) Answer the Asking (you can skip this step because it is not your responsibility but that of the Universe/Source)

3) Allow (prepare yourself to receive what you are asking for)

It’s the 3rd step that trips people up. Often we do get what we ask for, but are not ready or willing to receive it.

Well get ready!

Wishcraft

How to Get What You Really Want

“If a seed is given good soil and plenty of water and sun, it doesn’t have to try to unfold. It doesn’t need self-confidence or self-discipline or perseverance. It just unfolds. As a matter of fact, if can’t help unfolding. If a seed has to grow with a rock on top of it, or in deep shade, or without enough water, it won’t unfold into a healthy full-sized plant. It will try – hard – because the drive to become what you are meant to be is incredibly powerful. But at best it will become a sort of ghost of what it could be: pale, undersized, drooping.

In a way, that’s what most of us are.”

-Wishcraft

It’s not just your immediate family and friends that affect this stunted growth. Or even your school atmosphere. It’s a large scale smothering based on capitalism – that unless our special traits are lucrative, they are not worth investing time into. Competition, in its very essence,  negates our own individuality to an idealism of always placing one at the top as “the best”. This is not the case, but something necessary to acknowledge if we wish to realize our full magical potential.

Wishcraft, written in 1979, is surprisingly pertinent, despite a few comical cultural advancements. The book suggests taking notice of one’s personal style for the first time.  Well into the 2000s, we are obsessed with personal style as a self-determinant. The book also mentions women being the pillar of men’s success, trained to be unselfish. This pattern still exists in our society, but at the same time the problem is now just as imbalanced on the other side: men no longer knowing their place in women’s lives. The book also delightfully mentions going to one’s typewriter, but other than this, it offers a lot of helpful “real daydreaming” exercises, which is a branch of the Law of Attraction – visualization as the path to actualization.

Follow Your Bliss

“When you find yourself engulfed in circumstances that cause you to offer a vibration that is far from that of bliss, then reaching for bliss is an impossible thing, for the Law of Attraction does not allow you to make the vibrational jump anymore than you could have tuned your radio receiver to 101 FM and heard a song that was being playing on 630 AM.”

- Ask and It Is Given

This newer 2004 book discusses what to do with our pale, drooping selves in order to attain that higher vibration, which can only be received by us if we first tune ourselves to the proper reception. And so when we are at a low vibration, what we are seeking slight relief from the pressure of the negativity we are experiencing. The book presents the idea of a scale of emotions as an indicator of which emotion you can progress to in order to climb the scale, which explains why it actually feels good to get angry at certain points.  Which explains why I enjoyed those fantasies of kicking my ex in the face.

I suggest writing your own scale of emotions and using it as reference.

The key to this exercise would be trying out new thoughts and then doing an internal inventory of how these thoughts affect you.

For example: “I feel stuck in my life.”

A thought which may bring you up a vibrational level on the scale of emotions might be:

a) this is the chance to reassess which direction to step forward in, or

b) I am taking note of a stagnancy in my life and propelling myself in the direction of ______. Or,

c) what is the main event/situation/reality that is generating this “stuck” feeling and how can I overcome it?

How You Get What You Get

Dawn of Another New Era

Thanks for tuning in to dawnofanewera.

As of December 2009, the blog reached 1000 hits a day.

Expect much, much more randomness this year.

What better time to redefine the new era than January, the collective mental construct of the “New Year”. A new era refers to any type of new beginning. It is what eases the transition of letting go of the past. What reason do you have to let go of that which, yesterday, meant the world to you?  Because it meant the world to you YESTERDAY.

A new era can be justification for… an excessive purchase. (eg.Well, I like my old bag, but hey – it’s the dawnofanewera!)

Or, it can be an unlocked door in times of crumbling depression. (eg. Why get out of bed? Oh, right. I guess it is the dawnofanewera.)

The dawn of a new era can represent a new age, or simply the shedding of our former, beaten down selves.

But how can we become more specific in manifesting these new eras we wish to welcome?

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Attracts

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*I recommend you get past the New Age, sickeningly happy, Ouija board loving couple who wrote this book and read The Law of Attraction.

I found value in this book because it does not, like so many other spiritual tactics recommend that you continually give it up to God (“it” being whatever hardship or hard questions fall upon you), but it instead indicates ourselves as the creators. And so I have been able to sift through the book’s often irritating form (its authors’ continuously “expressing” their glorious joy and wealth), to salvage its useful content, which is information floating around out there for anyone to receive – doesn’t matter who is dictating it.

The Law of Attraction mentions time and again that we must come to understand how we “get what we get”. While my subconscious was dismantling the concept, I waited in line for my (plus size) bags at the airport on the baggage carousel, and playing on a baggage cart beside me a little girl was singing to herself: “I want what I want, and I get what I get. And I get what I want!”

Spoiled kid, or manifestation of my subconscious..?

The Law of Attraction:

• “If you are able to imagine it, then it is not unrealistic. If from this time-space reality, you have been able to create the desire, this time-space reality has the resources to fulfill it.”
• “That which I give thought to, I begin to attract. That which I give thought to that brings forth strong emotion, I attract more quickly.”
• ‘”The way you feel is your point of attraction, and so, The Law of Attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet, getting more and more of the way you feel.”
• Practicing the Art of Allowing means cultivating in yourself a state in which you are not attempting to block desire (of yourself and others). It is very important to realize that as you practice not blocking the desires of others, even when they are vicious and violent (force feeding ducks, for example) this “allowing” will become stronger in the manifestation of your own desires. It’s all or nothing. As we block the actions of others, we are simultaneously blocking our own. However, if our own desires become strong enough, and if we build up the ability to get out of their way, then we will no longer be vulnerable to the desires of others that traumatize us because we will be able to visualize solutions to the cruelty we have witnessed. If we focus on the cruelty, there will be more cruelty. But if we focus on the emancipation of these innocent beings, we are not evading their confinement and torture, we are devoting our power of  thought to set them free.

“I want, I allow, and therefore it is.”

• Try this: “I want to see _______, I expect to see ______, no matter who I am working with, no matter who I am talking to, no matter where I am, no matter what I am doing, and intend to see ______.”

And it will come to you – it is LAW.