No, not the kind of frog you might lick for it’s secretion of DMT (should you be so inclined.) That would be Bufo alvarius – the Colorado River toad. This is Phyllomedusa bicolor, an Amazonian rainforest treefrog, And talk about right of passage – this little fucker took me down! Sapo, frog “medicine” – or Read More
After swallowing a shot glass full of the somewhat wretched medicinal brew, with ceremonial reverence and a personal intention of what to work on for this ceremony, we sit upright in meditative postures, on mattress pads, in the darkness of the Maloka – a large circular palm thatched structure, open to the surrounding jungle sounds. Read More
Gene Sharp, Author of the influential Nonviolent Revolution Rulebook (more here) suggests that as people develop techniques for withholding consent peacefully, regimes will crumble. This must be true whether dictatorship or western “democratic” oligarchies. So don’t vote, it only encourages the bastards – arguably a privileged notion but democracy is a failed system as there Read More
Yes, indeedy, one of the most subjective media by definition, but here in my humble view are some of the best of our generation, meeting the minimal criteria of being any or all of the following: fucking brilliant independent / non-formulaic / non-hollywood-puerile-shite sublime acting superb cinematography / lighting / sets numinous story / theme Read More
On his way back to Earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced a radical transformation in perspective and thus consciousness. As he approached our planet from beyond it’s sphere of influence, “he was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved. He knew Read More
So he rolls up our long ragged redwood road and is doing a 7 point turn at the top of our driveway in a shiny PG&E survey truck. They’d trimmed a schwag load of branches around the power lines and left them in our turnaround several weeks ago, so I walk straight out to the Read More
Deepwater The Earth and all life functions as a continuously evolving, fluid, dynamic system that we barely begin to understand in it’s complexly interwoven entirety. Sucking out the oil and burning it off in a fashion marginally more evolved than the discovery of fire itself – e.g. the archaic combustion engine, proliferating to this day Read More
Google Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin disparaging the commercialization of search engines said. “We expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” They had a vision of allowing unfettered access to the sum of all human knowledge on line. However Google’s CEO Read More
Listen up! Non resistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Through it, consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in form. Inner nonresistance to form – whatever is or happens – is a denial of the absolute reality of form. Resistance makes the world and the things of the world appear Read More
by some curious twist of unsanity, music – the very thing that 1st moved in my otherwise numbed teenage sensate body, hours spent lying on the floor, head phones on, deep in sound space, moved to tears – melancholy and joy (Bruch/Beethoven) in a way not possible among other mortals – or moved by the Read More
An inspired remix: ‘We Are All Connected’ (ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye) [youtube width=”600″ height=”420″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk[/youtube] more at symphonyofscience.com melodysheep apparently uses Reason 4.0 (instrumentals), Adobe Audition (audio editing), and Melodyne (auto-tuning), but the musicality, art and inspiration is all his own. Good stuff.
Love the melodramatic ending at the end of this piece (“addicted to nonsense”) – The tragi-comic drama of reality!! It’s interesting to me that, whilst the picture is bleaker than we might care to acknowledge in our waking lives, the end isn’t necessarily nigh! On the contrary. Radical change is nigh – and the saviour Read More
And, in case nobody told you yet… thereisnospoon … And each and every one of you is being taken for fools. You work for an election or two to put chosen leaders in place, and expect those leaders to work their “leadership” magic to ram reforms down the throats of the corporate sector, failing to Read More
as above, so below (underlying cultural influence on the theme of Christmas and New Year) winter solstice is considered the strongest of the four main power points of the year. The light returns… masculine sun gains strength from this day till summer solstice (when sun begins to wane again.) Now… is when we might ritually Read More
An elegant and eloquent short. I like it because it offers (to me) a clear and honest juxtaposition of two worlds (without newagism or sensationalism) and where my values and heart truly lie – with the soil under my feet, a feeling community, and a simplification from distractions by knowing where my deepest pleasures in Read More
Do not adjust your mind – it is reality that is malfunctioning – RAW After successfully returning from Black Rock City after the 7th (or 8th?) journey to that wild and glorious place, I find my neurons are just beginning to regroup and the synapses starting to fire in the correct order once more to Read More
In pondering the theme at Black Rock City this year… [see also Burning Man and A Pattern Language] – really A model of the brain in eight circuits according to the esteemed independent explorers of consciousness and human potential, Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary THE EIGHT CIRCUITS: 1. Bio-Survival 2. Emotional-Territorial 3. Laryngeal-Manual 4. Read More
While we all known plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis, NASA’s 1989 study showed that many houseplants also remove harmful elements such as amonia, trichloroethylene, benzene, and formaldehyde from the air – how elegant is that!? In researching how to create a breathable environment for NASA orbiting space stations, scientist Dr. Bill Wolverton Read More
If any of these men could legitimately be called complex, it is probably Leary. A brilliant scientist, he was often reviled by traditional scientists, whom he called “arrogant motherfuckers who deny their role in the military industrial complex’s manipulation of the American people.” Leary rejected what he called the “grim Newtonian mechanics of objective fact” Read More
Hello… is anybody there… ? The UN says the world is in the midst of the greatest mass extinction since the big one – yep, Dinosoars – 65 million years ago. In 2007, one of the Earth’s oldest living species, the Baiji dolphin, was considered extinct and no longer to be found in it’s home, Read More
Obviously using food crops for fuel is a phenomenally stupid idea that could only be born of the rapacious corporate mind for profit before humanity. An effective solution to the issue of using vegetable oils for diesel fuel is exemplified in this eye opening video on prolific algae farmed fuel oil production (though of course Read More
An informative talk given by John Major Jenkins (sometime around 1999) describing the astronomical and mythological correlations of the Mayan calendar and the winter solstice end date of 21/12/2012. [audio:http://www.niksnexus.net/downloads/maya_cosmogenesis.mp3] or download
… the fire is coming up the slope towards our house. Flames are erupting immediately all around. Candles in the house are igniting spontaneously from the heat and gasses – there’s fire everywhere! I yell to Jessie call 911, call the neighbours, get help, we gotta run, but she’s just talking away to a girlfriend Read More
The sky is pressing broad and low over the oak green ridges to the East. An ominous cloud glowers bruisey yellow, diffuse morning light. Ash is falling like snow, gracefully, nonchalantly. And the sounds of bird song and the big low drone of choppers drift through the smoke filled valleys. Big Sur is burning and Read More
A Pattern Language is the seminal work of architect Christopher Alexander et al. describing a functional system to meet humanistic needs in the design of buildings, the urban environment and vital community. Pattern number 58 “Carnival” is a prescient and perfect description of what has organically arisen as the ephemeral Black Rock City – otherwise Read More
The Earth and all life functions as a fluid dynamic system that we barely begin to understand in it’s complexly interwoven entirety. Suck out the oil and burn it off in a fashion marginally more evolved than the discovery of fire itself – ie. the archaic combustion engine proliferating to this day by the obtuse Read More
a stroke of insight – Jill Bolte Taylor’s presentation (TED Conference 2008) Blow your mind…
some excerpts from Paul Hawken’s percipient work on the “Largest Social Movement in History!” – Blessed Unrest Inspiration is not garnered from the recitation of what is flawed; it resides, rather, in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “Consider” (con sidere) means “with the stars”; reconsider means to rejoin the Read More