Saturday, March 10, 2007

About Attraction/Apathy=Enemy/New Orleans Poem/Intelligent?

(P1) Philosophical

In Favor of the Law Of Attraction


Dear Friend,

While walking my dog Lady today, I pondered further on your understandable objection to positive affirmation and the law of attraction because they don't seem to be working for oppressed and suffering people in the third world:

My answer is that there is nothing wrong with the law of attraction. Were these people in a situation where they could practice it positively, it would work for them in a positive way, but where oppression takes away personal freedoms and where poverty is usually the result of greed, corruption, and oppression, personal freedom to choose is removed. Still, as was the case with Viktor Frankl in the concentration camps (Man's Search For Meaning), he survived by envisioning a different reality and made it his own. When I went to the DeYoung exhibit of the unbelievable quilt collection from the women of Gee's Bend, Alabama, I was forcefully struck by the freedom which comes from creativity. No one can suppress what goes on within. Even the slaves created great music as their way of transporting their reality to something much more inwardly sublime.

For the most part, however, when one's freedom is taken from them, the impoverished reality which they notice day in and day out becomes and remains their "vision." Of course it's not their fault. And it takes the helping vision of others to enable them to see beyond their immediate "reality." Hence the absolute wisdom in granting the Nobel Prize to Muhammad Yunus creator of the Grameen Bank who empowers people (especially women) with mini-micro loans of $100 or so to begin their own tiny weaving or similar businesses. The success of this program and others like the Namaste Bank serving Guatemala and other Latin American countries is staggeringly encouraging.

Enough soapboxing for positive vision except to say it's also the only route to world peace, and that's a whole other of my soap boxes. Encourage everyone to support the current House legislation for a US Dept of Peace! http://www.congress.org

Love,

Soapbox Eddie


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(P2) Political

Where Y'all At"?

American jazz spokesman and genius speaks also to the world we face daily and wonder what will become of it. He counsels doing something in other words participating:

"Find out where the tax money is going. Find out why something happened. Write to people. Just be a participant." Fittingly his latest song is titled, "Where Y'all At."

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(P3) Poetical

PIECES OF THE SKY

by Greg Fuchs

The wind, the water

Washed my home,

My people away,

My people wash far

Away my home.

Pieces of the sky.

The wind, the water

Took my home

Into the lake.

Home so fleeting

The pieces of the sky.

The wind and the water

Biblical lesson.

The lake came to visit

The river. The lake

Came to my house.

The wind and the water

So fleeting,

Pieces of the sky.

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Not-So-Trivia(l) Quiz

Who said the following - Press here to answer

"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners. put your answer here

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ed Soapbox Man!

Wassup! I think focusing on positive attraction is a good thing. But I would also say that, if negativitypersists, that is also not such a bad thing, If it can be approached and understood by self-reflection,awareness and acceptance. Because, really, positive and negative are just the hidden aspect of eachother. There's a place in between which is not where you "accent the positive and eliminate the negative"
(Dave Von Ronk).

Anonymous said...

Right on, Mike Matthews. Right-wrong, good-bad, positive-negative...They are same things, not opposites.

I am all for peace. I am not for another government agency for a corrupt administration to play with.

Until the majority population of this country realizes that our government - executive, judicial and legislative - is corrupt, we will not have peace or change.

In the news today is the story that Haliburton Corp. will move to Dubai, saying there is no more oppoutunity in the U. S. and the future is in the Middle East and Asia. This is the company granted no-bid contracts worth billions of your tax dollars by your elected officials. Vice President Richard Cheney is a former CEO of Haliburton.

On the positive side of the coin, we see that street demonstrations are finally getting organized in a few cities. That's a start, but what's wrong on the campuses? Where are the students? Are they so locked up in fear with government student loans that they dare not speak out? Or, are they just brainwashed into believing anything fed them with the goverment spoon? If this is the case, we may not be able to remain positve for long.

Anonymous said...

All change in our world begins from our ability to "imagine, dream or create", through our "coversations/thoughts",with ourselves and others, and the actions that result from those "conversations/thoughts". Positive and negative are terms that live in the same polar reality as good and evil, etc. Perhaps we should be looking for not right and wrong or positive and negative, but toward change that supports life and balance. Peace is not the opposite of war, it exists as a seperate domain and one of the characteristics of peace is the absence of war.
saramb

Anonymous said...

The March 5, 2007 edition of Newsweek contains an article, "Decoding 'The Secret'," in which the author opens with, "You'd think the last thing Americans need is more excuses for self-absorption and acquisitiveness. But our inexhaustible appetite for 'affirmation'and 'inspiration'and 'motivation' has finally outstripped the combined efforts of Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, Dr. Phil and Mitch Albom."
Thank you for saying that, I say! The remainder of the article is a balanced reminder that it's really no more than old pop-psychology "repackaged." Sure, positive thinking is good for one's state-of-mind, but is it a "natural law" at the quantum physical level? Pleeeze...
BJ Favaro

Anonymous said...

I thought Donald Trump was eligable for the Nobel Prize.