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Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
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Wednesday
Feb022011

The People Speak

Greetings,

By now the people's domino revolution in Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen, and Jordan and Syria to a lesser extent, is flooding the air with images and words of Egyptians demanding their basic freedoms. A concept taken for granted in so many places where human rights and free elections follow a democratic path.

Democracy is a messy business. Or, as Gandhi said, "Democracy is a good idea."

Pundits crow about the rise and fall of an authoritarian PUPPET. How the U.S. has been giving him $1.5 Billion a year for 30 years to maintain their political edge. Buying off a dictator is expensive. Game Over.

Hosni the obscure relic is an old stubborn man. Desperate people do desperate things. They stall for time promising sham elections. They cut off the internet. They hope the army will save them. Wishful thinking Mr. Puppet. The people know better.

Straw men and their wives pack in a hurry. 19 private jets filled with Egyptian businessmen and their families left last week for Abu Dabble. Money talks and gets the hello out.  

His selected (VPP) Vicious Person Puppet, Sullyman, is well known for his manipulative diplomatic skills. What is less well know but becoming clear is how he was a CIA front man in the extraordinary rendition program where terror suspects and innocent civilians were flown to Egypt and other friendly countries and tortured. 

The revolutionary weather channel calls for millions of Egyptian citizens to gather and express their desire to say goodbye to Mr. Puppet every single day. Tick, tock.

As one man in Tahir Square said, "I would rather suffer from hunger than die of fear."

Metta.

Monday
Jan312011

Mr.Tuk Tuk

A metallic Cambodian loudspeaker spoke, Now here this, The tuk-tuk is leaving in five minutes, Departing for points unknown, A massive short celestial event known as YOUR LIFE will depart in five minutes. 

You are advised to assemble all the necessary documents, certified seals of approval, water, invisible guide books, sunscreen, funny money and so on...you will visit the Mind-At-Large on your short, fast, easy tour.

Bring your life with you, And a glossy greasy Laughing Planet guidebook with heavily creased pages. If you attempt to read while moving at the speed of light or 186,000 miles per second you will discover a new sense of perspective.

You may be surprised or traumatized depending on your perception to realize your experience at Angkor is not about seeing the temples. You will DO Angkor. Get the t-shirt. Check it off your list. Less is more.

Please conclude all private and group discussions, disagreements or arguments with your fellow travelers to ascertain your destination. Talking time is finished. 

The tuk-tuk driver has his helmet and vest. His vest has a green four-digit number. If he tries to bring you into Angkor without the vest he faces massive surprises. For starters he will lose his job and have to return to his small distant isolated village where he will plant rice and provoke white cows with socialist Marxist production tools to pull the plow through mud.

The biggest dream for many young Cambodian men is to become a tuk-tuk driver. If he loses his tuk-tuk job his family will starve to death. This is a common problem here. Death by starvation. If you survive you win. 

If he dies you will be held in escrow. (Old French; a scrap, a roll of parchment)

A tuk-tuk river driver has an easy job. An easy life. He drives you to a temple and crashes out. You feed him. He takes you back where you started. He makes $15-20 for the day. 

The average Cambodian’s daily wage is $2.03.

Not a single woman in Siem Reap is a tuk-tuk driver. There are 3-4 women tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh. They are as rare as clean drinking water, sanitation, hospitals and schools. Women work in massage parlors, restaurants and guest houses. They are the guest and you are the house. 

Your house has many symbolic rooms: the basement is where your unconscious lives breaths-laughs and dances where it reveals inner vision. Clean all your rooms. Take out the garbage. Explore your diverse rooms. 

Don’t sweat the small stuff, it’s all small stuff. You are the housekeeper of perception, sensation, form, symbols and nothing.

A woman doesn't work as a tuk-tuk driver because: 

-it's too dangerous

-it's inappropriate

-it's foolish

-they lack the education, intelligence, drive, initiative

-they haven't broken free of deeply ingrained social and cultural stereotypes: a woman's place is in the home, producing offspring, taking care of kids and the elderly, washing, cleaning, and cooking

-their family will kill them with love and affection

Thirty years ago a Cambodian woman was lucky to finish 9th grade. She married and stayed at home. She produced children in assembly line operations with the highest quality control standards known to modern medicine and umbilical chords.

It will take another generation before women become tuk-tuk drivers. Tisk, tisk, tuk, tuk.

Your mother was appointed to have you.



Saturday
Jan292011

Bye Bye Mr. Murbarak

Greetings,

The Egyptian people have spoken with one voice. People power. 

They speak and demonstrate and march and suffer and sacrifice and create a unified community demanding their basic human rights, an end to BIG BROTHER police state dictatorship, corruption and endless cycle of poverty. They finally had enough. 

The Egyptian dictator and their cronies pocketed all the money. Playing their game they manipulated countries to increase military money. They pretended to be open and democratic. They created a police state where FEAR ruled. They put 60 million Egyptians in jails. They tortured innocent citizens.  

Now they will run away dragging their pitiful lives and join the Tunisian dictator in Saudiville, a remote luxurious villa filled with slaves, swimming pools, palm trees and a short future in the long now. 

Metta.

 

 

 

Friday
Jan282011

Papa Neutrino

Greetings,

Mr. Neutrino floated away on his raft. Before sailing away he left some instructions. He believed in human potential, joy, creativity and freedom. 

Metta.

YOUR THREE DEEPEST DESIRES (or YOUR 3 TOP PRIORITIES)

1. If you could only do one more thing before you die, what would it be? In order to answer this, you must set aside all considerations of whether you think you CAN do it or not, how much time it would take, what kind of efforts or money would be needed, etc., and especially what anyone else would think. Simply assume for the purpose of this MENTAL exercise, that you WILL be able to do whatever it is you name, but that as soon as you've completed it, your life is over. It's the ONLY thing you're going to do. Write your answer down, with the date. 

2. Now, by special grace, and because you are moving toward the one thing you want most, you are going to get to do a second thing, in addition. What would it be? Write that down, as number 2.

3. And, finally, you are given an opportunity for a third and last thing, in addition to your first and second choices. Write it down as well.

OK, now you've found your top three desires in life, at least for now. Don't worry if the answers are different tomorrow, the important thing right now is just to ask and answer from as deep a place as possible.

Next, you are going to rate your seven levels. You might want to print out the Seven Levels description for easy reference.

RATING YOUR SEVEN LEVELS

This process is going to give your unconscious mind information about your own personal evaluation of how your life is going for you on each of your seven levels. You are going to rate each level as it is now, today, based on a scale of 1-10.

The 10 is your own personal best that you have ever experienced in each level, whether it was a single peak experience or a particularly good and satisfying time period, whether it is now or at some time in the past. If this is the first time you have done this rating, you will need to think a little and name to yourself when that 10 was, picture it as fully as you can, so you know clearly what your 10 is in each level.

Then compare this to where you feel you are now in each level, and give your present status a number. Do not use any ideal or theoretical experiences as your 10, nothing you've read about or hoped for, only what you personally have actually experienced. From time to time you will have experiences that go beyond your present 10, creating a new benchmark for comparison.

Write down your present rating numbers for each level. 
1. Instinctive -
2. Sexual -
3. Imitative -
4. Emotional -
5. Intellectual -
6. Higher Emotional -
7. Higher Intellectual
 -

Read more...

Thursday
Jan272011

Polyommatus Blue Butterflies

Greetings,

In a series of evolutionary waves over millions of years, Nabokov theorized they started in Asia, flew over the warm Bering Strait and down to Chile. It wasn't chilly in Chile. It was warm swarming with butterflies. 

His passion as a self-taught lepidopterist into their 10 million years flight has been vindicated by gene-sequencing scientists headed by Dr. Naomi Pierce, curator of lepidoptera at Harvard. She was captivated by his idea of butterflies coming from Asia. “It was an amazing, bold hypothesis,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, we could test this.’ ”

NYT, read more...

Metta.