From the Summer of Love to Woodstock

My second year of college ended, while "the Summer of Love" in San Francisco in 1967 exploded on the streets and in the media. Images of young "flower children" walking with colorful clothes, long hair, smoking dope, dropping acid, and making peace signs. Youth grasped, for a moment, that the world was overly focused on things, technology, power, domination, consumerism -- at the expense of being human and loving. And, something had to be done about it.

The older generation viewed young people as merely engaging in "sex, drugs, rock'n'roll". This was not true. Youth were recovering the love and aliveness unseen in parents and the people around them. A generation looked back and saw the clichés of love, but not love itself. A time of radical rediscovery of love's luster, innocence and "becoming as children again".

Dehumanizing technology power manifested in the images and reality of the Vietnam War. Helicopters, napalm bombs, and chemicals destroying jungles. Machines and gadgets against people. Vietnam made no sense, yet took 50,000 American lives. "We", the good guys, where killing people, animals, and plants in a foreign land. In quiet ways, we did it here -- at home. Human instinct, culture and technology were out of harmony. The Summer of Love was a true healthy human response to insanity.

Abbie Hoffman, put it thus: The lesson of the 60's is that peoplewho cared enough to do right could change history. We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided. The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly, headstrong and scared half to death. And we were right. (http://www.summeroflove.org/main.html)

A longing for return to the Garden of Eden got expressed in the "back to the land" and ecology-recycling movements. Many went to "live on the land" in communes. Others formed cooperative houses and communes in all major cities. Most of these social experiments faded away. But, many remnants remain. It's significant that the Summer of Love was in San Francisco on the streets near the corner of Haight and Ashbury; while, two years later, the Woodstock music festival happens on a farm in the East Coast.

The Summer of Love opened a path leading to the cultural and technical integration of Woodstock. An event greater than a music concert. University of California at Berkeley, Professor Hubert Dreyfus writes:

Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and other rock groups became for many the articulators of a new understanding of what really mattered. This new understanding almost coalesced into a cultural paradigm in the Woodstock music festival of 1969, where people actually lived for a few days in an understanding of being in which mainline contemporary concerns with order, sobriety, willful activity, and flexible, efficient control were made marginal and subservient to certain pagan practices, such as enjoyment of nature, dancing, and Dionysian ecstasy, along with neglected Christian concerns with peace, tolerance, and nonexclusive love of one's neighbor. Technology was not smashed or denigrated; rather, all the power of electronic communications was put at the service of the music, which focused the above concerns. (from Dr. Dreyfus's paper titled "Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics".)

A vision that harmonizes instinct, culture and technology was articulated and practiced. Can we find a way back to it in the middle of ordinary 21st century life? 300 years from today, another young generation shall either bless or curse us for our response to this question.

Politics, Leaders, and Followers

Politics is larger than life. Our relationships to leaders are reduced to those of children looking upon a distant parent. We tend to demonize or sanctify them! Reality is distorted. If you are a leader you sign up for being “the reason” why things appear to be working or failing. Leaders cannot be leaders without followers. Look to the quality of followers to understand the quality and power of the leaders.  (+)

Money Has No Intelligence But Money

There's the idea that money is rational. Get the most for the least money. Buy high, sell low. Get the best paying job. Or, get the most pay for the work you like. But, if you look at the way we play money these days, money is uncoupled from meaning, love, and all that is divine in human life. Why? Because we have learned, as a culture, to put money first and all else below that. This is a prescription for corruption. National politics now suffers from the fact that "money has no intelligence but money" - basically, money wants to make more money. You invest in a candidate that will help you get more money. It does not matter who. It's the money that counts. This is stupid; and, now we have stupid politics. One man at early morning coffee table said, "We got better presidents when they were selected behind closed doors at political conventions - men such as FDR, Eisenhower and Kennedy." Now, winning means getting the most money behind you, and running ads to hypnotize the voters into the "best candidate that money can buy". 

Former President Barack Obama honors Sen. John McCain

Originally posted by Americ on 9/8/2016 We are in unprecedented times. We look at a world on the brink of chaos. It is crucial to vote by Nov. 3rd. Make your voice heard. Bring light to the darkness. 

The power is yours. 

Moment of Creation

Sit quietly in a chair. Imagine the Big Bang at the moment of our universe's creation, based on current cosmological understanding. You are sitting, now, in the space-time continuum. What could that be? Never mind. Our theories continue to change as we learn more. It's a poetic journey into true reality. Right now, you are taping into a fragment of the total energy of creation. Every time you develop a new idea, such as writing a poem, or planning activities for today; you are creating. Remember who we really are! 

Psychological shortfalls stop us from seeing deep enough to feel the glory and power of Being. Individual ego must die, but the real Self (Atman) is eternal, never born. How do I know this? By a lifetime of exploring the inner self and following intuition; it began when I was young and in grade school. The suffering of my first school years: not knowing English, kids making fun at me, the emotional distress and uncertainty of immigrant parents - all factors forcing me inward to protect my sanity. Somewhere deep within I saw the Truth of Life. I held my space and place firmly and softly: without violence. Later in life, while reading about Gandhi it became clear that "truth force" (satyagraha) is a power seeking to to actualize. Afterwards, I learned to actualize one dream after another.

Live fully this present moment. That is living at 100%.

Knowing water

On October 4th, 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite. It was the size of a basketball, weighed 183 pounds, and orbited the earth in 98 minutes. So began the "Space Age".

I was ten years old. When the United States entered the space age, so did I—by becoming a junior scientist. I could not go into space, but I could study the elements. I studied the chemistry of the water molecule—two hydrogen atoms bound to a common oxygen atom. At room temperature and normal air pressure, these two elements were gases. Eventually I ran a direct electrical current through an sulfuric acid solution, and collected hydrogen and oxygen at two electrodes inside separate test tubes. This was one of my life's greatest moments.

But did I really know water? The power of water was just an abstraction. The Pacific Ocean was only thirty minutes away, but I had never stepped into those vast waters. My mother was afraid of water—be it a rain storm or the ocean—and I was my mother's child.

Not until I was married did I learn to swim. The body is lighter than water, it will float if you don't struggle against it, becoming stiff and thrashing yourself down until you take in gulps of something quite alien to your lungs. Water is hard. Fall into a pool and water demonstrates its solidity. Water is seductive. As you swim, it takes on the feeling of a sensuous substance enfolding you within its body. Eventually, you feel free—like a fish or a soaring eagle. Moving and flowing in a pool is its own self-sustaining pleasure.

After some months in the pool, I braved the frontier: the roaring Pacific Ocean. I became a beach bum. Sun and surf, day after day. Throwing my body into the waves. Catching a wave of salt water that carried this finite human body to the soft sandy shores of Corona Del Mar not far from Newport Beach. I took in life from the vast water. I had discovered water as way of being, at an entirely other level from oxygen and hydrogen.

Meanwhile, more and more satellites orbited the earth. I knew that water was going to be important to people someday living on other planets. Would they make their own water from hydrogen and oxygen? Would they know water as a way of being? Would they even care?

Making a Living is Not Living

There's profound confusion between money and life. I grew up with the expression "making a living" - which means making enough money to stay alive - as if money is life. True: money is not life. Life is life. Life is love. Love is working together. Life is freely given to us because we're embedded within the matrix of all life on earth. And, all life depends on sunlight. Yes, the sun is life too. Does the sun need money? Who/what needs money - only humans. Why? Because there's not enough love, trust and faith among us collectively to feed each other in our extreme interpersonal specialization within our civilizations. I hope we learn to rethink, re-feel the way we are in our world together. Our greatest need is not money, but the creation and re-creation of enlightened good societies on our precious earth. 

Light of Life

The light of life

    opened the day

    I sat waiting

    for the sun

    to rise from

    my horizon

    of darkness

    and dreams

Surprise

Everyday is a surprise
You wake up in the morning
And suddenly it's different from yesterday

Perhaps it's useful to experiment
with different ways of expression
in writing, in recording, etc.
Shake things up slightly
Be a little more spontaneous 
not so worried that the "English teacher"
is going to come by and grade you down
for using the "wrong" format for a word

Life and language and art
are infinitely wide open
Why close ourselves off so much from the ultimate sources of creation which we are reflecting in every moment of living with every breath?

Be not worried
Express yourself
Like a child again
All life evolved on this Earth as acts of creation
Some worked; some failed
and with what is called "natural selection" 
leading to evolution of consciousness
leading to technology
leading to this computer
leading to the extension of 
this mind
this moment
this expression
this little act 
this spontaneous
creation  
here and now

Business and wisdom

Today business is the greatest power on earth. The churches and temples are small compared to the world's office towers. Business ethics is now reduced to mere survival tactics. Too many business leaders never stop accumulating wealth and power -- without any hope of true satisfaction or happiness. There's an addiction to constant accumulation for its own sake. This corrupts free markets, governments, media, culture and the human soul. The Halls of Congress are filled with hungry business representatives from corporate boardrooms. Can anything be done? I say "settle down" and meditate. Businesspeople at all levels need to spend time looking within -- to see who they really are. This does more than all the ethics rules and government regulations people come up with. With clear insights, true ethics is spontaneousness -- as we begin to see that we are not in survival, but actually have enough to look beyond self-interest. It's about love; saying "Yes!" to doing business as love and service.

Civilization, Terror, and Real Security

Today, the biggest "temples" are skyscrapers devoted to office work; no cathedrals at the center of town devoted to worship of a Higher Power. The true religion of world civilization is money. The attack upon of the World Trade Center in New York City was not just an "attack upon America" but an attack upon the current modes of world civilization. Terrorism challenges civilization, just like street crime challenges a local community. Crime is a symptom of a social sickness; terrorism is the surface symptom of systemic disorder in civilization.

What's wrong with civilization now? We must ask and dig into this question. This question has been asked since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And, needs to be asked even more now. The terrorism that we suffer now is happening as a tension between the oil producing and oil consuming parts of our civilized modern world. I have no answers, but ask that we just look at this tension in all its dimensions.

Modern global civilization depends on freeways, cheap petroleum, making lots of stuff, shipping stuff here and there, extensive personal and business travel, telecommunications and computer networks. These are the wonders, and potential downfalls, of our age.

Our money-oil based global civilization undermines the Earth itself. Without Life on earth, the notion of "economy" is meaningless. Our governments, businesses, and households assume "growth" as the prime measure of a healthy economy. Earth has finite resources. Humans are now hitting Earth's walls. It's time to renew our models of economic health to include the health of all life on the planet -- not just humans. Economic grow alone is very dangerous at this time.

Commuting in private cars to work is not an acceptable form of civilization. Freeways are the backbone of modern urban civilization. They encourage sprawl - commuting from one city to another. Freeways, in the morning are clogged with cars in both directions -- going to work where you do not live sometimes one or two hours away. Pedestrian communities need to become the norm. Work, live and play within walking distance of your bedroom.

The consumer economy with its advertising and marketing system, encourages spiritual bankruptcy to increase the making, selling and buying of "goods" to create satisfaction that never stays. So we must go on to consuming more.

Security will come from little actions. Little actions change the world. Save a bit of a tree by NOT using the wood coffee stir stick to mix the half-and-half in. You know that the cream will swirl around by itself. Drive a little less, walk more. You'll be healthier and have cleaner air. Don't just air travel on a whim, even if you can afford it. Stay near home; become a tourist in your neighborhood. Find work near home. Life will become more relaxed. Share cars. Go for "growth in value", not growth in consumption. A new kind of consumerism is needed: a consumerism of knowledge and wisdom rather than things. Place more value on time with friends and family rather than exchanging gifts. Remember that you buy your money with the time in your life -- time that you could have used for real relationship with friends and family instead of buying things and experiences.

This post-consumer world will not be so wealthy in material, but will be much wealthier in spirit -- we'll have more time for being and creativity. This could become the basis of a real security, of a world that does not breed terrorism. A world where the tension between oil production and oil consumption is not the fuel of politics, religious wars and hate campaigns.

Civilization as we know it now will either collapse or transform. I vote for transformation; for the gradual changing of our ways of life until we get to a life positive form of civilization. This post-consumer world will also be a world without terror as we know it now. It will be a kinder place.

Published in Berkeley Daily Planet, July 3, 2007.

Image from Eagle Rock Trading Post.

Overbooked

While holding a corporate job, I decided to start a healing arts center. It was my first business start-up. It seemed a worthy cause – to promote holistic health and healing practices. My wife and I saw ourselves as healers. Unfortunately, I was not ready for the “busyness” of business.

I became overwhelmed with organizing, marketing, and money. In the end, I could heal no one, not even myself. My peace of mind was completely shattered. Something was wrong. I dropped the healing center and began a deep self-examination.

I had gone through the basic problems of economic society – a complex world with many demands. Nothing is done in isolation. Government regulations, financial issues, marketing and sales – all these and many more issues had to be addressed in starting and maintaining a business. Most start-ups don’t last more than a year or two. Parents and spouses usually want you to go to work for a solid company with a regular paycheck.

For those deep in the culture of entrepreneurship, having a packed calendar of appointments is almost a sign of status, a sign that you are making progress. Yet, when I look back upon such times in my life, I can only wonder at all the time and energy used up. Had I been wiser, I would have done less and gotten a more solid sense of achievement. I was overbooking myself. Now, I see myself in a society that is overbooked all around, with not enough time for real human value in all the getting and doing, in the midst of plenty.

The madness of too many things to do will make you forget who you are. (That is what losing your soul is about.) Every moment is the first & last moment of your life. Your entire life comes to a head at this very moment.

The Self

I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void! I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness,” just observing and watching.

-Eckhart Tolle's Enlightenment moment

Choose Life

LIFE is the deepest mystery. No one gets to the bottom of life. We live day by day, breath by breath. Philosophy, medicine, biology, and “rocket science” may all give us insights. The unfolding life mystery delights my soul. I love unsolvable, unanswerable questions. All I know is that with each breath we choose life.

Falling In Love With Wisdom

The roots for the word “philosophy” simply mean “the love of wisdom”. I fell in love with philosophy while taking a Great Books course in high school. We used a wonderful book of readings titled Preface to Philosophy: Book of Readings. All the great philosophers were there and many other great thinkers, poets and general writers. All the great ideas seemed to be there. Everyone so wise. My mind and vision expanded to new limits. It was wonderful. Thereafter, I wanted become one of “those” writers or thinkers. I wanted to see, feel, and breathe in reality!   

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