I don't know, Torstoise. I've stayed in hostels and fully enjoyed it. You meet and eat with people, share tips about good places to go and things to do that are way less expensive than winging it on your own with no ideas to work with but the things tourist travel agencies hype, and can generally cook your own food, and, how might you say it, regulate your intake of nutritious food while saving hard earned money. I've met people in hostels who met their mates-for-life there. Hostels are not the ritz, but no one ever claimed they were, or wanted to hang out in a ritz-like place.

Travel has only opened my mind and broadened my vistas. The expanded perspectives only enriched my life, and my spirituality - ie in jungles I hiked through I've found mentors whose information I use daily. Far from mundane, I find travel to be spiritually expanding and invigorating on all levels, and almost always dread going "back" to wherever I started from, no matter how comfortable it seemed when living there. In fact, I rarely go back to where I started from, and instead move forward into new experiences.

Living in a rut of routine, no matter how comfortable it may seem, always bores the shit out of me. Not only that, but choosing to live in a rut of routine seems to be based mostly on fear. Do not enter the circle of Life in fear, for what you fear will manifest. While it may keep the bowels cleaned out, there is more to life than sitting on the same toilet the rest of your life, imagining the big bad wolf is kept at bay.

And....I do not see travel as a one week or longer holiday. I see travel as going somewhere and getting into the culture, living it, becoming part of it, a seeking, not a spectator viewing. The longer one is in some new place, the less expensive it becomes and the more one gets from it. And then moving on to the next new experience. The thing is to heed the pulse Spirit gives when it is time to move on to the next horizon. It is nearly impossible to sense the pulse to move on if one is attached out of fear to some rut of routine. All of life is good, not just the boring ruts we've become used to that make us yearn for something different. I mean, why settle for just a little bit of something different. There is a whole world to explore. One can staycate on the move. The only real security is the breath you take in the moment. If security is your bag you might as well begin selling insurance policies - which I see as institutionalized betting people they are going to lose.

- Ziggy

I am feeling particularly confident in my life choices today, so I wrote this essay about my own particular version of idleness which I hope you will all enjoy.

I have suffered my whole life with a feeling of being 'not good enough'. Not thin enough. Not tidy enough. Not successful enough. You get the picture. But I have recently, thanks to a conversation with my elder sister, come to the conclusion that, actually, my life ISN'T normal. I'm NOT like everyone who can hold down a 40-hour-a-week job and take care of kids and keep a reasonably presentable house and have hobbies and socialise and all the rest of it put together. I burn out INCREDIBLY quickly. If I do too much of one thing, I have no energy for the rest of the demands on me. And you know what? That's OK. I'll never be like 'other people' and no matter what my father tries to drill into me, it isn't NECESSARY for me to be like them.

I have realised that this would be all well and good if I was the kind of person who was content to live my life in a flurry of activity and never actually have time to stop and appreciate those things that are so undervalued in our society - like being there to go through times tables with my 3-year-old daughter and clap and cheer when she successfully reads numbers beyond 100, or help my 9-month-old pull himself up onto his wobbly little chubby legs and hear him giggle because he's so pleased with himself. Like having time to keep up with the laundry and cook real dinners and see friends and help family members in crisis. Like taking time to be my husband's partner and best friend, not just his co-parent. Like actually using my writing talent to post on forums and blog and write a novel (currently in the submission stage).

Is it mental illness that makes me think this way, and have these priorities? Perhaps it is a part of it, or maybe it's just who I am. Whatever the reason, I am someone who needs to work part time rather than full time and to be with my kids. In order to do this and survive I must claim certain government benefits and rather than feeling guilty about this I choose to be grateful that I live in a system where I can receive this help and not have to choose between being on the brink of suicide and abject poverty. I choose to recognise my contribution to society through my work (I am a cleaner at a local college) and through raising and educating my children at home, teaching them to value authenticity and wellbeing and fulfilment over status and money and the opinions of others. I have the skills and confidence to handle unexpected situations, such as the other day when I first-aided a little girl with a nosebleed at the park. Thanks to careful life planning (as much as the brain allows) I am able to be a force for good in many people's lives.

I'm in debt, yes, and can't always pay the bills on time. My flat is chronically untidy. There are days when my kids annoy me and I am grumpy and can't find it in me to be the best mum and wife in the world, or to do anything much beyond stare at the TV. But these things, like the good stuff above, are all part of being me. I can't change them and my focus has too long been directed at fixing these 'problems'. Whilst beating myself up for being 'not good enough' in the eyes of mainstream society I have done my family and friends a great disservice, by failing to notice the positive effect I have on their lives. Perhaps this sounds bigheaded...but I'm only forming an opinion based on empirical evidence.

Not everyone is meant to be a 'good little worker bee' with a career and a mortgage and a flashy car. There simply aren't enough resources to support all of our huge population having these things even if everyone did want to or was capable of it. Perhaps we will live to see our world accept those who choose a different way of life, or who have to adopt a different way of life because the norm isn't possible for them. Since I'm in a positive frame of mind tonight, I will continue to hope.

- Vixthenomad

I like this subject, hello everyone. I think society has stress points; moments when the lies and illusions are starting to slip away and people start to question what the hell is going on with their lives. I'll mention this in a separate thread I think.

When people are unsettled I think its normal to look at a way to displace the anxiety (drinking or some kind of drugs, from the doctor or the dealer, to take the edge off the daily grind of living). The unsettlement I'm describing is something intangible, like sensing the whole infrastructure and value system of society is wrong, the realisation that you can't change anything, and then the choices you make to live each day. Its like waking up one day and discovering that the colour red has been stolen from your vision: everything looks kind of the same, but for some reason the picture is not right. You feel its wrong, like a very little death has occurred, but can't express it. This metaphor is quite useful in the context of supermarkets, because they have stolen flavour from you. I like to eat my own carrots, especially for fresh carrot juice, but the ones from the supermarket have no flavour. I was stuck the other day and had to use the supermarket to make chicken noodle s!
oup for some people with a standard chicken, and the soup was tasteless so I had to add a stock cube. If I'd played the supermarket game I would have bought the extra special chicken, and the best quality organic veg. In this way the supermarket gets consumers to buy status (extra special means the customer feels extra special) and also allows them to maximise their profits by selling total rubbish to the price sensitive, and partial rubbish to the wealthier.

So here's a scenario. I'm a mother with 2 kids, and I'm shopping for the family. I'm late getting to the supermarket because I've sat playing with my breasts in the car but I get there eventually. So I'm in the supermarket and I want to do the best I can for my family. Maybe I buy some free range eggs but I can't spend much money on the organic veg, so I get the value range. I see some price-reduced extra-special range ready-meals, so I pick them up. Its good to treat the family and get a bargain. Unfortunately the extra-special range is made from the same shit as the other range, still uses the battery eggs and processed meat. But still I've made the best decision based on the choices I had and the packaging is nice. I probably pick up some things to comfort myself, because I have a funny feeling that this is not the way life is meant to be. But what can I do. In this way I'm manipulated by the supermarket through unlimited choice of packaged goods, price targetting, and if!
I want anything of quality I have to pay more. There are so many contradictions in my purchases, I'm aware vaguely of the manipulation, but I feel powerless to change.

This scenario is difficult to change because there is a whole backdrop to our lives where collectively we have lost the colour red. Society is broken, and with one of the last illusions being destroyed (this idea that your rich because your house goes up in value) is making people very uncomfortable. The knowledge that as a nation we've collectively lost practical skills like wiping our own arses, we're sending children to school where they are being told that an estate agency career is good, and we're feeding them the lie about the value of a degree and charging them as teenagers so much to get an education that we are effectively enslaving them to the banks and pointless entry level jobs until the loans are repaid. In this way we make citizens or stakeholders of people, and mould them into actors in the masquerade of society. And on top of this scenario, that acts as backdrop to our lives, sits consumption. Whether it is clothes, food, cars or whatever, its the stuff that !
papers over the cracks in our anxieties. The simple substitute to a greater solution where we collectively create something better. And food is one of the simplest ways to reward ourselves when we feel low. The supermarkets thrive because society is broken. When people demand to see the colour red again, when they insist on flavour and meaning in everything and not only their food, the supermarkets will shrivel.

- Longtail

I think it's naive to believe the system that has many mega-computers that monitor and control every element of the world's society had a fluke error that created a financial crisis based on debt. Rather, I suspect we began to "feel" free by the election in 2008, and the boom was lowered to keep us in place. I do agree that the profit element of capitalism is destined to run out of material resourses to exploit. Enter the New Age and the 10th Celestine Insight pushing the limits farther out by selling spirit.

Our water and the frequencies run through our electricity are controled by "unitility companies". Who are they? What chemicals are added to our water? What do they do? What frequencies are pulsing through our homes, out of our computer screens, etc. What do they do? What mirowaves are about? Doing what? In cell phones now on most everyone's person.

Computer chips: As far as I know, Japan had the first video phones for public use. At least, they had them long before the US, and before Britain did. Test group? A couple of years ago I did a house swap week-end with a friend, who was doing doctoral work (with birds) on this island and had a boat he lived in in the harbor just north of Waikiki. Aside from my astonishment at how built up Honolulu has become since I was there in '66, now a mini-polynesian NYC, the thing that struck me the most was as I was passing a duty free store for foriegn tourists, where locals and American citizens cannot purchase anything at the redused duty free rate. To monitor this, there was a person standing at the door with a beeper, like the product beepers used in checkout lines for items too big to take out of the cart. He was beeping the wrists of Japanese tourists entering the store, the chips in their wrists! It sent a chill up my spine that said "The day is here."

IMHO, any resistance to the takeover that is being talked about is futile, because the takeover has been in place for long a while. Its presentation is being polished all the time, each new technology first applied and tested for government purposes, before lesser uses of it is permitted for public use, always at a profit for those in charge. It's a bleak picture. Easy to see why so many people, even those who have no sense of what is going on, are driven to take anti-depressants, which are in themselves another tool to tame the public.

Consciousness is all we are left with, and that must be guarded to keep it, not by resistence, but by actively avoiding use of those things which enslave us more, or, at the very least, using those things in a way that minimizes their enslaving effect on us, and by putting consciousness to use. I equate consciousness as escape hatch with awareness, and that, when coupled with free will choice, and with spirituality, and that with evolution of the human race.

When I lived on the Hopi Reservation, the man who was entrusted with the tablets given to the Hopi when they emerged from the previous world told me, among other things: "If they come from the east, things will be harder than if they come from the west. But they will come. Non-resistance is the only way to respond, because all resisters will be killed." He did not specify who "they" are. I didn't ask. He had sat down at the table with me at my friend's, his son-in-law's, house, and started telling me things. I felt a burden being laid on me, and asked why he was telling me these Hopi prophecies. He said "Because I helped in his and his son-in-law's corn fields, and asked for no corn." My wife was teaching first grade at the village school, leaving me to do nothing all day, mostly within the confines of the teacherage we were given to use. Not very exciting. I need Nature to keep inner balance. So, I asked the son-in-law if I could work his field, as he was busy as the village medicine man, a 24 hour on call roll in the community done for free, and making jewelry for money. I felt recompensed already by being allowed to work the fields, and really didn't want any burden laid on me. I'd been idling for 6 years at that point, and dug being burden free. The old Hopi also said: "Know where your water and your food come from." If you will, figure that into your computations of things.

Personally, I've never felt entirely free of or in the system, starting with when my father, who, with his generation that has Pluto (mass subconscious, human race karma) in Cancer (institutions, nationalism, family), bought into the system entirely, told me at 5 years old I needed to begin thinking about what I wanted to "do". After 29 years I felt free as a hippie traveling around the western states in a caravan making and selling necklaces to venues I came upon. But, that freedom relied totally on the venues, which were in place as part of the system. I got to dress in the hippie uniform, have no boss per se, move around at will (as the money in my pocket allowed), and survived for a number of years doing that. I now see that time like an LSD tracer, a left over motion from the sixties, that was "allowed" to run its course, because it did not interfere with the establisment's established game plan. In other words, my sense of freedom was for the system a moot point. At least I enjoyed it.

I also think it is naive to think any resistance can be organized over the internet and not have every step monitored and manipulated toward no real effect. I realize my perspective sounds fatalistic, making "doing" anything futile. But then, the motto I put energy into living is "doing nothing is highly under rated". And, IF is THE place to idly "do" nothing, is it not? Discussing the zietgiest movie is interesting, and "does" no thing. There are people aware they have chips in them already, and they accept it. There is nano-technology, and seasonal insistance via the media that people get flu shots. I do not get flu shots.

I think the only real freedom we have left is to expand our consciousness, to heighten our awareness beyond the 5 senses, become actively adept with reading the 6th sense and beyond, and the equally necessary step of evolve spiritually. That is, learn to create one's own reality more, with a twitch of the brain cell, or twitch of a wand, if you will--whatever system of personal awareness manipulation one jives with; do something with the senses beyond the normal 5, and the spiritual tools that naturally come within reach. With, of course, the necessary constant liberal doses of testing of oneself and one's perceptions, to avoid a massive case of delusions. That doing of nothing that creates something is what I see as our only release valve from all the oppressive control and manipulation being laid on mankind.

From a religious point of view, since religion believes there is a caring entity running the show called Life, and since the dominant religion says that entity did not give the job of "saviour" to Satan because he wanted to "make" everyone go to heaven, and instead gave the job to the j-man, and since the world is so locked in manacles more and more, it seems blatantly obvious that the donimant religion's devil won (possibly when the j-man got crucified?) and is now in charge. Since money seems to be the agent of putting manacles on everyone, maybe Satan's real name is Mammon. In a lateral leap from that vein, Christian O'Brian wrote a book called the "Genius of the Few", wherein he makes the case that Satan was just a job title on a par with Constable. The story line being that the Constable was aware of the criminals actions and joined them; the criminals being the other beings (who were retired from the work force once humans were created to replace them) having intercourse with human females (thereby messing up an otherwise easily controlable gene pool) and, for example, teaching humans to use herbs not just to heal but also to poison, and shape metal not to just make plows but also make swords. Likewise, O'Brian also said the Archagels names were job titles; Michael in charge of works involving fire (forges, etc), Gabriel in charge of works involving water (dams, canals, etc), Raphael in charge of air, Uriel in charge of earth. All being one, invoking their names in ritual calls up the power inclusive with their original positions and all that has accumulated with them since, and is the basis of the rituals in the Necronomicon. I'm not recommending any of that, or saying one way or the other about if or how I play with those tools. I'm just getting at active spiritual application of self is a wide field to play in, and most definitely does not have much if anything to do with religion, which I see as just intellectually abstract stretches of logic to generate no more than a comfortable emotion that keeps the participants happy powerless slaves.

I think the Zietgiest creator does have a solid acceptable NYC presentation of his work. Me? I like the boonies and Nature.

So, I put down my tin foil hat, in hopes any glare from it did not blind anyone to whatever amount of usable truth there was is the above, and head to the stove for a spot of tea. Cheers. Sorry if you find any of this too far out. All I can say to that is "Reach. You won't be disappointed or lose anything. And you may gain more than you imagined possible."

- Ziggy

Ziggy,

That was simply awesome

I started out as a rational materialist & someone who poo-pooed conspiracy theories as a matter of course.

Now? Hmmm... I'm some breed of neo-platonist that accepts the people in power don't have my best interests at heart (!). And from this my behaviours have changed I suppose. Bill Hicks said it right... you make the choice between fear & love.

Love to me doesn't mean slapping on a sickly smile & evangelising on the streets..it means getting in touch with my intuition & trying to live my life in a 'real' way... which presupposes there is a natural order, that I have a place in it & that my intuition tells me what that is!

I agree there does seem a need to control us being exerted. Chemicals in our water? Well, I believe Flouride damages the Thymus gland... those of an esoteric bent might say it closes the heart chakra. Is that what you're hinting at? Putting flouride in children's toothpaste seems bizarre to me. Adding a known neuro-toxin to their toothpaste for teeth that will fall out & knowing that they'll swallow it seems very strange behaviour.

I've sat in a few meetings with government scientists charged with (among other things) making sure the mobile phone company masts are safe. They joked about 'cranks' that thought mobile phones could be harmful & explained their research, which was modelling what heat would do to very complicated virtual models. So... if they aren't looking at how mobile phone frequencies affect, say, endocrine function... they'll not find any affects!

Mmmm, chips under the skin? No thanks.

I don't feel as depressed as you do about the apparent plans to control us (maybe it's relative youth talking). Your idea about consciousness isn't 'all that's left', it's all that is...it's all that ever was. Maybe you know that already!


I can't really comment on invoking the four elements, it's beyond my experience.

- Alfuy

I thought I'd rap on about the spirit of service. It ties in with some ideas I've been having. As you know, ideas are one thing - articulating them is another.

I was sitting at home, bored out of my skull, watching a martial arts video on YouTube. For some reason they make me feel better... I don't mean a Bruce Lee flick either. This was much more practical; it was about the Japanese art of ninjitsu.

Anyway, after the fighting was over the protagonists met up in a Japanese restaurant. The ninjitu master was also a cook. Someone asked him, 'Do you think your martial arts have helped with your cooking, or the other way around?' This seemed like a very good question.

Without hesitation he said, 'My martial arts have definitely helped my cooking. I cook in front of people, and the focus I get from my fighting skills helps me to bring the same spirit of service to them.' Or words to that effect.

It struck me how un-western this comment was. Here in the west, we feel we have to know it all and climb the ladder. The idea of 'service' is instantly equated with being lowly. In case you read this and think, 'He has no idea', I'm afraid I do. In my 20s I did a few jobs which some people would have walked out of. Not scrubbing floors, but I was certainly underpaid and exploited. Virtually pissed on.

That isn't what I mean by service. Not in the slightest. The man I heard on that video had already learnt something special: if you freely give people some of your time and energy, you actively respect the life that is within them. When things are going well, they will respect you back again. It's a virtuous circle.

This is not an easy thing to do. We are taught to be selfish, and society conditions us to be go-getting and materialistic. This approach can actually work for a while: perhaps for half your life. Then, I think it falls apart. If you are very lucky you will just about manage to crawl away from the wreckage intact.

To serve is not to be servile. In fact, if you feel that's the case you need to walk away from the situation you are in. If you are made to feel lowly, then you aren't living up to the potential which definitely exists inside you. Someone wants you to feel that way, to increase their sense of personal control. I call that vampirism.

Let me personalise this. I provide people with information for a living. It's not necessarily what I want to do forever, but it pays the rent. I give people what they ask for, and in doing so I'm helping them out. They go away and use this information to improve something. You could call it a benign domino effect, though there is no guarantee things always go to plan.

If you are involved in this for long enough it changes your view of the world. I've met people who are very successful financially, but what they seem to lack is authenticity. I worked for a millionairess once, and she used to invite me back to her place 'for tea and a chat'.

I could see her coming a mile off. She would brew the tea and then - when she thought I was nice and relaxed - start quizzing me about the contract I was on. She wanted details. She was playing a game. Who's doing this, who said what this week...

I walked away from that contract. I'm not interested in office politics, and I will never be a millionaire or someone's poodle. The spirit of service isn't about vying for position or playing chess, using people as pawns. It's about giving and taking. Pushing, and yielding.

It is more subtle than the crude tactics of bankers, politicians and bureaucrats. If you give, you will sometimes lose badly and be disappointed, but you will feel better in the long run. Life will be far from perfect, but at least it will be real.

Good - it's stopped raining. Perhaps I'll go out later on...

- SleepyJohn

well Mr. Wallace this is purely my personal experience and views on the subject, and I would like to hear from anyone else who has had a similar experience or(dissimilar)

this is a subject that I have only ever talked about with one other person in 26 years, and that was my ex wife, but apart from recounting the experience it was never discussed any further, and I found no reason to go any deeper investigating until a few years ago, and from what I have read all over the internet it is a common happening, not universal but those who "go and come back" have very similar stories, most are not documented, some are actual clinical deaths, others just an out of body experience, but what seems strange to me is that this "most personal of happenings to me" is shared with so many others, some have put it down to their religious beliefs, others it has made them religious, skeptics like me are less common, but still show a remarkable similarity in the experience itself, as you have probably gathered from some of my other posts I am based in science, its what I do! braking everything down into its components to understand what the whole thing "is" when !
it is reassembled, but I am stumped on this subject, it is greater than the sum of its parts, what I mean is that no matter how I analyze it, no matter how the doctors an scientists profess that it is simply a biological breakdown of the brains functions prior to actual death, I no longer "believe" (and that is the only word I can use) it to be so! for what I experienced goes far beyond my understanding of "life as we know it"

for a start I was only 24 years old, fit and healthy, a widower of less than a day, totally distraught at the loss of my wife who had died in my arms that evening, she was everything to me, I never loved anyone like I loved her, either before or since, I was alone in my bed sobbing silently (or so I thought) then I felt a pain in my left arm and shoulder that crept over to the middle of my chest, I couldn't move, not even an eyelid but I could still see and hear, but the pain got suddenly worse, and I was floating, up through the roof of the house into the dark night sky, the pain had gone, a dim light in the distance made me want to go to it, and I did, and as I got closer I could feel the warmth, I saw shadows of outlines of faces of people that I had known and some I didn't, but they knew me, and they were there to greet me, there was this overwhelming feeling of love and security, and compassion, it felt like I had been away on a long long voyage and I had finally come b!
ack home, but my wife was stood in front of them all , and though I could see her face her lips never moved but yet I heard her say to me inside my head,

“go back, go back, you still have life to live”I felt her let go of my hand , and immediately felt sad that I had to come back, but I had no choice,

then I was back laying on my back in the bed looking at the ceiling  wondering how I could have got through the roof tiles, and the pain in my chest returned, and my uncle was knelt over me, he shouted downstairs to my aunt “ yes he’s ok, he's just woke up,  apparently I had gone suddenly quiet ! and as they had been listening to me sob for quite a while from their bedroom , after a couple of minutes they decided to check on me, my aunt could find no pulse or heartbeat (she had been a student nurse when she left school), and I didn't respond to anything they did, so she went down to phone for an ambulance,  I remember every detail except them coming into my room, I assured them I was all right, and they both said  that I had freighted the willies out of them, the pain had eased and I rolled over and went to sleep.

I didn't know  until 3 years ago that  that was my first heart attack, and it left  damage that would show up 23 years later on my heart scan after my second heart attack, apparently that 1st one was a bad one and that I was lucky to survive, especially as I had no treatment for it whatsoever, but believe me when no2 happened I knew exactly what it was, but it was different there was no pain I just couldn't move, I had no feeling in my body, yet I could still see and hear, all around me , but I just couldn't do anything,  the  strangest thing to me is that you never notice your own heartbeat, until its not there!  then you notice the silence within your own body, that was scary!  this time I was not alone and I did get sent  to the hospital  with a 98% blocked artery to the left ventricle (I still have the x-ray pictures) and left untreated  it would have been fatal, my doc in the E.R sent me for a 3D heart scan and  when the 3D animation showed up he was more interested in !
my last heart attack than this one,  I said I hadn't had one before , and he showed me  a part of  my heart muscle that was not  pulsing as it should, and he said that it was evidence of major attack years ago,  in which that part of my heart had died,  then I was whisked away to the O.R  and the blockage was removed and they put in a stent,

so now I know how I am going to go!  so long as I don't get hit by a truck, but these experiences have left me with a feeling of comfort, that there is a place beyond death, and though I have no religious views  and the fact that my wife was a catholic, I still find no reason to have any religious views,  so, being a man of science,  what do I think now having analyzed all this stuff,

It is really simple, our body is a vehicle, just like a car in this realm, its what gets us from a-to-b, from one point to another, some cars are good and last a long time, some are not, and some just get worn out, like mine, but my consciousness is the driver, and  just like an old car when it is done we send it to the scrap yard, but we don't send the driver with it! it will die and be crushed and returned to its basic elements just like our bodies, but the driver moves on to something better, our physical presence is over but our thoughts and feelings of love and care of others lives on, and if what I have experienced is real then I will have gone home.  I have a feeling that those who have  done unspeakable horrors while here may not have the same greetings I got, but then again to forgive is divine (or so I am told) and I want to end on a simple note, yes you can love someone so much that you can die from a broken heart, I almost did. and as far as animals go I am sure !
that all the ones that I have loved and cared for and have gone on ahead will be there to give me back the love I gave them, in the end “all you need is love”

- Gadget