into the woods..

yesterday I helped send off two of the beautiful goddesses in my life into the beginning of a new life. it was magnificent, and great experience, due to the reflections in my life.

yesterday also brought the second to last exam of my college career, before our final period has even begun. My last exam is on Monday, and I still have two papers to finish Monday and Tuesday, so I really don't know what to think yet.

Come September I will (briefly) be in western mass, and come December, Saveria and I will hopefully find ourselves settling into a wonderful new home in Northern California.

wow. I sit back, and I am still amazed.


regardless, it is now time to journey to the serene woods of northern vermont. the rainbow is coming to an end, and a journey shall begin.


if I miss you this weekend,
I shall see you soon.
much love,

~J.Sun

I am not a poet. I swear.

A.B.r.a.v.e.N.e.w.W.o.r.l.d.

I have had visions,
generations into our coming of age,
of Aquarius.

The war has been waged.
The wounds have healed.
Our charred skin has been shed.

A very different place it is.
Indeed.

Evolutionary consciousness,
an evolution of Spirit.
The great homoluminescence,
we have become.

Another leap of evolution,
we are.

Our daemons have been disbanded,
our sickly pleasures forgotten.

Our senses have returned,

the warmth of our hearts pour fourth,

an infinite sea of creation.

Our eyes glimmer with every thought.

We have nothing to fear, and only everything to love.

We are grounded in endless possibility,
amongst the seeds our love has planted.

Yet we soar through timeless voids

of endless mystery.

Into harmony we have returned,

eternal bliss.

The serenity of infinite compassion.

Oneness.

We are informed by the universe, guided by her ways.

We are keen to her needs, and invested in her protection.

We are mother earth, we are father sky.
We are the change we have prayed for.
We are the beauty our worlds once lacked.
We are Spirit.

We are One.

The lightbeings have emerged.

Shining.

Endless light.
Infinite possibilities,
conduits of uncertain possibility,
weaving the fabric of life.

We are the future, we once dreamt.

Hack the Planet!

this coming weekend, at Hotel Pennsylvania in New York (which is soon to be demolished), all technological hell will break loose.

The hackers are gathering.
Art. Tech. Beauty.
Electrical Mysticism.

We will explore these conduits of energy and momentum.
Social. Technological. Physical. and the Intangible.

We are changing the world.

www.thelasthope.org/

--------------------------

I've been considering this trip for some time now, reluctantly.. though I could only see myself there, and not here in Boston for the weekend..

The intricacies of the situation became clear today, while considering more details.. and there is no way I can avoid going. I will not be - once again - held back by this institution in boston.. and this was the choice, to step down to the level of consciousness my professors think is appropriate, or reach up towards the infinite, our ability to create and innovate.

I'm down.

what's more, I will be a (slightly) homeless wanderer in a magnificent city of beauty and destruction, of energetic confusion and mass hysteria.

I am going alone.
and with only my food, the clothes on my body, and computer in hand.


so if you would like to spend some time with a wandering, faerie-hacker moseying about the city, feel free to give a call..

sometimes, I eat a few mushrooms

broken down into their simplest form, our actions and choices are simple examples in problem-solving. This is why AI is so much fun to research (it's as philosophical and abstract as it is technical).

We solve problems with our toolsets, thoughts and pathways of intellectual discovery, scraps of our experience pieced together to innovate and create.

thus, if we need to act differently, we need to think differently.

if our thoughts are like pathways of (often past) experience, we need to be *creating* new pathways of thought to act differently.

shamanic journeys and their medicines accomplish just that.. they ask us to try a different experience, to change our experience. they offer alternate pathways of thought, and beg for new connections and types of signals to emerge.

see, we *can* change the world.
our actions needn't be changed,
simply our thoughts

A Live Foodie's Brunch

I just couldn't help but enjoy the beauty of our brunch this morning:

(no utensils allowed)

. fresh whole avacado (remember, hands only)
. fresh mango with coconut butter
. goji berries
. pink lady apple with almond butter
. kombucha


there is so much high-vibrational energy here in this apartment right now, it is beautiful. We had our art gathering last night - more about this coming later - and the morning has just been spent basking in that spirit.

So I've spent the last hour reading and commenting on other folks' blogs, and I originally didn't plan on posting anything to mine yet.. until I came across this article.

The line that caught my attention:

"The researchers told a European reproductive health conference that it was likely the problems were caused by DNA damage in sperm."

Here is a good example of how science can often go off the path of sensible understanding and logic. Let us pick apart the article a little bit:

• The article is examining the link (in men) between low fertility rates and age.
• As with similar research into female fertility rates, we've built this concept of a biological clock.
• Conceptually, the biological clock is simply the idea that the biological process in question (fertility in this example) degrades over time.

So the older you are, the less fertile. ok, seems to make sense.

the problem I have with this is the conjecture that is made by the presentation and interpretation of this conceptual biological clock.

here, we are led to believe that our functionality simply degrades with time, I feel led to believe that this is just how our bodies are, that with time, they don't work as well.. like a car or any other mechanical system or machine.

makes sense..

but are there other possibilities?

let's check out that quote again:

"The researchers told a European reproductive health conference that it was likely the problems were caused by DNA damage in sperm."

So the researchers believe the lower fertility rates are a result of higher rates of damaged DNA in sperm for the folks queried.

Our question then becomes - and this would seem to be the more important question resulting from this research, the question the article could propose to its readers - what causes or leads to these higher rates of damaged DNA?

good question.

here's my point:

Rather than give up our freedom and responsibility over our lives (by believing we have a biological clock, beyond our reach of control and influence), how can we identify the places where we actually create this situation? What are we doing to ourselves that is damaging our DNA?

Where does cancer come from? (woah.. that came out of left field.. 10pt if you see how I made the connection)

what can we do differently?

are we not the ones in control over the gradual destruction of our physical, emotional, and spiritual forms?

if we do in fact have some influence in this degradation, what choices can we make differently, and how do we reverse this degradation?

::sigh::

Let us talk, for a moment, about the war.

my favorite two lines are at the bottom:

"If brings to more than $650bn (£330bn) the amount provided by Congress for the war in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003."

if brings? what the hell are they trying to say there? even if you swap the if for an it, this still doesn't make sense.

or am I just crazy?

ok, on a slightly more serious note, the second one:

"Congress did attach two conditions to the funds - prohibiting the construction of permanent US military bases in Iraq and requiring Baghdad to match any US reconstruction aid."

So we will require Iraq to pay an amount equal to that which we destroy? We're going to invest 162 billion *more* towards destroying a group of people, then require these people to pay *our* reconstruction companies for sketchy back-room political deals, high-salary positions, driven by only selfish, dishonest, and immoral motivations?

why do we even need to do this? why are we not yet rioting in the streets, clamoring at the white house doors, cuffs in hand? have we become complacent? how far have we allowed ourselves to drift? how could this be different? should I be breaking this here cycle?

but I don't quite get Congress's logic, getting lost on the destruction part.

more about my friends..

after a freak car accident that nearly killed her:

"Life is the most precious thing there is, comparable to nothing else. The meanings of our lives are in what we create. We are given art supplies of unfathomable versatility – what will we do with them? We have the freedom to create beauty or ugliness, kisses or violence, and most of us spend our lives copying the creations of others instead of being true artists. What would the world be like if we all followed our artistic inspiration in the creation of our lives and held the lives and creations of the world as unfathomably sacred? If we each knew in every fiber of our beings that each of us is a complete and utter miracle. That the Divine has many hands and is creating a work of art with each one; each hand is a living creature and each work of art is a life. We are all one and all unique, and the whole thing is miraculous. The hands cannot see the one body they are all attached to; they fight amongst themselves; they destroy one another’s art; they copy one another’s art, fearful of doing the unexpected and not fitting in.

It is our choice what we create. People hold so tightly to their pain and let go so easily of their joy; it is so easy for us to go from joy to pain and so difficult to go from pain to joy. We insist that we have a right to our pain and forget that we have an equal right to our joy. Death teaches us to let go of pain, to be grateful and enjoy and make the most of our lives."

I just can't let this one slide..

I interact with the news in such odd ways, and new things have been standing out to me more and more over the last 9 months.

Here's a fun one.. oh, Bill Clinton

To start with the humorous, I just can't get over that look on his face. It's difficult to contain my laughter..

The other side of it is a little darker:

Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are to hold a joint rally on Friday, but Mr Clinton will be in Europe and will not attend.

"President Clinton is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States," said spokesman Matt McKenna.

So Bill supports Obama, but is going elsewhere. Nor does he pledge his support, his spokesfolks say he is "obviously committed." ok.

either way.. why am I starting to feel this way.. so I ask myself, how do I feel, and how much sense does it make?

well, I feel conflicted, like I'm being lied to, and manipulated. Little things stand out and don't add up, giving me the sense that more is going on than we hear about.

However, our correspondent adds, while the Obama campaign says it is confident Mr Clinton will play a role in unifying the Democratic party, relations between the two camps remain strained.

oh right.. manipulation!

our realities are shaped by us, our physical and astral beings, and the world surrounding us.. It's beautiful, but how much are we living for or through, other people? How deeply are we thinking about our actions and the things we tell ourselves, and how much are we thinking independently or on our own?

It was only a couple of weeks ago that:

Earlier, Mr Obama had paid tribute to Mrs Clinton and hinted that she would play a role in any future Obama administration.

Mrs Clinton has said she would be "open" to the idea of being Mr Obama's vice-presidential running-mate.

That's cool, they'll work together.

You don't even need to read this one: Surprise Obama-Clinton talks held

woah! surprise!

Another theme I hear is of party unity:

"This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans," she said.

Indeed.

Here's something on an entirely different track..
what catches my eye, many of the children in our country, and around the world, feel the same way.

how will we survive, as a species, when our next generation feels this way?

ok, back to my lemon-ginger kombucha.

:)

I rarely concern myself with the "news"

I do, however, often find it amusing. It's becoming a bit of an unsettling ability to find at least a few ridiculously entertaining (usually something ironic about the world outside the store, or the words inside) aspects of *each* report I actually checkout (and other times I struggle not to get angered by these reports)

Consider this..

This is one that actually angered me a bit. More precisely, it touches on a frustration of mine with contemporary medicine and science.

"It is thought she revived after the effect of drugs - given to her mother during a complicated labour - wore off."

these are the sentences that stick out to me.

I won't go into the tyraid now, but contemporary medicine has completely *fucked* childbirth.. amongst other things (and in consideration of our species' survival.. I think this is an important matter).

If, and when you are going through, or accompanying someone through a pregnancy, please, please, take the time to educate yourselves and make your own choices.

Deciding whether or not some drug, even under the guise as a "medicine," or "procedure," deserves more consideration than the 5 seconds (or even minutes) hospital staff give you.

Understand that the common belief is that our birthrates are rising, when in fact, complications and difficulty in birth is rising. Fewer and fewer women in America are giving birth on their own. I don't mean alone, or at home, I mean without the intervention of hospital staff - not good.


-------------------
in other news...

what do I find amusing here?

after all the arrests, trials, media, and waste of time, money and energy, the problem still exists; Naples is still run by the mafia, and is actually in *terrible* shape.

I've a friend who just returned from a semester in Italy, and who traveled through Naples before leaving Europe. She shared her amusement in this matter too, explaining how there are massive *piles* of trash, everywhere.

Yes.. the mafia runs the garbage collection in the surrounding areas, dumping their collection trucks on land all over Naples.

Interesting..

(now we know why those travel deals to Naples are so cheap! ..but it's ITALY! it must be nice.. ahhh.. marketing..)


OK.. I'm adding this as an after thought (I guess today is news day..)

clicky clicky..

The important line:

"But Mr McCain can draw on the deep pockets of the Republican National Committee, which has far more money than the Democratic National Committee, correspondents say."

let's think about this for a moment..

. every republican president of the last 40 years has managed to turn this nation's debt into a new record

and

. the republican national committee has more financial assets than their rivals?


hmmm...

holy hell, does this government frustrate me..

types of people...

that I hang out with:

"For the first time in 20 years I am beginning to open to repressed memories from my chldhood that I haven't been able to access until now. It started with some intense energy work I am doing with a Tibetan master who has very high vibration energy. In connecting to the deeper parts of my body I have been able to open and release tension that I have held onto out of fear and the desire to control. I am opening to love now and letting fear lose its power and grip over me (although it is still there). I live in my body as though it were for the first time. Everyday I piece things together more and more and realize the many layers of this process, the latent mystery. It feels a little overwhelming, a little terrifying, and also very exciting because my awakening has started. My dreams have been recognized and are slowly being answered. I will not run away from my own creation. The truth is in my body. The key now is to be patient and very aware of my body and the process. I am opened to any insights people have based on their own experience of realizing memories that have been repressed and stored as toxins in the body. I feel like there is no beginning or end to any of this."

justice

one thing that disgust me is the use of the word 'justice' in any context that involves the United States government's view on our (national/international) legal system.

here's a great example:
linky, linky

to me.. this is an opening for justice, but is something like this honored by the United States government? I guess the world would be a very different place if it were in fact honored.

though if this were the case, I'd be considering a lot of legal action:
. IRS
. FDA
. nearly all of corporate America
. and I'm sure a whole lot more.. (maybe the catholic church?)

all who've either manipulated us, taken advantage of us, killed us, or otherwise inflicted harm.

robots - going back a moment.

we were discussing those crazy mechanical-bull-style vibrators, this is the conversation that ensued:

"really? that's crazy!

I don't like machines fucking me..
there's an empty, echoy feeling to it

well, I mean, it's ok.. I like it..

but I prefer humans.

then again, I'm not an android yet."


future addendum: "that may change"
future addendum #2: "take out the I like it, cause I don't really like it. it's ok"

control yourself!

I've been reminded what we impress on our children.
Interesting.

I had a great time with all you folks today.. thanks :)

I've decided..

It might help to send Bush through one of the no-child-left-behind intelligence tests and see where he falls.

My weekends really are magickal

Time, as a creation of our being, becomes a creature of our definition.

This sensation often brings me places I never would have imagined, and often with relatively short notice.

4pm Friday night I boarded a bus for western massachusetts, with the intention of being dropped off in the vicinity of 6pm, on Springfield or there abouts. The intention: spend the weekend helping my finance move her abode. By midnight I was enjoying the warmth of the night breeze as we skirted through the lost hills of massachusetts, amidst the north western portions of the state.

in all honesty, we knew very little about where we were headed.. the facts:

• our supposed destination was that of an all-night gathering.
• driving directions were simple: take road 1 to road 2, turn left onto road 2. Drive. Look for a tin man.

little did we realize this would be a gathering of an inconceivable nature. If there was any place you would want to share in the psychedelic world, this was it.

we arrived knowing absolutely nothing about the premises and its inhabitants, though details emerged as time carried on. We learned that our host was an artist. By nature of his backyard, we knew stone was his medium of choice. We also heard he was an antique stove dealer.

Either way, this place was incredible; 20 acres of land, mostly populated by dense forest, though the few acres immediately surrounding his house and workshop had become an intricate stone maze of an inconceivable nature. By stone I really mean boulder; the smallest hunks of rock were desk-sized.. and the largest, were that of pick-up trucks. HUGE.

consider stone henge + japanese rock gardens + the garden of eden + dragons.

(yes, dragons)

about an hour into our visit, we realized the rock formations towering over and around us, separating the various garden "rooms" was the body of a massive stone dragon.

he also had a towering 15foot san pedro cactus just inside the back entrance to his house.


eventually we found ourselves excruciatingly bored of the party's intoxicated audience, and upon further consideration, voted for our departure.


--

Saturday evening was a bit quieter - physically, certainly not energetically. While lying in meditative silence - a place we call home, to the inka, infinity - my beautiful finance opened me to the places she had traveled. Through her, came powerful ancestral songs from cultures around the world. She shared her sense of deep energetic connection, despite feeling physically incapable of the frequencies that would come together in music.

it was in that moment, the following made sense:

our worlds are made up of our thoughts.
for me to sense your world, all I need to do is share in your thoughts.


it's as simple as that.


all those forcefields we use, all those things we employ as warriors in our quest to differentiate ourselves from the beings around us, we can lay down our arms.

if we want to let go of that which ails humanity, we've got to come together.
all that currently separates us is our belief that we're different.

if you want to feel the closeness of that person beside you, feel their thoughts.

some call me psychic.

----

go back and reread some of that.

----

<3

an eaves dropper from above..

rather funny if you had seen me too.. standing - in complete darkness, save for the streetlights outside - in my bathtub, silently and patiently absorbing my neighbor's thoughts about some topic I didn't stay long enough to hear.

what I did pick out was a snippet concerning our love for each other.

the words I caught went to the following tune: "you don't love me, how can you love me, you barely know me.." and as his words continued, my thoughts trailed off into another universe.

along my route I passed through today's conversation concerning evolution..

we are amidst a time in which we are actively evolving. Believe me or not, you all have and are sensing this evolution (it's that odd feeling that seems a bit out of place). Regardless, what I realized is that how we treat love is one aspect of this evolution; true, and implicit love is a guiding force of this next step.

Having the capacity to truly love anyone, errr rather, to love everyone, it's powerful. And it is a reality for many.

by the way, the shift is into homoluminous

apologies if I spelled any of your names wrong..

I can't help but think like a hacker: faced with the desire to see what other folks write, and troubled by the inefficiency of the system, I came up with a solution.

While I'll talk more about this "open source" thing sometime soon, know that the hackery accomplished here are the results of the freedom of both information and software.

---

While walking home today I realized a solution to a problem I hadn't even run into yet (though one that would have surely annoyed me). I realized that the RSS feeds I have setup for the several sites across the internet are awesome, and that I vaguely remember seeing the icon on some blogger site at some point in the vastness that is the online world. So a drop-down folder of RSS feeds, one for each student would be as simple as signing up for each blog and organizing the links..

one of the joys of opensource is that nearly all data files are straight, simple, and editable text. You could, for example, open a spreadsheet file with a text editor (instead of the spreadsheet application..) and swap two columns of data manually (but using that speadsheet application is easier..) The implications of something like this may not be so obvious, but understand that they are.

In the UNIX world, anything that can be done manually, can be scripted and automated - broken down into discrete components, run sequentially, and often processed by the system quickly and autonomously.. finally, anything even remotely repetitive should be scripted, or rather, when given the opportunity for efficiency, ++hacker points for ingenuity.

Given that text files can be edited and manipulated manually, I converted the word doc listing each of us and our blogs into straight text, ran it through a quick script and formated the data, signed up for each RSS (manually), creating a folder of RSS feeds, then extracted the important bits from my bookmarks.html

SOOOO what all of this means is that you can:
. grab this file.. (right click, save as, and save it somewhere on your computer)
. open firefox
. click "Bookmarks" then "Organize Bookmarks..."
. click "file" --> "import"
. select the bookmarks.html file you took from me
. enjoy your beautiful list

when you import the bookmarks you'll see something like the following (just delete the duplicate "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder")



Please understand that I take no responsibility for any attempts you may make at this, and while I encourage you to experiment, it is at your own risk.. be sure to backup your current bookmarks.html file in case something goes ary!


EDIT :: what this means is that you can go to this drop down list, and see the title of each post that each of us makes as a clickable link. For whatever reason, it isn't always perfect (some posts don't show up all the time), but it's a start..

Originally, I had envisioned starting off with a bit about me.. as I believe our collective understanding of one another really depends on our ability or sense of clarity in implanting ourselves in each other's worlds.

While the question of when this changed matters little, that shift happened somewhere between last night and this morning.

So I'll come back to the introductions thought in another post.. for now, some random topics:


Were we not just talking about witch trials yesterday? While several of us figuratively alluded to the "witch hunt" aspect of humanity, even in contemporary cultures.. it was still figurative. So I think you can understand why this caught me a bit off guard today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7413268.stm


Marriage seems to be another topic of current interest, and given our first few words on the topic two classes ago, I felt I needed to reopen this box for my own clarity and sense of communication. Please share your thoughts :D

I believe pointing out my interest in this first, is important: I am wildly in love with an incredible angelic woman of magnificent power. More importantly, we share a unique understanding and connection to this world - something I'll continue to expand on in later posts - but a connection that has proven to continually rival and challenge our (us and you) notions or understandings of this place around us.. more succinctly, my view of marriage differs (vastly) from that of our collective understanding.

(oh, Saveria is her name, you'll see it a lot here..)

This is of particular interest partly because we've found these philosophical differences in many other individuals, but mostly because we can sense this as another aspect of the shifting collective consciousness.

What does that all mean?

Our understanding and perceptions of marriage - and relationships in general - is changing.. as is our understanding of, and tolerance for, legal and government intervention into realms they aren't (or don't have to be) welcome.


Let's get analytical and organize our thoughts here a bit:
. the situation of marriage has both personal and legal aspects (e.g. your love for this person(s) is something personal, but there are legal complications.. death/taxes are an example..)
. to what degree have we concatenated our perceptions of these two aspects of marriage?

So where do I fall in and around this mess?
. marriage - the intimate connection between two or more people - is a basic *necessity* of human social interactions. That is to say, this intimate connection can not (and is not, it is just made painful and/or grossly difficult for some, LGBT folks spring to mind..) be denied from *anyone* Again: no single person, group of people, or legal entity, etc etc, has the right (or power..) to deny any human being this necessity.
. marriage - the legal association between two or more people - offers many restrictions and benefits. Unfortunately, the benefits are enough to coerce folks into contributing to a system that is disputably arguable.

Here are some questions:
. do you believe in the freedom of marriage, legal and interpersonal?
. if you do believe this, and thus believe anyone should be legally allowed to married, would you get married? (legally?)

I believe that it is important for us to acknowledge that each of us who participates in this legal system is then supporting it.

I believe in the freedom of marriage. As I understand most governments, marriage is not legally free, therefore, I will not be getting married (legally).

There seems to be a social connection between these two (legal/interpersonal), such that most people who I've discussed this with, do no acknowledge a marriage that hasn't been legally established.

please leave your thoughts.

I've many more, but they're far too jumbled at this point, so is the action of blogging. (and i guess it turned into only two topics, oh well)

lots of love.
(yes, I do love you all.)

~J.Sun

BAM!!!

...and we're off running

~namaste