rethinking vegan, oil and bombs December 20, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in activites, air, bombs, co2, ev, fuel, global warming, goals, leadership, oil, quest, values, vegan, wargames, waste.1 comment so far
Dunno about you, but I really value air. And water. They’re kinda important. Just a bit. So, I was already in the market for a hybrid car, and my imminent seachange has us excitedly planning our vege garden and getting back into wholefoods and baking and all that jazz. I’m also doing things to plant a tree a month (at least, probably more), boycott ethanol fuels (they destroy more water and waste more resources than standard fuels), and continuing to find ways to invest in our future on this planet – enriching our habits and habitats – rather than ignoring important things til we run out of air or water or both.
That in mind, I had a divinely guided themed flight back from DWD (best dwd EVER, just quietly), watching back-to-back movies including: “An Inconvenient Truth”… “Who Killed the Electric Car?” and a bit of “Fast Food Nation” etc
….and then I got emailed this article to boot…. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html
My new seachange home also happens to be the beef capital of Australia, and pretty much the mining capital as well…….. so, into the belly of the beast, any ideas to help blow it up from the inside??
Speaking of blowing things up, I found out that war games are scheduled to bomb our delightful wonder-of-the-world great barrier reef just off the coast of my new home town in May/June 2007. http://www.peaceconvergence.com/ Are we nuts, people?? I mean, Seriously!?!?!
I can’t help but think I’m getting thrown into the middle of mining-beef-and-bomb-central for a reason… if everything happens for a reason and it serves and it’s guided, then this can’t be an accident, can it?
If you’ve got any ideas or contacts or anything you’re doing or anyone else is doing that may help or even spark an idea or two about any of these issues, please let me know. I would deeply and eternally appreciate anything you’ve got to offer, even just your own thoughts on the matter – even the most innane trivial stuff can be immensely valuable in the right hands.
Many oceans of love, many generations of gratitude, Jade
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Emotion? November 16, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in activites, emotions, goals, management, mothers, neuroscience, school, values, writing.add a comment
Crap things only feel crap when we make those emotions wrong and try to avoid them in ourselves and others. When we try to avoid making anyone feel hurt or upset or angry or frustrated or confused or overwhelmed. But, what’s so bad about feeling any of those things?
I reckon there oughta be two compulsory things in this world: YOGA and ARTS
YOGA – coz crappy posture = crappy feelings = no oxygen to the brain = no access to the powerhouse of resources you’re dragging around with you every day. If people actually felt great in their bodies and stopped taxing them so bad thru misuse everything would change.
ARTS – coz then you rekindle the love of the dance of life, an innate passion for contrast and curiosity for depth and meaning. Everything you see, hear, feel, notice and observe becomes less about trying to keep the peace or maintain balance (balance schmalance, this is a life of divine extremes, a dance, swinging like a pirate on the pendulum between the furthest points, then swinging even further on the next run), and it all becomes material for your next creative project, regardless of your chosen art form.
Art is myth, and myth is the language of the soul. We all know that a good story has twists and surprises, it isn’t bland and numb and
predictable, so why would we curse our lives to be that way?
My stand-up comedy teacher said: “Personal development is great, but make sure you don’t get too fixed. You’ll run out of material.”
Feeling Delicious November 16, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in emotions, goals, love, neuroscience, values.add a comment
A friend wrote me a discourse about depression and such, followed by the PS “I think you would argue that a ‘painful’ emotion is not a ‘bad’ emotion.” hehehe – he was right, that’s exactly what I was thinking!
There ain’t no such thing as negative and positive, good and bad, esp when it comes to emotions. They’re all different colours and tastes and textures. I choose to group emotions into taste categories, like sweet, sour, savoury, bland, tangy, spicy, etc.
I really like the concept of tastes and hungers re: emotions, coz hungers get satiated and return, tastes vary from moment to moment. They’re a message, a calling from deep within us, calling us to go open the fridge and search for meaning, pick up the phone and delivery menu, a call to action to make a change to our biochemistry, our focus, a call to give ourselves a boost of nurturing and nutrition. Emotions are that same call to action.
The biggest issue comes when we misinterpret emotions, or when they get stuck in an inappropriate trigger/anchor loop. And some complement each other, and some clash.
And it’s not just doctors that focus on ‘taking the pain away,” loved ones and bystanders do that too. Often loved ones can be the most potent enablers of all. Empathy is a bad idea if you use it to make people (or yourself) feel more comfortable staying in one emotion or another (even excitement), instead of interpreting those emotions as a call to action. If ANY emotion hangs around too long, you end up stuck and numb.
The key, I feel, is flexibility and interpretation, and not getting stuck on unaware autopilot, salivating on cue like pavlov’s mutts (aware autopilot is way cool, tho).
I fully, fully, fully agree with the inarticulate nature of ‘depression’. After working with some teens earlier this year, I actually did a post on precisely that, with a bunch of emo-vocab to play with…… (my most highly commented/replied-to post to date, btw) http://jdverse.wordpress.com/2006/06/15/make-or-break-words/
My City at Dawn November 14, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in love, poetry, values, work.add a comment
I love the city when it is pure architecture and design
spirit and beauty incarnate
in the hours between witching and waking
In that mostly forgotten timeless time
when you can feel the city’s heartbeat
before the first alarm clock dictates
the first coffee boils
the walking dead fill the streets
their veil of numbness hanging thick in the air
the real world whirling in the slipstream of their discontent
Neuro-Schooling November 7, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in leadership, neuroscience, quest, school, values.add a comment
Why is it that some ideas (memes) get fed IV-style into the bloodstream of society and are expected, nay demanded, to be common knowledge amongst every man woman and child, while other ideas/memes are relegated to be super-specialised knowledge only available to the few with the GPA, time and inclination? Who decides what’s what? Neuroscience is everyone’s business, especially parents and teachers. Everyone has a nervous system to take care of, and everyone (esp parents and teachers) is shaping their own and those around them with every thought and interaction. Surely that’s grounds enough to make the foundations more widely known??? Put em on sesame street? Make a card game? Or a sport? If kids today knew half as much about their insides as they do about their Yu-Gi-Oh cards…… <sigh>
This guy (typical big fish in a puddle) in this book was talking about a synesthesia as if it were a disorder, rather than just divergent neural pathways. When you look at things neurologically they always make sense. And you can play with them. Everyone has synesthesias, it’s how we’re wired. It’s not a kind of person, it’s a kind of neural pathway that everyone has developed to some degree or another. Usually first exposure to a given item or concept will throw out a whole bunch of different neural connections like fireworks, connecting with everything that’s in focus at the time. The connections that stay are the ones that are strengthened by being most consistently reinforced, while the others (equally valid in the first instance, but not reinforced) drop away as though they never existed in the first place. Green carpet. It’s all anchoring, triggers and where they lead to. If a particular trigger or stimulus leads to one place (that is the generally accepted and most popular place) then someone’s granted ‘normality’ but if, through habit or repeated co-incidence, their trigger fires off in two directions at once, that’s a disorder? I don’t think so, Tim!
City Trees October 25, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in love, poetry, values, work.2 comments
Trees in the city are cut too high.
Leaves yearn to touch the people scurrying by.
Slow them down, help them feel and care and breathe again.
And the people yearn for the trees’ sweet caress.
Even tho they don’t even see them anymore.
Four Questions… October 16, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in activites, goals, values.add a comment
Have you ever achieved a goal and it didn’t feel as victorious as you imagined it would?? Want to get beyond the smokescreen goals and values to the real deep ones hiding beneath and beyond all the hype?
- If you could be anyone – who would you be, what would you do and why?
- What are you chasing?
- What are you running from?
- What are you missing/ignoring?
#4 has all the gold – try it, and be honest… the answers might just surprise you.
