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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
What's New
| "We trespassed, field to field; you, glad of my arms each time a fence challenged us; I, always held you longer than it took to help you over." Walter Benton, This Is My Beloved |
| Here are the latest additions to Word Gems |
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Can we observe without seeing images of the past? the hurtful memories coloring perception, so that when I meet you next time I see you as my enemy. Can the mind break through its egocentric conditioning?
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Jiddu Krishnamurti
1895 - 1986
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The Krishnamurti lectures, delivered around the world for more than half a century, constitute, in my opinion, the greatest corpus of spiritual instruction ever compiled.
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READ MORE on the "Dualism" page
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Editor's Essay:
What We Stay Alive For
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to remain steadfast in belief, despite lamentation over what we've done to ourselves - the missteps of youth, the spurned opportunity, the unprepared heart, the glassy-eyed sensibility, the quick-draw-shoot-first temper, the self-serving and epic miscalculations, the egoic and puerile torpor of mind, the insensate worm only vaguely aware of the light - that love endures, and still lives, beneath the rubble of the lost years;
moreover, to trust, though it delay for a “thousand summers,” that Heaven's gift will finally arrive; in this delay, "too long a sacrifice," as Yeats wrote, "can make a stone of the heart," and many would refuse to wait; the true mate, however, sets himself to wait, waiting with joy, as he builds his life around the inner-whispering assurances of inevitable reunion...
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the difference between pride and self-esteem
Bruce Lee: “Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not part of us, while self-esteem derives from the potentialities and achievements of self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body of possessions.
“There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is insensitive and uncompromising. The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection…
“All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in a crisis of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavors in which the masses most readily unite [are] basically a search for pride.”
READ MORE on the "Hoffer, True Believer" page
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how to begin writing
“To know what you’re going to draw,” instructs Picasso, “you have to begin drawing.”
So it is with writing. When the creative muse taps your shoulder and whispers, “it’s time”; when clarity finally summons; when you sense that, "ah, at last, I have something to say"; then – how to begin? The answer is, simply begin.
Writing will now pour from you in a natural way. As you write, all the world, and you yourself, will discover exactly what it is you have to say.
READ MORE on the "how to become a good writer" page
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happiness cannot be found in one good time, or even in a lot of them, but only in a whole good life
Editor’s note: the following is from preliminary paragraphs of An Introduction To The Great Books And To A Liberal Education, the fourth reading.
Happiness is the theme of the first book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The fact that happiness is a subject of universal interest confirms Aristotle’s most fundamental insight about it: all men want to be happy, and everything else they want they seek as a means of becoming happy.
Among the things that men call good and strive for, happiness stands out as the one good which, if fully possessed, would leave a man satisfied and at rest. No one would call himself completely happy if anything essential to his well-being remained beyond his grasp. Happiness must, therefore, be the sum of all good things...
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the vicious-competition view of nature is profoundly errant; instead, nature is an alliance of cooperation
The Darwinian paradigm of nature at war with itself, of ruthless competition among species, of creatures engaged in a zero-sum game of survival is deeply flawed.
Careful research reveals another world of widespread cooperation; moreover, a harmonious, carefully balanced, ecosystem seemingly designed to minimize, and even eliminate, competition in both the plant and animal kingdoms.
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The New Biology: Discovering The Wisdom In Nature, Augros and Stanciu: “Derived from a classic study by ecologist Robert MacArthur, this diagram illustrates how five species of warbler, similar in size and shape, feed on bud worms in the same spruce trees. They avoid competition by occupying subtly different niches. The shaded areas indicate where each species spends more than half its time. The birds also use different methods of hunting. This pattern of noncompetition is typical of naturally coexisting species.”
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Editor's Essay: Viktor Frankl’s Decision-Making Philosophy which Helped Him Survive the Concentration Camps
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Time and time again, in the camps, Frankl’s life, as he said, was “toyed with by fate.” A quick decision would so often mean death or survival. He determined that he would not attempt to "push to the head of the line" and "fight for an extra morsel of bread." Instead, he resolved to choose an attitude of altruistic service. As he did, things worked out for him: an uncanny ninth-inning rescue would intervene.
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animal language
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Some higher-level animals have been taught to communicate via sign-language, even with many hundreds of hand-symbols. And these tutored creatures string together symbols to create proto-sentences and, by such, do convey messages. But, is this communicative interchange of the same order of language that humans experience?
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animal psychologist Francine Patterson and Koko the gorilla
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| Your Life and Behavior will Change Naturally, Easily, and even Quickly, when Your Metaparadigm Changes |
“You can't change the fruit without changing the root.” Dr. Stephen R. Covey
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Psychologist Titus Rivas' new book featuring more than 100 NDE reports confirmed-as-accurate by independent sources.
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Not Enough Time, Part III
Parallel Universes, Science in Crisis:
How the good name of Science is discredited
by hypotheses unrefined
in the purging fires of a rigorous induction
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Editor’s note: presenting The Meaning Of Beauty, Part IV.
Beauty
All great theories of science have in common a profound “elegance or simplicity of assumption.” Roger Penrose
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Dr. Wilder Penfield's brain research offers compelling evidence that the mind is not part of the brain
Dr. Wilder Penfield
Dr. Penfield performed over 1000 brain surgeries. The implications of his work are shocking as they overthrow the materialistic paradigm: human awareness, the mind, is not localized in the brain.
See the astonishing life's work, the profound findings, of brain surgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield.
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it's not the color of skin, but the heart of darkness
READ MORE on the "Economics" page
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Can you be content living in the world as an unknown, uncelebrated non-entity?
As a young man at Bible college, though it was not my original purpose in attending, I quickly fell into the group’s dysfunctionally competitive spirit of attempting to win a ministerial post. If I quiet my mind just now, and cast myself back, 50 years ago, to the energies coursing through my person at the time, I can still feel the churning and seething neediness. I wanted to be noticed. I needed someone to tell me that I was competent and able. I craved a Dear Leader’s stamp of approval to feel good about myself.
READ MORE at the bottom of the "Spirituality, Part III" article.
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Editor’s note: I have added a new item to the points-of-evidence roster on "the afterlife page," #32:
Dr. David Fontana, one of the world's premier afterlife researchers: "a billion billion to one" statistical odds in support of post-mortem survival of consciousness
Professor Fontana speaks of scientific experiments, comprised of thousands of trials, which, in aggregate, offer insurmountable statistical evidence supporting survival of consciousness; as he states, the odds of the findings happening by chance are “a billion billion to one.”
In other words, chance is ruled out as causal factor; or, to state it differently, the existence of an unseen world of unseen forces has been more than amply substantiated.
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Darrell Huff's classic book, How To Lie With Statistics
Raw data is message-neutral, but statistics represent an interpretation of the data. This is where the fun begins.
If you're a propagandist with a party-platform to sell or impose, it's not difficult to make the data appear as a rising or falling trajectory, or a flat line, whatever is required to offer "proof."
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I am your density, Lorraine
I have created a new topic-icon for the homepage – Destiny. See the accompanying “Editor’s 1-Minute Essay.”
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you can have it all laid out in front of you, but it won't make you think
Concert for George
Royal Albert Hall
November 29, 2002
Horse To Water
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you can take a horse to the water but you can't make him drink, oh no, oh no, oh no, a friend of mine in so much misery, some people sail through life, he is struggling, I said, "hey man, let's go out and get some wisdom," first he turned on me, then turned off his nervous system, you can take a horse to the water but you can't make him drink, oh no, oh no, oh no, you can have it all laid out in front of you, but it won't make you think, oh no, oh no, oh no
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listen to Sam Brown’s sensational version of “Horse to Water” at the Concert for George
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