Halfway Up the Mountain
Interview with Jed McKenna
The truth is that enlightenment is neither remote nor unattainable. It is closer than your skin and more immediate than your next breath. If we wonder why so few seem able to find that which can never be lost, we might recall the child who was looking in the light for a coin he dropped in the dark because “the light is better over here.” – Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment, the damnedest thing
alone yet, not
And you thought you had it made
There are lots of us stubborn and ignorant
100 TED Talks Lessons In 5 Minutes
You Can Easily Learn 100 TED Talks Lessons In 5 Minutes Which Most People Need 70 Hours For
The other week he watched 70 hours of TED talks; short, 18-minute talks given by inspirational leaders in the fields of Technology,Entertainment, and Design (TED). He watched 296 talks in total, and he recently went through the list of what he watched, weeded out the crappy and boring talks, and created a list of the 100 best things he learned !
This article isn’t entirely about productivity, but he guarantees you’ll learn a thing or two. Here are 100 incredible things he learned watching 70 hours of TED talks last week!
Productivity
1. Studies have shown that what motivates a person the most (in non-factory-type work) is how much autonomy, mastery, and purpose they have, not how much money they make.
2. Playing video games can actually make you more productive because video games give you more physical, mental, emotional, and social resilience.
3. A lot of people aspire to be productive so they can become happier, but happiness has been shown to lead to productivity, not the other way around.
4. You don’t have as much attention to give to the world around you as you think. You can’t recall memories while processing new data, you can only process so much information at once, and your attention is easily manipulated (like by magicians).
5. Innovative thinking is often a slow and gradual process, not a moment of instant, lightbulb-like inspiration.
6. If you want people to remember you, sweat the small stuff. Most companies (and people) do the big stuff right, so sweating the small stuff (like getting the user interfaces on your products right) can really set you apart.
7. You have three brain systems for love: lust, romantic love, and attachment. To develop more intimate relationships with your significant other, it’s important to invest in all three.
Kurzgesagt
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It’s a subtle nuance
Specks of dust suspended in the air
Big Attitude
Honda’s 2014 Grom™ is a fresh, new way to add some fun, practicality, independence and style to your life. Fun: This new machine is a blast to ride, offering all the excitement of a full-sized motorcycle but in a package that just about anyone old enough to have a license can handle. Practical: The Grom’s thrifty Honda engine means you can run it on pocket change, and you can park it just about anywhere too.
Independence: With your own wheels, you can bag the bus and forget about having to beg for rides from your friends or—shudder—your Mom. Stylish: Check out the Grom for yourself. And then think of it as a blank canvas, waiting for you to customize it.
The new Honda Grom. Big attitude. Ride one and see.
50/50 Squelches Our Sexual Essence
“I am suggesting that, as we have grown in wholeness, many of us have lost touch with our own true sexual essence as well as our partner’s, so we aren’t getting what we really want in a relationship. Instead of enjoying the uniqueness of each person’s sexual essence, we often settle for a fair, relatively healthy, yet mediocre sense of equality.
For instance, we may think we want to share “old-style” Masculine and Feminine responsibilities equally with our intimate partner. So, we agree to a fair, 50/50 split right down the middle but we really don’t enjoy cooking half the time or changing the oil in the car half the time. It just doesn’t feel authentic to our core. It doesn’t feel like our true gift. Our sexual essence ends up feeling squelched. It’s not completely fulfilling, but at least it’s fair.
We also end up unfulfilled when we disregard the sexual essence of our intimate partner. For example, we want our partners to be receptive and listen to us as if they were our therapists, but we also want them to ravish us as if they were gods or goddesses of love. Our partners may become so used to “giving us space” and listening to our problems, however, that they no longer feel free to spontaneously ravish us with the wild force of their love.
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He gets in through your ear, with a whisper
Another view (117)
Complexify
Comes and goes, comes and goes
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Now watch
Space and the Judge
“The judge will attack your experience of space from different directions:”So you are feeling emptiness in your head You numskull, that means you are stupid! … If you start losing your sense of boundaries, you are asking for trouble…. Quit spacing out and get to work! What do you mean, you don’t feel guilty about what happened? Don’t bother trying to sense yourself; there’s nothing there-and that’s your problem!” Until you begin to recognize spaciousness for what it is-the authentic presence of your beingness without any content-your judge will easily distract you from experiences of open emptiness. All it has to do is call up the image of something missing and you will fill up the space with searching and worrying!
Spaciousness has its own particular power in relation to the judge. It is what is in between and around words, objects, and ideas. The more you are aware of space as an experiential quality, the more you are focused on the open field in which everything arises. This is the opposite of content, of the narrow, focused engagement with the judge.The judge’s message is seductive compared to other content, but compared to empty space, it is no more powerful than a TV commercial and considerably less pleasant than a nice piece of music.When you are feeling spacious, the judge is not right in your face, even if it is present, so it can’t exert its usual degree of pressure. In fact, spacious means space to choose, space to ignore, or space to go around. Feeling spacious brings elements ofour experience back into proper proportion, and the judge’s significance rapidly diminishes.
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I remember all those moments
Think you know what you need to do to be healthy?
We are indeed the creator, of our very own limitations
I’m fuck, punk you
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Sneezed it
Healthy sweetness
Life is but a dream
This is not your beautiful purpose
Bankgeheimen van Joris Luyendijk
Journalist en antropoloog Joris Luyendijk bevond zich twee jaar onder bankiers en schreef er een boek over. Hij praat door waar het boek ophoudt.
‘Op een haar na heeft de financiële wereld in 2008 uw leven al onvoorstelbaar ontwricht. De diepere oorzaken hiervan zijn niet weggenomen, hoewel alle insiders weten wat ze zijn. Hoe kan dat?’. Dat is de grote vraag die Joris Luyendijk zich stelt in zijn recent verschenen boek ‘Dit kan niet waar zijn. Joris Luyendijk onder bankiers’.
In 2012 en 2013 schreef Luyendijk voor de Engelse krant The Guardian een ‘banking blog’ waarvoor hij op anonieme basis honderden medewerkers uit de financiële sector interviewde. VPRO Tegenlicht nodigde Joris Luyendijk uit om, met uitzicht op de Amsterdamse Zuidas, zijn bevindingen tegen het licht te houden. Zal een betrouwbare en veilige financiële sector voor altijd iets blijven waarvan wij alleen maar kunnen dromen?
Want wat is er nou daadwerkelijk veranderd sinds de val van de Amerikaanse zakenbank Lehman Brothers in september 2008? Wie Joris Luyendijk’s nieuwe boek leest, in feite een antropologie van ‘s werelds financiële sector, wordt er niet geruster op. Wie of wat houdt nu precies het bestaande systeem in stand?
Het DNA van de financiële sector is niet wezenlijk anders dan zeven jaar geleden en daadwerkelijk grote hervormingen blijven uit. Luyendijk maakt een levendige schets van de arena waarin de grote geldhandel plaatsvindt, en van de mensen die er onderdeel van zijn. De front-, middle- en back office; de snelle jongens, de tandenknarsers, en de twijfelaars.
Hij beschrijft het amorele karakter van de werknemers van Planet Finance waarin ongezond lange werkweken worden gedraaid met weinig tot geen baanzekerheid. Waarin de hoogte van salarissen en bonussen gelijkgesteld worden aan succes. Met als gevolg een totaal gemonetariseerde en op korte termijn een op gewin geënte kijk op de wereld.
Hoe kunnen we tot fundamentele hervormingen komen en weer greep krijgen op die losgezongen wereld van het flitsend kapitaal? Daarvoor zijn moedige politici nodig, verlichte nieuwe bankiers en kritische, dieper gravende journalisten. De eerste voorbeelden zijn er, volgens Luyendijk.
Regie: Marije Meerman
Research: William de Bruijn
Productie: Jeroen Beumer & Jessica van Beek
Eindredactie: Marije Meerman & Doke Romeijn
Source: http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/afleveringen/2014-2015/bankgeheimen-joris-luyendijk.html
The count is one, snowflake
The possibilities are endless
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
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I bet you think this text is about you
How to Think for Yourself
When you accept everything you’re told without question, you open the door to being manipulated. If you want to avoid being someone else’s puppet, follow these steps.
Steps
To experience the experience
Maravilloso
The story of cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ambitious but ultimately doomed film adaptation of the seminal science fiction novel.
Director: Frank Pavich
Stars: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Amanda Lear, Brontis Jodorowsky, Chris Foss, Christian Vander, Dan O’Bannon, Devin Faraci, Diane O’Bannon, Drew McWeeny, Flor, Gary Kurtz, H.R. Giger, Jean-Paul Gibon, Jean-Pierre Vignau, Michel Seydoux, Nicolas Winding Refn, Richard Stanley
Another view (104)
a battle of opinions
We’re rigging the game, ourselves
Two and a half …
No Personality Consciousness yet
Creature Comforts
That’s all I have to say about that
Don’t believe the hype
Tell me Universe, what is the meaning of life?
YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
The Rubik’s Cube’s 40-year history is full of twists—quintillions and quintillions of them.
How Ernö Rubik Created the Rubik’s Cube By Noah Davis
At 29, Ernö Rubik was too old to be playing with blocks. But the Hungarian professor of architecture couldn’t help himself: He was fascinated with shapes and spent much of his free time building and perfecting 3-D models. In 1974, a particular project had him stumped. For months, he’d been working on a block made of smaller cubes that could move without causing the whole structure to fall apart. So far, each attempt had failed. The evidence was strewn all over the two-bedroom apartment he shared with his mother.
One spring day, a frustrated Rubik left the apartment and wandered the streets of Budapest. He followed a gentle bend in the Danube River, a path he had walked countless times before. At one point, he stopped to listen to the water lapping ashore and looked down at the polished round pebbles that lined the riverbank. Suddenly, his heart started racing.
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We only have one life. I believe this is a great experience and I don’t want to put it to waste.
Preface
America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . accepts the lesson with calmness . . . is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house . . . perceives that it waits a little while in the door . . . that it was fittest for its days . . . that its action has descended to the stalwart and wellshaped heir who approaches . . . and that he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes. . . . Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—their Curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness— the terrible significance of their elections—the President’s taking off his hat to them not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not nature nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous business nor farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal of man . . . nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest . . . namely from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of present action and grandeur and of the subjects of poets.—As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in North and South America were less than the small theatre of the antique or the aimless sleepwalking of the middle ages! The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all returns of commerce and agriculture and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory to enjoy the breed of full-sized men or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple.
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