Love Rules

Nonviolent Communication, chapter 1

-- by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.

"Believing that it is our nature to enjoy giving and receiving in a compassionate manner, I have been preoccupied most of my life with two questions. What happens to disconnect us from our compassionate nature, leading us to behave violently and exploitatively? And conversely, what allows some people to stay connected to their compassionate nature under even the most trying circumstances? ..." ---- by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., The Center for Non-Violent Communication; read more on cite

Spirituality, Free Love and the New Role of Women

-- Gina Weismann

"...Love has certain qualities. Love has to do with compassion, with perception, with interest, with curiosity, with the joy of living, and with grace. Not long ago I had the thought that love without agape'(1), without grace, without kindness, without helpful support, cannot exist. And suddenly I felt how happy it made me when I can be unconditionally loving and if I can give that to someone. If from there I look at the love between men and women, I have to see love as free, and then it is something very beautiful. ..." -- Gina Weismann; read more on cite

Compassionate Communication

--Marshall Rosenberg

"At an early age, most of us were taught to speak and think Jackal. This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately it provokes defensiveness, resistance and counterattack. Giraffe bids us to speak from the heart, to talk about what is going on for us - without judging others. In this idiom, you give people an opportunity to say yes, although you respect no for an answer. Giraffe is a language of requests; Jackal is a language of demands. ..." --Marshall Rosenberg; Love and Evolution Site; read more on cite

Conversion

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conversion

"...It's only a matter of Time; but considering that the Mayan Calendar ends on 21st December 2012 it's really NO-TIME at all. Anchored in the Template of Oneness, Giddy in the Heights of True Love, Floating on Rainbow Clouds of No-Mind, No-Problem, No-Worries, Mate... and transported by Gleaming Starspangled Trekset Magical Mystery Tour Bus, I arrived back in Melbourne on the 21st March high on Soluntra's marvellous Star Essence.

And That's When The Loony Lords Of The Labyrinth Took Over

Bear in mind it was the Fall Equinox in the Wonderful Land of Oz, and the Wizard was ready for some Real Fun. I took a cab with Aku Ek Tara back to her little house in St Kilda (where I'd left the rest of my 3D baggage). As soon as we entered I sensed a powerful magnetic field of despair and isolation: it was emanating from Aku's nomadic house guest, a Swiss visionary painter, musician and mystic named Christian Camenzind. Aku announced that she needed some head space and disappeared into her room. I made tea and had it in the garden with Christian, who began to unburden his soul to me. After a while it dawned on me that I was face-to-face with the Phantom of the Unfinished Opera of Duality. Christian had taken on my own former experience of Unrequited Love and Tragic Romance - which was the meaning of my earlier name "Tamaares" and on the last day of the Falls Creek Reunion I had edited out that name, having played out the painful cycle of separation and loneliness that has been the lot of all passionate lovers during the Time of Duality.

Christian finally let me in on a "secret": he was actually St Germain. Well, he could have been Count Dracula for all I cared. I felt compelled to try and heal him, to fill the vacuum in his heart; and so we went out and had a Chinese meal together. ..." --Antares, Magick River; read more on cite

Death Penalty as Revenge

--A Message From The Dalai Lama on the Death Penalty."

"...The death penalty fulfills a preventive function, but it is also very clearly a form of revenge. It is an especially severe form of punishment because it is so final. The human life is ended and the executed person is deprived of the opportunity to change, to restore the harm done or compensate for it. Before advocating execution we should consider whether criminals are intrinsically negative and harmful people or whether they will remain perpetually in the same state of mind in which they committed their crime or not. The answer, I believe, is definitely not. However horrible the act they have committed, I believe that everyone has the potential to improve and correct themselves...." --Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama; read more on cite

The Gift Economy

--Gifford Pinchot

"Lest we think that the principles of a gift economy will only work for simple, primitive or small enterprises, Hyde points out that the community of scientists follows the rules of a gift economy. The scientists with highest status are not those who possesses the most knowledge; they are the ones who have contributed the most to their fields. A scientist of great knowledge, but only minor contributions is almost pitied - his or her career is seen as a waste of talent.

At a symposium a scientist gives a paper. Selfish scientists do not hope others give better papers so they can come away with more knowledge than they had to offer in exchange. Quite the reverse. Each scientist hopes his or her paper will provide a large and lasting value. By the rules of an exchange economy, the scientist hopes to come away a "loser," because that is precisely how one wins in science.

Antelope meat called for a gift economy because it was perishable and there was too much for any one person to eat. Information also loses value over time and has the capacity to satisfy more than one. In many cases information gains rather than loses value through sharing. While the exchange economy may have been appropriate for the industrial age, the gift economy is coming back as we enter the information age...." -- Gifford Pinchot; read more on cite

Hope is Not for Wimps

--Frances Moore Lappe

"... I was aware that without hope we die, if not physically, certainly spiritually. So my self-appointed task of spreading hope seemed pretty important. It's taken me three decades, though, to begin to understand that hope is not about cheerleading or even about stacking up the evidence... Hope isn't in any picture, in any static accounting. Hope, I learned, is more verb than noun. It is action. Hope is not what we find but what we ourselves become. But how?

...Perhaps we are looking for hope in all the wrong places. And maybe this is one reason the World Health Organization reports that depression is now the 4th leading cause of the loss of productive life as a result of disability and premature death. In less than 20 years, it will place second. Maybe we've been looking for hope in evidence—in tallying up the positive and weighing it against the negative. Hope is something else. Hope is what we do..." Francis Moore Lappe; Gary Zukav Interview read more on cite