Category: Seen on the Web

Ubi Caritas

Jon10 Comments

Bob Griffith of Hypersync posted a link to this YouTube video of a boy in the Netherlands singing about the love in his unconventional family. Aside from the obvious questions it raises, such as why the Christian Right is apoplectic over the idea of letting everyone have the right to marry whomever they choose, there’s something deeper here besides.

As I commented on his post, I remarked that ironically, as Europe has become less “Christian,” and church attendance has plunged, Europe may be becoming more “Christian” in other ways, not associated with religion. So where is God in “post-Christian” Europe?

For me, the answer is a universal one, found in an ancient hymn of the Church:

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.

(Where there is charity and love, there is God.)

Something in the boy’s song gives me hope. Not just for equal rights for gay people, but of something far more profound. God is love. Love conquers all.

Steve Pavlina on Nonduality

Jon7 Comments

Although its over an hour, this is worth listening to. Steve Pavlina uses the freedom of the podcast format to explain his idea of the “Law of Attraction” at length, and in the course of doing so, nonduality as well, which he calls “subjective reality.”

It’s fascinating (for me, at least) to hear nonduality being discussed in a completely non-religious, even non-spiritual format. For instance, enlightenment teachers and religions have developed a vocabulary to distinguish between the higher, universal Self that’s in all beings e.g. (Atman, Christ, Universal Mind, etc.) with the illusory “self” that thinks one particular body-mind sensor unit is its self (the soul, flesh, ego, etc.). The lack of such a vocabulary makes it a particular challenge to elucidate such concepts to an audience completely unfamiliar with the subject.

Yet Pavlina does a masterful job, and has some great answers for why the most apparently obvious things in the Universe (e.g. separate beings, separate consciousnesses) are not as they seem. His idea of the Law of Attraction (particularly in the engaged, active mode) also parallels what my teacher has taught me about how to change aspects of my life.

Non-duality breaks out of the “spiritual” closet. Who’d’ve thunk it?

Zaadz

Jon5 Comments

Andrew did it, Zach did it, Julie did it, and I did it. We all joined Zaadz.com, a new online community created for people who want to “change the world,” and especially those with a spiritual bent or an interest in health, healing, the environment, etc.

If you’re not yet blogging, but have thought about starting, Zaadz might be just right for you. If you are already blogging, you’ll probably want to use the excellent profile and interest-sharing tools to make more friends and bring more people to your site. In addition, Zaadz has a large number of moderated forums, called pods, for further discussion.

I’m quite enthusiastic about it. Where else can you find over 300 people who say they LOVED the movie I Heart Huckabees? Zaadz looks to be a safe and supporting environment to develop wider connections and further your vision.

One Day at a Time

Jon3 Comments

It’s been a long time since I first came across Peter Russell’s excellent site. However, one of the more trivial-seeming items on it has been the one that has intrigued me most: he keeps track of his “(ext)age in days”:http://peterussell.com/age.html. Russell notes that “The day is the natural cycle of our lives. The cycle of light and dark, wakefulness and sleep, has more significance than the cycle of the seasons.” Who can argue with that?

I was interested in tracking days for the same reason he was, to think about time differently, and to encourage myself to see each day as a new event, full of all the possibility it contains. But it’s not easy to make that work without having frequent reminders of the number. So, I adapted his Javascript for my own site and have a reminder for myself in the very header of the page. (I also added calculations for how many lunar cycles I have lived, and what percentage of this cycle is complete.) If you’d like to calculate your age in days, go to http://peterussell.com/age.html.

Welcome back, Mark!

Jon3 Comments

There’s at least one good thing about a wonderful blogger taking a hiatus from Web: like all things it tends to be impermanent.

Mark Walter of Eternal Awareness is back. Mark’s blog has struck me as one of the wisest and most honest personal expressions on the Web, and one of the most beautiful as well.

Please stop by and treat your soul to the company of this fellow traveler. And it might be nice to leave a comment?especially since his last 100 comments have been spam!