For any of you that are interested in this topic, or who could use some help organizing and actually doing all the things that you want to do in your life, I highly recommend these:

I am so thoroughly enjoying David Hawkins’ body of work. ‘Power Vs. Force’ was incredible, as was ‘Eye of the I’ (which I read years ago and am now re-reading), and ‘Truth Vs. Falsehood’ puts Hawkins’ work into an illuminating context.

Here’s an excerpt from the preface:
“The bewilderment of current human society is evidenced by the lack of clarity or comprehension of the fundamental issues, which require identification and elucidation as well as validation of their credibility and authenticity. The primary defect now is, as it always has been, that the design of the human mind renders it intrinsically incapable of being able to tell truth from falsehood. This single, most crucial of all inherited defects lies at the root of all human distress and calamity.

Operationally, the mind is dualistic and thus sets up separatist mentations based on arbitrary, hypothetical positionalities that have no intrinsic reality. Thus, by design, the mind has the basic defect, as pointed out by Descartes, that it cannot differentiate res cogitans (also cognitans) from res externa (i.e., mentalizations about the seeming appearance of the world versus the world as it actually is). The mind thus confuses its own projections and mistakenly assumes that they have an external, independent existence, whereas, in reality, no such condition exists.

The design of the human mind is also comparable to that of a computer in which the brain is the hardware that is capable of playing any software programs fed into it. The hardware is, by design, incapable of protecting itself from false information, and, therefore, the mind will believe any software program with which society has programmed it, for it is innocently without any safeguard or protection. The same declaration has been made by all the greatest spiritual leaders of history who unanimously state that the basic defect of humanity is its relatively invincible ignorance, the recovery from which is operationally impossible without the help of a spiritual teacher.

The human mind, therefore, by virtue of its innate structure, is naive, blind to its limitations, and innocently gullible. Everyone is the victim of the ignorance and limitation of the human ego. Not only is the majority of the content of the average mind fallacious, but it is also programmed to attack itself with self-hatred, depression, guilt, low self-esteem, envy, greed, conflict, and endless misery. These defects are then projected onto the world as hate, war, violence, and genocide. The ego defends its own limitations with prideful denial, thus becoming its own victim.

That the human mind, without help, is unable to tell truth from falsehood due to its own innate structure and design is so staggering a discovery that it is roughly comparable to the discovery by Copernicus that caused cultural shock in the sixteenth century. Because this single face alone is confrontational to the average mind, it will probably not be welcomed or warmly greeted by those who profit from sophistry and its illusions.

In today’s world, it is not just the seeker of spiritual truth who is focused as never before on discovering how to tell truth from falsehood. The general public is in a semi-paralysis state due to the quandary of doubt and futility of hoping for any kind of dependable authenticity in the current public discourse. Public interest is riveted on testimony before investigative panels. Mobs in Madrid chant, “We want the truth.” Juries strain to sift through evidence, and protest groups vociferously challenge every aspect of society.

At this time, there is no common agreement on even the most basic, simple, and obvious questions: What to Do? What to do when an avowed enemy slaughters thousands of innocent civilians? Should we “lock up” criminals or just see them as victims of society and let them run the streets as compulsive predators? Is it simple, common-sense police work to scrutinize obvious terrorist-group suspects, or is that to be forbidden by civil rights? It is not even clear who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. Who or what is to blame?

This woman is just so freakin’ awesome and adorable and endearing. If you’ve seen “You and Me and Everyone We Know” you’ve not only seen one of her movies (which she wrote, directed and starred in), you’ve also heard one of my favorite film scores (written by Michael Andrews who did the cover of the Duran Duran song ‘Mad World’ for the Donnie Darko soundtrack with Gary Jules).

In fact, that cover is so freakin’ great I’m going to include the video for it:

Back to Miranda… She’s great. Here’s her website, and here’s a link to the wonderfully whimsical and ingenious website she made for her book ‘No One Belongs Here More Than You’. Be sure to click on “the begining” on the second slide of that stove-writing series if you haven’t already seen it.

Umm… I’m obsessed with Doseone from Subtle. The following is an excerpt, verbatim (including capitalization and such), from a book that he compiled of his drawings and illustrations called “the pelt”:

note: nostradamus was a hack

the numbers on your house begin to sweat as you go to remove the 2 bills and usual circular. Your mailman’s standing out by the recycling with his back to you. you can sort of see in his truck rear window that he’s adjusting a clown nose to sit properly on his face. You turn to fish out the missing person postcard, but you begin to feel watched. You look to your left a full grown baby and large orange cat are fake driving and staring at you sideways from the front seats of an airbrushed blue van. as they slowly take a speed bump to the axels you notice that todays missing little girl is none other than a strapping young ed mcmahon. Your eyes go inside out for a split second. WHIP! Suddenly the powerlines across the street go taut, release, and then slowly suck in their slack over a standard oakland sky. There in the immediate distance a rather plump dove/pigeon looks as though its flying directly toward you. its carrying what appears to be a veiled birdcage in the three strong fingers of its one good foot. a slow sky second later it’s setting the strange gift on the shallow wall that fronts your apartment’s un-porch. the dumpy little pigeon peers up at you and winks it’s one eyebrow twice. Out the corner of your eye you notice the blue mean man van going up in orange flames at the nice red sign down by the second speedbump. The massive cat and grown baby are no where to be seen. The pigeon takes off quietly, sending something like chills down your suddenly so dreamy street. A moment later the block goes slow again, and the mailman has gotten ghost as well. Only the birds belated birthday cage remains veiled there before you. you slowly life the crushed velvet cloth covering the abandoned birdcage, and there on its side on a bed of damp news paper, is the candied and severed head of a young ed mcmahon. Were it not for the last give minutes you’d be shocked, but instead you grab a nearby stick and start to poke its closed eyes very gently. Nothing happens. and as you reach to pull the top off a deep breath, it’s done eyes snap wide open. you reach to cut yell, but young ed cuts you off.

“Put a cat in a box, and rig up a rube goldberg contraption involving a hammer, a vial of poison, and a quantum triggering device. if an electron moves into the opposite location, the hammer will drop smashing the vial and killing the cat.
The laws of quantum mechanics hold that as long as the electron remains undisturbed, it hangs in limbo, occupying both its possible states.
The cat, by extension, is both dead and alive.”

note: It will be hailed as a giant step forward for all mankind… When they decide to permanently alter the aestetics of either a school or prison bus, their appearance being otherwise identical,less the fenced-in windows is entirely unacceptable.

optimists are easy…
They’re practically sluts…

“When the criticalness and discrimination of dualistic perception are set aside, the absolute perfection and beauty of everything stands revealed.

Art seeks to abstract this awareness when it takes one moment in time and freezes it in photographic art or sculpture. Each stop frame depicts the perfection that can be appreciated only when a single view is isolated from the distortion of the superimposed story. The drama of every moment of existence lends itself to preservation when art saves it from the extinction of transformation of material form called history. The innocence intrinsic to any given moment is apparent when that moment is taken out of the context projected onto a sequence of selected moments which then become a ’story’. Once converted into a story by the dualistic mind, the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are then applied. One can readily see that even the terms good or bad refer in their origination to what is really merely human desire. If something is desired, it becomes a ‘good’, and if undesired, it becomes a ‘bad’. If human judgmentalism is removed from observation, all that can be seen is that form is in constant evolution as ‘change’, which is neither intrinsically desirable nor undesirable.”

PHENOMENAL book!!! Phenomenal!! This is one of those books that covers material that everyone should have been taught in kindergarten, but that sadly few people ever learn.

The subtitle of the book is: “A practical guide to the creative process and how to use it to create anything - a work of art, a relationship, a career or a better life.”

The book is tragically out of print (so dramatic!), so you’ll have to order it via www.amazon.com

Quotes:
“Reality Skills - The ability to discern reality is one of the most important skills a creator needs to develop, especially if he is going to create over the long term. One way of thinking about the creative process is organizing changes in reality over time. Creating desired changes would be impossible if you were not fluent in reality, since the reality is related to your desired results. Reality is an acquired taste, but once you have an appetite for it, you will not want to give it up.”

“You can react to life, you can respond to life, you can also create in life. As a creator, you can bring into being special universes in which you and others can live.

Since you can create self-contained universes, each creation you make can be a whole, full, and completely itself. You do not need to form a pattern of consistency between one universe and another. You can make a creation, then another, and the two may have nothing in common. They may even seem to contradict each other. When you are creating any one result, you do not need to use any previous result you have created as a frame of reference. (more…)

“The great become legendary when they teach by example. It isn’t what they have, nor what they do, but what they have become that inspires all of mankind, and that’s what we honor in them… The nurturing of excellence and recognition of its value is the responsibility of all men, because the quest for excellence in any area of human endeavor inspires us all toward the actualization of every form of man’s yet unrealized greatness.” - from Power Vs. Force by David Hawkins

I’ve purchased and tried to read several books on writing lyrics and poetry, and they’ve all been pretty bleh. This book however is freakin’ excellent! Where all the other lyric books have focused on show tunes-type lyrics and songwriters who are far from contemporary, this book is quite broad in the pool of artists that it pulls from and interviews, and has a lot of really really great ideas for approaching songwriting and just creativity in general. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s at all interested in songwriting / lyrics.

From Amazon.com:
Lyrics sheds light on all aspects of lyric writing for music and will make songwriters feel more confident and creative when they tackle lyrics. It’s perfect for all songwriters: those who don’t like their own lyrics and find them difficult to write, experienced writers looking for a creative edge, and those offering lyrics to set to music in a partnership. Topics include channeling personal experiences into lyrics, overcoming writer’s block, the right lyrics for a bridge, the separation between lyrics and poetry, exploring imagery and metaphor, avoiding cliches, and more. The book also offers tips on the various styles of lyrics, from protests, spirituals, and confessionals to narratives and comic songs.

This is a truly incredible and groundbreaking book about the nature of consciousness.

Here are a few quotes from it:

“There is no antidepressant that will cure a depression that’s spiritually based, for the malaise doesn’t originate from brain dysfunction, but from an accurate response to the desecration of life. The body is the reflection of the spirit in its physical expression, and its problems are the dramatization of the struggles of the spirit that gives it life.”

“To become more conscious is the greatest gift anyone can give to the world; moreover, in a ripple effect, the gift comes back to its source.”

“Society is collectively most vulnerable when the capacity to distinguish between attractors and imitators, or to perceive nuances of differing levels on consciousness, is dulled. This is how civil abuses become law and political extremists persuade with righteous slogans. The children of violence become its perpetrators because a confused society that’s lost the capacity for discernment necessary to protect its own consciousness can hardly hope to protect its young.

An individual’s level of consciousness is determined by the principles to which one is committed. To maintain progress in consciousness, there can be no wavering from principle, or the individual will fall back to a lower level. Expediency is never adequate justification. If it’s wrong to kill another human being, that principle can allow no exceptions, regardless of how emotionally appealing a construct may be used to justify the exception. Thus, a society that condones capital punishment will always have a problem with murder - both are products of the same level of perception. After all, to the murderer, the killing of the victim is a justifiable exception.”