Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Fuzz's LiveJournal:

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Friday, April 27th, 2012
11:10 am	Note To Self: Wording for Spiral Dynamics Revision Yellow and Turquoise are not "mind" stages, they are "soul" stages. I've argued this before, but one way to think of it that goes back to the relationship between Yellow and Red levels, and Turquoise and Blue, and Coral and Orange, is that when you are at Red or Blue, you ARE a mental being, but you don't IDENTIFY that way. You are operating from a mindspace, but you are mostly concerned with physical realities. Only at Orange do you really solidly IDENTIFY as a mental being. This is the stage of self-reflexive thought. You are consistently aware of your thoughts rather than just having them. You can "think about thinking." Similarly, at Yellow and Turquoise, you ARE a spiritual (soul) being, but you don't IDENTIFY that way, because your concerns are largely mental. Coral is the first stage where you really solidly IDENTIFY as a soul being, and your intuition is self-reflexive. This explains the "gulf" that has been observed between Green and Yellow. With such a gulf, it is illogical to assume that this is just the difference between one mental stage and another--rather it is that PLUS the difference between one STRUCTURE and another. It is the gulf between mind and soul, in terms of the LOCUS of identification. It is where you act from, not what you consciously identify with. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Friday, January 20th, 2012
1:09 pm	Lesser of Two Evils I posted this in response to someone's question, "What if you HAD to vote...who would you support?" Well, if I HAD to vote, I'd pick the least obnoxious candidate, but we wouldn't really be living in as free a society as we do then. But to address the spirit of your question, let's say a bunch of people don't vote, because they don't support any of the candidates. So only those who do, end up voting, and things get worse. Let's say they get way worse. I don't know about you, but I've noticed that individuals--and thus societies--don't tend to address a problem until they have to. People have to hit "rock bottom" a lot of the time before they address the issues and move on. Sometimes societies do too. When an individual's behavior is clearly going to lead to a big fall, and you are the only one stopping it by constantly picking up their inordinate amount of slack, by removing the obstacles, putting out the fires, and shouldering the weight of their problems because "who else will?" we call that "being an enabler." There are societal enablers just as there are personal ones. Yeah, it affects people when someone hits rock bottom, and it affects far more people when a society does it, but some means of "preventing" this only serve to mask the problem and delay it rather than actually prevent it. There is always the third option of saying "these options are not acceptable." That's how civil rights worked--if someone said, "All the black people have to sit at the back of the bus or the right side of the bus, and those are your choices," you would not sit and debate which is the lesser of two evils and then pick one. You would declare both options unacceptable and not participate except in a way that makes this clear, and work to raise this awareness. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
3:47 pm	Note to Self: Borderline Characteristic It just occurred to me... Narcissists feel the need to keep getting a response from people who are or have been "fixtures" in their lives. Similarly, Borderlines feel the need to keep responding to people who are or have been "fixtures" in their lives. That's why they continue to feel traumatized even by basic and normal interactive problems, like breakups and such. They keep feeling victimized or affected because it's how they define themselves. Narcissists keep wanting to feel in control, because the objects they control are how they definte their environment. Current Mood: contemplative (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 28th, 2011
1:36 pm	Problem with the West I'm finding some very good, interesting articles on Aljazeera.net. Great summation here: This was one of the questions that animated the Frankfurt School and those who influenced it. They focused on the interaction between capitalism and culture. They noted the ways in which capitalism progressively turned everything into something that could be bought or sold, measuring value only by the bottom line. Slowly but surely such measures came to apply to the cultural values at the core of society. Even time, as Benjamin Franklin told us, is money, a doctrine which horrified Max Weber in his searing indictment of the capitalist mentality as an "iron cage" without "spirit". Current Mood: impressed (Comment on this)
Monday, July 25th, 2011
10:37 am	20 Years Late I got to go to the U2 concert on Saturday. That was pretty awesome, because who knows how much longer they'll be in the business. They've been going for 30 years, and they're getting a bit old. A friend of mine in high school asked if I wanted to go to the U2 concert in 1991, and I said "yes," but then he never got me a ticket, never told me what I should do so he could get me one, or told me prices or anything, so I was rather annoyed that i missed them that time around. Coolest part: Captain of the space station recorded and recited stuff for the U2 tour, which got played on the screen. But the whole show was good, and they kept playing through the rain. Current Mood: peaceful (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
2:41 pm	Kingdom of Jordan Tourism This website is freaking awesome. I want to go to Jordan now. Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
11:06 am	Homosexuality or Haircuts? Pretty good article about how ridiculous it is to cite the Bible in regard to gay marriage. Current Mood: amused (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
1:50 pm	Deliberate vs. Accidental Attunement When you accidentally attune to a person (which is often catalyzed by some inner readiness to accept the love, light, and awareness of your own soul and is set off by a trigger related to the other person), whether it be someone you know, or someone completely new to you, you are subjected to all of their flaws, inadequacies, pathologies, neuroses, as well as their virtues, graces, talents and competencies. And when you devote yourself to them, you are subjected to all of their life choices, their values, their abuses, their vices, their ills, their attributes, their successes, their fortune and their benefits. You are subjected to all of their REALITIES when you attune randomly and devote to the person who triggered the discovery of the divine in yourself. It is random, so you get a random person and you attune to them for better or worse. You become a devotee of an unwitting and unqualified guru. It amazes me that I never hooked the word "devotion" with "devotee" before. How stupid is that? When you deliberately attune to a person, you can choose who it is. You can get to know the person, come to trust them, share life goals and patterns, attraction, love, share anything you wish to share, and begin devoting yourself to them. When you do this, you find that you feel much more lenient about your remaining differences, you become more selfless because of your devotion to another, and are much clearer about who the person is and how you relate to them. You know them intimately, down to their soul--flaws, virtues and all. But you already knew much of this. You devoted yourself to a known quantity and found previously unknown quality. You devoted yourself to a guru that you decided was qualified and trustworthy. This connection is no less than any other attunement, but it requires some devotion before attunement, which means consciously choosing to devote yourself and your attentions. With an actual guru or with an accidental attunement, the attunement happens first and makes devotion (or attempts at it) almost automatically follow, for better or worse. Both connections, in the end (i.e. once attuned), ARE THE SAME, because whatever the trigger or association, what we are awakening is our own soul, and the soul can attune to anyone or anything by chance or by choice. Devotion is easy when there is an internal drive already there, and there is always that drive because we all have and give love. And we all want things that tend to require attunement of some kind in some degree to possess. And in the devotion, we feel we not only possess it, but we give ourselves to it. For this reason, and this reason alone, we can attune to as many things as we wish. Devotion is a matter of attention and care, and the more we practice it, the more of reality we feel devoted to, even if that was not our initial objective. Devotion is a form of attentive love and it links us with our own souls. The act of devotion awakens the soul, and we feel more loving and attentive of everything. Gurus, for example, devote themselves to reality with love and understanding by paying mindful attention to everything and learning to care for it. Through this devotion, they are attuned to their own souls and the objects of their devotion in time, and it can be attuned to them more easily. That is how they so easily switch on that transmission with their devotees: they can will the attunement of another to divine realities, particularly if the other is receptive enough to receive the transmission. The reason we feel this attunement is so rare and sought after is because we tend to only familiarize ourselves with the accidental kind. I have read that people usually only feel this attunement to a person once or twice in a lifetime. But when you think about it, this is often because we then spend so much time in attempted devotion to them and are mostly receptive to them rather than other attunements. We do not devote ourselves to reality in general or to self-discovery; we devote ourselves to one person. And even if it starts with one person, devotion done properly should lead to greater attunement with reality as well, followed by some level of devotion to it. But we do not understand devotion. Usually we grasp that which we are attuned to, and we try or wish to devote to it, we feel compelled to do so, but we run into our own (and others') obstacles to devotion, be they pathology or simple laziness or selfishness. And if it goes poorly, we feel distanced but still attuned, and feel helpless to do more than wait for this to accidentally happen again. We fail to devote ourselves to reality because we are waiting for another accidental attunement to incite us to do so. When it happens, this process starts over again, and we hope it has happier results. But people tend only to have one or two gurus in their lives as well. These are chosen deliberately, attunement is guaranteed, and we hopefully devote ourselves successfully to them and to reality in such a way as to bring about greater awareness and attunement. But devotion itself attunes us to ourselves when properly exercised, because it stems from the soul. And the soul is precisely what we think we are attuning to in the guru. When we devote to that, we are faced with the reality that it is WE who possess this higher reality that we are so desperately seeking attunement with, and we integrate it within ourselves, attune to ourselves, and find that this part of us is the very thing we were grasping after. We no longer project this divine thing outwards and hope to seize it in others and devote only to those objects or people. Instead, we devote awareness itself and to what we choose, because we have the power of self-attunement, and devotion to reality runs on our own being. We devote ourselves to realities and people as they are and as we know them, not as objects of our attunement. The importance of attunement randomly happening diminishes in importance as we seek to attune ourselves. We no longer need to wait for accidental attunement like dormant needles in a compass waiting for a reading, and we no longer need to feel deprived by the blocked or unfulfilled devotion to such attunements. We no longer regret such failures, no longer consider these to be lost opportunities, because we can create successes at our own choosing. Because while attunement isn't always a choice, it can be chosen. And devotion is always a choice, and we can choose what qualities, compulsions, perceptions, projections, realities or fantasies to base it on. The choice empowers us rather than those things we base it upon. It is important to note that we don't cease being attuned to those we have attuned to. And we feel this burden when there is a block or a loss in relation to that connection or person. But when we realize the conscious and deliberate side of attunement, these connections stop defining our relationships. We can take an honest look at the people, but use the connection of attunements to bring energy and awareness to the choices we make and to the devotion we choose to practice in our lives. Bad relationships (unsuccessful devotion) with those who we have attuned to become instructive in the most energetic and aware ways, and we need no longer carry those memories with us as burdens. Instead they bring mindfulness to our lives and lend their aid to the directions that we choose for our lives. And by doing this, and practicing this, and realizing we have the power to attune ourselves through mindful devotion, we learn to let go the hold that we feel these attunements have over us. [Ref from One Taste, Sept 15th entry: "The same thing, but on a higher level, seems to go on in authentic Guru Yoga. You, the devotee, project not merely your shadow but your own True Self onto the guru. You see the guru, but not yourself, as possessing the Divine Reality. And this is why the devotee is absolutely fascinated with the guru, drawn to the guru, wants always to be with the guru. You fall in love with your own True Self, as projected onto the figure of the guru."] Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
12:17 pm	Ecclectic Spirituality I hear people talk about meditation and yoga a lot as if they're for "relaxing" and "getting fit." People don't like the purposes that these things actually have, so they focus on other, shallower effects. But saying meditation is for relaxing is like saying eyeglasses are for looking sophisticated. Of course, authentic meditation and yoga instructors don't care why you do it, because they figure that if you keep wearing the eyeglasses, eventually you'll notice that you see things better. Current Mood: amused (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 18th, 2011
4:23 pm	Simple Relations Reading Emerson's essay on Compensation again and laughing. All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. Truer words... Current Mood: contemplative (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
2:32 pm	Topping from the Bottom It annoys me greatly when people who are ridiculously busy and who want to get together with me (since I'm rather less busy) ask me when I'm free. To me, this seems like a way to try to avoid admitting that they are unavailable to me. Most of the time I tell them, "You're the busier one. You tell me when you're free." Other times, I say, "Here's when I'm free." I then watch them rule out every last one of those days, except for a "maybe" on a 2 hour slot on a particular day (which then ends up getting canceled half the time). This happened today, and I knew how it would turn out immediately, but played along for amusement value and bitching rights I suppose. "I have nothing planned next week at all," I said rather truthfully. "Well, I have this, that, the-other-thing going on this night, that night, and the-other-night, then there's whatnot on the weekend [Note: this is EVERY week, not just next week]...Sunday nights are the only times that work for me, honestly." The "honestly" is important. Start with that, and you won't have to ask me. A friend of mine used a sort of BDSM analogy for this phenomenon once and it stuck with me because it's so funny: Topping from the bottom. It basically means pretending to be submissive (or accommodating, in normal situations), but you have to pick exactly the right option or they will take over the decision-making--not directly, of course, because that wouldn't be accommodating, but by methodically restricting all options but the ones they want--and show just how not accommodating they are. Current Mood: aggravated (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
11:10 am	Workplace Guideline #1 No one should ever bring caramel corn into an office that has no dental floss or toothpicks. Current Mood: uncomfortable (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
11:07 pm	Tough Love I was talking to a friend who is going through a rough time recently due to failure of others in the situation to administer tough love, and I made the observation that tough love isn't just called that because it's tough on the person receiving it--it's also tough on the one administering it. Hope it helps, but I need to remember that one. Current Mood: pensive (Comment on this)
Monday, May 9th, 2011
10:26 pm	Mother's Day I dunno why I forgot to post this again for Mother's Day. NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Current Mood: amused (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 29th, 2011
4:20 pm	Mt. Variety Note to self: Diversity of soda options is a good thing. And when putting out a request for all your gamer geek friends to bring soda, you will discover that, by yourself, you cannot provide the same diversity of Mountain Dew products that they can. >:-/ Current Mood: frustrated (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
9:40 pm	Drive Thru Fun Was in McDonald's drive thru months ago. Was about to give order which included (not for me) a Crispy Ranch Snack Wrap. She wanted to know if I remembered what I was ordering before I ordered it, so I repeated it back to her and without a pause substituted "Crappy Risk Snatch Ramp" for the aforementioned item. Hilarity ensued. I have been dared to actually say this into the microphone next time circumstances and order preferences allow, in order to see if we actually get the correct food item or if they notice at all. Current Mood: determined (1 Comment |Comment on this)
9:23 pm	Icon Fail I seriously need help getting this and this into LJ user icon form where the animation doesn't freeze as soon as I set them up as icons. Why can't I ever have anything nice? Current Mood: disappointed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 15th, 2011
12:13 am	The other side of vegetarianism Just found this from raiding an ex-friend's journal: Both of these guys have been hosts for Have I Got News For You? David Mitchell is particularly funny. Current Mood: amused (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
2:47 pm	Volunteer by proxy What's with people volunteering the services of others? Is it just me or is that generally kind of lame? "My brother in law would fix your car and only charge you for the parts." "My sister would lend you her air compressor." "My aunt will do your taxes." "Your brother will lend you the money." [That's my dad's favorite, but at least I've MET my brother.] Not once have I seen it materialize, not once have I felt like I have any call to ask, and not once has it seemed appropriate that they should be making the offer without consulting the "volunteer." Current Mood: tired (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
1:16 am	Minnesota Food Etiquette Someone said to me that it's a very Minnesota thing not to take the last of any kind of communal food. Once I started paying attention to this, I found it's usually more specific to middle-aged women in Minnesota. I work with a bunch of middle-aged women in Minnesota. Apparently this means either I eat the last cookie/brownie/whatever, or I watch it languish overnight and well into the next day as everyone fights not to take it. It's really rather silly, but it means I don't have to worry about lunch. Current Mood: predatory (4 Comments |Comment on this)