I Don't Experience Essence The Way You Do...

In the conscious evolution community, as we have worked on the process of shifting from ego to essence with ease and clarity, many (particularly women) have expressed a seemingly common experience of "essence" _ a sort of warm, fuzzy, pink, orgasmic kind of experience - which has created something of a disturbance in "the force" for me because it doesn't resonate with my experience. I wonder if what I’m experiencing is unique to me, or just one of many ways that anyone can experience being in essence? Whatever...

I Don’t Experience Essence The Way You Do

In my ego, I am like steel, strong but imperfect, amorphous, malleable, capable of holding a razor edge or being a weight, forgeable and corrodible. I am Neander-John Cro-Magnon Strohl the evolutionary homo sapiens. Emotions and intellect are the critical duality of my BEING. I AM my carbon-based life form.

When I am in essence there is a distinct shift of perpective. It is like changing from normal vision to wide view binoculars, only much better. It is like stepping back and forward simultaneously. I AM my own Escher instance… but it makes sense. It is not an experience OF sweetness or glowing light or floating or warm spaces but rather these CAN be attributes of that space. It recognizes but is transcendent of male and female roles (born in an ego-centric space) but more, it is most fully formed in the union of the two. I am transcendent of vulnerability or invulnerability. I AM.

My ES-sense is of a carbon fiber mesh, cleansed of it’s impurities in fire, tested in battle, lighter and stronger than steel, pseudo-crystalline structure of infinite wisdom and flexibility, neither corrodible nor corrosive. I AM the Agent of Change, the wind of change that is blowing from the south. I AM an Agent of Conscious Evolution, the supra-sexual homo universalis emergent and evolving. I no longer need to “know everything”. I just KNOW what there is to know and I need to know. I can feel the DIFFERENCE. I KNOW truth or falsehood as they emerge - in THAT instant - I can SEE the path. I am ONE with THE WAY. I do not need dominion, because I/WE am/are ONE. My ES-sense is of Yin, to Ego Yang. I/WE are the birther, the birthing, and the coach united. I/WE were coming. Now I/WE are HERE!!

So, I/WE LOVE YOU… but I don’t experience essence the way you do.

Outcome Based Education - Isn't That ALWAYS What We Want??

Folks, 

Twenty years ago I was involved in an effort to transform the educational model in the Jefferson County School System, on the west side of Denver, Colorado. What we were trying to implement was  Transformational Outcome Based Education, otherwise known as Transformational OBE. Our coach and mentor in this effort was William G. "Bill" Spady, who some refer to as the Father of OBE. He always laughed and said to be the the Father of OBE he would have to be 500 years old... and he was right!

Real, no kidding OBE has been around at least that long, if not longer. Yet, at that point, twenty years ago, the zealots and nay-sayers rose up in a chorus of dissent that could not be believed by anyone looking more than ten feet into the future. This motley crew was made up of religious zealots who claimed it was counter-religious indoctrination, freedom zealots who claimed it was MIND CONTROL and the schooling for the new world order, and worse. It would have been laughable if the result was not so serious.The result is that, twenty years later, we are still saddled with a completely ass-backward, out of date, and out of step 19th century educational model as we roll merrily into the 21st century.

I challenge you to think of a single thing that we do today, where the result really matters, that we DON'T use outcome based education - pilot training for commercial carriers, surgical training, military combat training - none of these things use a grading system and a set time limit. They ALL use a "demonstrated proficiency" aka you have to meet an expected outcome to be able to practice. I guarantee you, you will NOT be operated on by a guy who got a "D" in open heart, and you will sleep better tonight knowing that the guys and gals who defend your liberty have to demonstrate that they CAN before they are "field tested"!

So, when we are talking about education for the future, education that takes into account cradle to grave learning, that is focused on life long demonstrated capacity and proficiency, I don't think we need to get any more radical than to get serious about implementing transformational OBE. Your thoughts and feedback are, as always, welcome.

Thanks for Being There and Being You!
John

A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney

" THE recent remark by Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom that upon clinching the Republican nomination Mr. Romney could change his political views “like an Etch A Sketch” has already become notorious. The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder."

Thus begins the funniest and most pointed bit of political writing that I've seen since Molly Ivans left the scene (God rest her troubled soul!) This piece is called "a Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney" and was written by DAVID JAVERBAUM and Published: March 31, 2012 in the New York Time Sunday Review. You can see the whole piece here @ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html

Bon Appetite!

and thanks for reading - have a great day!!

Smokemaster John

Make a Difference Today - STOP Joseph Kony

OK, here's the starting point for me doing my bit to make this happen - for you who haven't been paying attention Joseph Kony is the self-agrandizing SOB in central Africa who's leading a forced army of child soldiers and HE'S NOT FIGHTING ...FOR ANYTHING MEANINGFUL just his own continued deviant ambitions. His so called Lord's Resistance Army visits the most horrendous acts of violence on innocent civilians routinely and he's been doing it for OVER TWENTY YEARS.

What's different? Jason Russell and a group of determined activists have been spreading the word about his atrocities for some time now but Jason's video has gone viral this week in the virtual world of Facebook & the blogosphere. Here is the link. Watch it. It is very well done for a relative amateur and he makes the point without gratuitous horror. After you've watched it, I strongly urge you to support the campaign. You will hear about whiners and arm chair activists who are complaining about the amount of money spent making film, traveling, and showing film - DUH!! It's a global campaign to make this guy public pariah #1. THAT'S HOW YOU DO THAT!!

Anyway, watch it and pass it on. Thanks for your caring, but most of all thanks for being there and being YOU!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

Like What You See In The World? BE THE CHANGE!!

My People - Are you happy with the world as you see it today? I have your reading assignment and I do not make it lightly. "With each sector reporting out the overwhelming challenges we were each facing from this perfect storm, we sought to... discern together what we were each to do. One glaring conclusion was that we had our ladders up against the wrong wall in a most dramatic way. With the global economy the dominant world institution, we all assumed that the environment was a subset of the global economy. In fact, the opposite is true. Common sense dictates that, since we are all supported physically by the earth’s air, water and soil, the global economy is actually a subset of the environment. Further, we realized, there is no way we 6 billion+ people can all get down from one ladder, get across the room and get up the other ladder without massive disruption. The transition is not going to be easy and will take every one of us to our limits…and probably past them! All we can do is each take personal responsibility for our lives and our families and start taking care of home….which is literally our own watershed. We each have to help create a ‘local, living economy’ wherever we live." This is an excerpt from "Trojan Horse of Love" by Susan Davis. It is freely available for download at http://www.capitalmissions.com/ (http://www.capitalmissions.com/THOL_Easter_2011.pdf) If you care about nothing more than your family, or you care about the whole of humanity in the coming times, get and read this. All you women in my network, get and read this. EVERYONE, get and read this. It is critically important. When you get done, or before you get done, pass it on, to EVERYONE.

Thanks for reading this, and have a great day!!

What Is At Stake & Why We MUST Change!

Cultural diversity is not only humanity’s hallmark of progress, but an insurance policy against extinction as a species. Diversity gives not only cultural and economic riches derived from different perspectives on natural resources and what it means to be human, but options to problem solving that are stifled in a homogenized society. When such a society is organized around economic goals that are measured by profit margins for private gain by powerful elites, where the demands of those who bear cash as the ticket of admission to the marketplace rule, rather than the needs of people, then those who are deprived – and those who have never been part of such a global economy – must necessarily suffer. The genocide of tribal peoples, therefore, is symptomatic of a deep malaise in the world’s metropolises. Indigenous peoples will suffer the most, but humanity as a whole will suffer the loss of some of its memory, not only of a unique knowledge of the natural world, but of its ability to cope with the future in various, diverse ways.

THY WILL BE DONE, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil,

Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett

Harper Collins, 1995, p. 685

Blessings in all we do - and must do

John

Should Ron Paul be considered a serious contender for the Republican nomination?

This was the question posed by The Economist website (http://www.economist.com/economist-asks/should-ron-paul-be-considered-serious-contender-republican-nomination) Two response comments were significant and worth repeating here, in the hope that they may get more exposure. I don't necessarily agree with what they are saying about Ron Paul, but what they are saying about the Republican field of presidential candidates is right on:

Current total votes: 10189 as of 3:00 PM EDT 21 August 2011

Voting opened on Aug 18th 2011

TheRedSheep wrote

The exact wording of the question was: "Should Ron Paul be considered a serious contender for the *Republican nomination*," not "for the presidency." The latter is debatable, the former much less so. His problem from past elections--that he comes across as a crank--doesn't really apply when you put him on the same stage as Bachmann. Or Cain, or Gingrich, or essentially anyone at Ames bar Pawlenty.

He sounds distinctly reasonable by comparison; he has crank positions, but he gives the strong impression of having thought them through and done research of some sort. The fact that he's been expounding those same crank positions for decades, without swerving, makes him utterly immune to the charges of flip-flopping that devastate Romney. He has Tea Party cred, but isn't super-strongly associated with them and the gag reflex they presently trigger in the American psyche. Throw in his horde of gold-standard-mujahideen supporters, and you've got a solid contender.

His main problem now, as I see it, lies in his tendency to stammer his responses. That's the downside of actually thinking about what you're saying instead of fishing about your memory for a vaguely pertinent pre-rehearsed sound bite. But what do I know? I'm a left-leaning centrist.

Lucky Buckeye wrote

Ron Paul's steadfast belief in the full validity of returning to the gold standard as an economic cure-all disqualifies him for serious consideration, no matter what else he believes. He consistently displays a rabid, and unfiltered loathing of anything government, and seems to have been educated in the early 1800's. He appears to be detached from reality - not a good characteristic for a US President. Still, these are not his most critical weaknesses.

The US presidency is a demanding job which wears on its occupants like a bad case of the flu. I have watched Ron Paul speak, and it is clear to me that he is too old, too frail, and too weak to be President. He makes Bob Dole and John McCain seem like strapping youngsters.

Due to Republican-instituted changes in election rules in many states, and the current shape of the electoral college (owing mainly to population shifts), it appears to me that a second term for Obama is in serious jeaopardy. I'm not even sure that it would be the best thing for the nation or the Democrats (moderates and liberals) for Obama to be re-elected.

Just as only Nixon could go to China, create the EPA, and retreat from Vietnam, it may be the case that only a sane and decent Republican can deal with the tea party and the other self-obsessed Republican rabble that currently occupies Congress. For that reason, I am hopeful that Republicans will nominate either Mitt Romney or John Huntsman, who at this point in time, appear to be the only Republican candidates who aren't certifiable as lunatics; and I mean that seriously. The others would be considered a joke at any other time in American history. I have never in my many years seen anything like the existing Republican slate of candidates seeking office in America. Their lack of comprehension, sense of 'real history', and compassion is shocking. To propose tax increases on the poor as a solution to the nation's debt problem is vicious and patently absurd, as is labeling the filthy rich as 'job creators'. Their doublespeak and semantic dishonesty is beyond compare.

I am losing hope for America, for the first time in my life. Our Constitution was not designed to deal with politicians who placed only their own interests above all else. Tea Partiers and their ilk would see 10 million people die in the streets before they would consent to one tax increase - even one returning rates to the 1950's. It's truly preposterous.

*****************

It does give you pause to consider, when the best that the rabid-publicans can put forward as candidates are backward looking, intellectually "lights are on but no one's home", certifiable nut cases, Ron Paul almost looks legitimate. Scary!! I feel the same way about Barack Obama that I did about Arnold in California - "You elected the guy to take on the most significant crisis in recent history that was twenty years in the making (or more!!) and then bitch because he hasn't "made everything right in two years???" WTF???!! Are YOU crazy??

Thanks for reading - and have a GREAT day!!

Smokemaster