Using One's Life

It was 1991. Colombia was still reverberating from the ongoing war between the government and the rebels. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire. Many died or were injured in the process. Many others escaped their villages and homes to seek refuge and safety. With nothing on their backs, they fled to other parts of the country. Most settled on vacant hilltops where they build makeshift homes made of broken tree limbs and other debris they found in the area. In these shantytowns, as they were called, lived many elderly people. The majority of them, some in their eighty’s and ninety’s, were sick, alone and poverty stricken. Abandoned by their families and their government, these poor souls were left to fend for themselves.  read more »

as i approached the vast, spacious view of the grand canyon, i began to feel it- my heart stopped, my breathing slowed and my mind quieted- for an eternal moment, i disappeared into the Oneness of the Cosmos.

merging into the river of Spirit, the river of creation, i became the source of it all. i was the sky, i was the sun, i was the earth, i was the rain that sourced the river that created this magnificent work of art. in that eternal moment, there was no time, no space, no form. there was only a continuum of nothing and everything.

returning to my body form, my mind and my emotions, i experienced the interconnection of all that Is. i realized that there is no object or subject, no out there or in here, no life or death. There is only Spirit-- and that everyone and everything is the manifestation, the reflection, of this spirit.  read more »

7/12/07 Intro Article LET’S PRETEND THE INNER AND OUTER WORLDS ARE SEPARATE We gotta Transform This Planet (TRFP)! This site provides many suggestions for how to move the TRFP project ahead. In this particular section we pretend that a person's internal world is separate from the external world. This is a quite common and shared perspective that our thoughts and feelings exist in a different space than our cars and governments. We presume that working with our internal world is essential to increase our effectiveness, efficiency, and resilience as we engage the outer world with our TRFP actions.  read more »

Think about what would happen if you lost everything you had. How much of it would you not even want back? How much of it is just crap or has become crap over the years?

What is discardia?

Discardia is a floating holiday created by Dinah Sanders that celebrates using less, and getting rid of the things that don't provide our lives with value -- from relationships to furniture; from habits to old bank statements. It celebrates letting go of what you don't need or don't want anymore. More simply, it celebrates nothing. It is a holiday with absolutely no obligations and no need for stress. On discardia you can simply "decide that you won't buy anything or bring anything into your home and that you will instead just enjoy the fact that you have enough."  read more »

Dear Kind Soul,

It was a striking, sunny, spring Sunday afternoon. The air was crisp and dry. A light wind was softly brushing by the sea of people milling about on the steps of the Metropolitan museum. There was a sense of burgeoning joy and wonderment, as if we were all experiencing life for the first time. As I stood at the top of the stairs waiting to meet my girlfriend Marlene, a rush of alertness coursed through my being. I could feel each sense of my body come to attention; the fresh, sweet smell of budding trees and flowers; the gentle caress of the ever so perceptible wind against my body; the bright, radiating sunlight illuminating everything it touched, beckoning its inner beauty to manifest; the cacophony of conversations, children’s gleeful cries, cars passing, trees rustling, all entered my ears in symphonic concert. I tasted its entirety.  read more »