Friday, July 25, 2008

WHY ARE WE IGNORING GREAT OUTDOORS?

Why are we ignoring great outdoors?

I got up a little after 5:00 this morning and I walked down to the streams on the property here near my cabin. As I shined a flashlight into the streams that have always been so full of life with a variety of minnows and several different sizes of crayfish, and a few frogs and an occasional salamander, I noticed things were starting to change. There were much fewer minnows and the number of crayfish swimming around on the bottom was down to one here and one there...and I was lucky to find these two. All because of the ignorance of people and because of two huge houses being built on this property with no concern for nature or for the people that already live here or come here to visit.

When the builder would not take action to fix all the many problems over the course of over eight months, and when the county would not take action, I called up the Environmental Protection Division and they sent out Amy Mundel and she took action and got things done! Both of these multi-million dollar houses where shut down until they meet the proper requirements! And now the multimillionaire owners of these houses, who own Neocom Solutions, and the county is trying to target me and bring me harm only because of my concern for the destruction of this paradise that is so near to my heart and that I have enjoyed since I was a little kid. This was also one of my father’s favorite places to enjoy the outdoors, and now they are trying to run me out like they already did one of my neighbors who were the first people to live on this property.

Why are we ignoring the great outdoors? Why have people become so indifferent to the importance of nature? Most people in this town just ignore the importance of preserving nature. Here in Canton, Georgia, the building department and their inspectors, the people in Planning and Zoning, those in Engineering and the people in Environmental Health, and those in the Marshal’s office, all don’t seem to care at all about the life in these spring fed streams. And because these people don’t care, when the lives of these creatures that make these streams alive are stamped out they won’t even miss them. When these live streams become dead, like all the other streams around our poorly managed developments, none of these people will ever give a hoot. We are destroying nature, and by destroying nature and our environment we are slowly destroying this marvelous earth.

There are so many other aspects of nature that should be preserved in this virtual paradise. This awesome place is located in a deep valley surrounded by rolling hills at the corner of the Etowah River and Lake Allatoona. It is literally like another world down in this valley and down the nature trails that wind through the steep rolling hills to the lake. Speaking of not giving a hoot, there are many owls that live in this area. One can hear them hooting everyday and every night and occasionally I will get to see one of these awesome creatures. In fact I can hear one now as I write this. One day they will have no place to live or they will not be able to survive the damage caused by the stupidity of these harmful development practices. There are also big and beautiful redheaded woodpeckers, and many other kinds of birds, not to mention the other wildlife that uses this land to survive. There are also many different varieties of butterflies and other cool insects that are in abundance in this area of natural beauty. Why don’t people care about all this?

This place is in many ways a kind of tropical rain forest. In fact it often rains here and no where else in the area. The clouds are often fed by the moister off the water that goes for many miles. Almost every morning there is moister in the air. This moister feeds the many thousands of Earleaf Magnolias and the many species of ferns that cover the grounds, some in thick beds of ferns by the hundreds and some are giant ferns, four or five feet tall. There are many hundreds of wild holly and wild azaleas, and the hills by the spring fed streams are covered with Mountain Laurel. Dogwoods proliferate here and there are so many other plants and flowers that grow in this area in abundance and in this area only.

Why do we continue to destroy the very nature that is dependent on our own long-term survival? We already can’t eat the fish out of most of the rivers and lakes in this country and even our great oceans are becoming polluted. Some of the great whales have cists on them because of our ignorance. There is not much time left for the oceans! Why?! Why are we doing this? It is so simple to use environmentally friendly developments and environmentally friendly landscaping, yet we don’t do it. Why? Is it because we have come to ignore our great outdoors?

I know how easy it is to do environmentally friendly construction and landscaping because I have a degree in Architectural Engineering and I have done it and I have shown how simple and cost effective it is to do.


Please. For your own sake and for the sake of those to come...Let's get outside and enjoy nature...and let's stop ignoring great outdoors.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Baptist Church of Canton, GA

Baptist Church of Canton, GA
I went to the Baptist Church of Canton this morning just to see how the good ‘ol church was operating these days since I had not been in many years. This structure is a bran new multi-million-dollar church and it is huge! It was a very strange experience.
The sermon was about witnessing to others and how each person should witness to as many people as they can every day. It reminded me of being at a very large multi-level marketing meeting. The preacher said that it was mandated by God that each person should testify and share the message that Jesus Christ is the only way to HEAVEN and that the only other alternative for those that have not been “SAVED” is eternal damnation in the pits of FLAMES in HELL.
He talked about how each person should ask everyone they came in contact with, at work, at school, at the store, anywhere, and if they had not been saved you should witness to them. This sermon about how each person was commanded by God to witness to people every day went on for some 40 minutes. He said that each Jehovah's Witness is ordained to witness to 2000 people a year and that most Christians do not witness to anyone after they were SAVED. He went on to say how scripture makes it clear that if no one tells someone about Jesus Christ, how will they know?.. and they will be doomed to burn in hell fire forever because they were never told!(?)
It is amazing how Christians say that believing in Jesus Christ is “solid ground” and everything else is “sinking sand”. And, believe me, if you don’t believe as they do they will do what they can to put you into the sinking sand! Is it any wonder why so many people become Christian robots? And is it any wonder why this religion continues to grow along with the neurosis of society by using this multi-level marketing technique? My god, it's got one of the best marketing techniques in business! The many multi-level marketing companies in this country and in other parts of the world have demonstrated how fast a company can grow and how it will continue to grow, even though the product is not truthfully represented, or nothing more than a scam.
There is one thing very clear....if we are ever going to have peace and sanity on this earth, this bizarre and false religion has got to go, and all other religions must disperse as well. Only then will we stand a chance of moving away from the stupidity of tribalism sustained by the many false beliefs and into a truth based selfless intelligence.

Friday, July 04, 2008

There is no path to truth


There is no path to truth

If truth can set you free, where do we find it? We cannot find truth in society and its institutions, nor in organized religions and their dogmas, nor in any self-help guru or outside spiritual “authority”. The hope for truth and ultimate freedom can’t come from someone telling you what to do or believe; it can come only through your own creative self-understanding.

Monday, June 30, 2008

On Time

On Time

Question: Can the past dissolve all at once, or does it invariably need time?

K: We are the result of the past. Our thought is founded upon yesterday and many thousand yesterdays. We are the result of time, and our responses, our present attitudes, are the cumulative effect of many thousand moments, incidents and experiences. So the past is, for the majority of us, the present, which is a fact which cannot be denied. You, your thoughts, your actions, your responses, are the result of the past. Now the questioner wants to know if that past can be wiped out immediately, which means not in time but immediately wiped out; or does this cumulative past require time for the mind to be freed in the present? It is important to understand the question, which is this: As each one of us is the result of the past, with the background of innumerable influence, constantly varying, constantly changing, is it possible to wipe out that background without going through the process of time?
What is the past? What do we mean by the past? Surely we do not mean the chronological past. We mean, surely, the accumulated experiences, the accumulated responses, memories, traditions, knowledge, the sub-conscious storehouse of innumerable thoughts, feelings, influences and responses. With that background, it is not possible to understand reality, because reality must be of no time: it is timeless. So one cannot understand the timeless with a mind which is the outcome of time. The questioner wants to know if it is possible to free the mind, or for the mind, which is the result of time, to cease to be immediately; or must one go through a long series of examinations and analysis and so make ongoing attempts to free the mind from its background.
The mind is the background; the mind is the result of time; the mind is the past, the mind is not the future. It can project itself into the future and the mind uses the present as a passage into the future, so it is still—whatever it does, whatever its activity, its future activity, its present activity, its past activity—in the net of time. Is it possible for the mind to cease completely, for the thought process to come to an end? Now there are obviously many layers to the mind; what we call consciousness has many layers, each layer interrelated with the other layer, each layer dependent on the other, interacting; our whole consciousness is not only experiencing but also naming or terming and storing up as memory. That is the whole process of consciousness, is it not?
When we talk about consciousness, do we not mean the experiencing, the naming or the terming of that experience and thereby storing up that experience in memory? All this, at different levels, is consciousness. Can the mind, which is the result of time, go through the process of analysis, step by step, in order to free itself from the background or is it possible to be free entirely from time and look at reality directly?
To be free of the background, many of the analysts say that you must examine every response, every complex memory, every hindrance, every blockage, which obviously implies a process of time. This means the analyzer must understand what he or she is analyzing and he or she must not misinterpret what he/she analyses. If he or she mistranslates what he or she analyses it will lead him or her to wrong conclusions and therefore establish another background. The analyzer must be capable of analyzing his/her thoughts and feelings without the slightest deviation; and he or she must not miss one step in the analysis, because to take a wrong step, to draw a wrong conclusion, is to re-establish a background along a different line, on a different level. This problem also arises: Is the analyzer different from what he or she analyses? Are not the analyzer and the thing that is analyzed a joint phenomenon?
Surely the experiencer and the experience are a joint phenomenon; they are not two separate processes, so first of all let us see the difficulty of analyzing. It is almost impossible to analyze the whole content of our consciousness and thereby be free through that process. After all, who is the analyzer? The analyzer is not different, though he or she may think he/she is different, from that which he/she is analyzing. He or she may separate him or herself from that which he/she analyzes but the analyzer is part of the analysis. I have a thought, I have a feeling—say, for example, I am angry. The person who analysis anger is still part of anger and therefore the analyzer as well as the analyzed are a joint phenomenon, they are not two separate forces or processes. So the difficulty of analyzing ourselves, unfolding, looking at ourselves page after page, watching every reaction, every response, is incalculably difficult and long. Therefore that is not the way to free ourselves from the background, is it? There must be a much simpler, a more direct way, and that is what you and I are going to find out. In order to find out we must discard that which is false and not hold on to it. So analysis is not the way, and we must be free of the process of analysis.
Then what have you left? You are only used to analysis, are you not? The observer observing—the observer and the observed being a joint phenomenon—the observer trying to analyze that which he or she observes will not free him or her from his or her background. If that is so, and it is, you abandon that process, do you not? If you see that it is a false way, if you realize not merely verbally but actually that it is a false process, then what happens to your analysis? You stop analyzing, do you not? Then what do you have left? Watch it, follow it, and you will see how rapidly and swiftly one can be free from the background. If that is not the way, what else have you left? What is the state of mind which is accustomed to analysis, to probing, dissecting, drawing conclusions and so on? If that process has stopped, what is the state of your mind?
You may say that the mind is blank. Proceed further into that blank mind. In other words, when you discard what is known as being false, what has happened to your mind? After all, what have you discarded? You have discarded the false process which is the outcome of a background. Is that not so? With one blow, as it were, you have discarded the whole thing. Therefore your mind, when you discard the analytical process with all its implications and see it as false, is freed from yesterday and therefore is capable of looking directly, without going through the process of time, and thereby discarding the background immediately.
To put the whole question differently, thought is the result of time, is it not? Thought is the result of environment, of social and religious influences, which is all part of time. Now, can thought be free of time? That is, thought which is the result of time, can it stop and be free from the process of time? Thought can be controlled, shaped; but the control of thought is still within the field of time and so our difficulty is: How can a mind that is the result of time, of many thousand yesterdays, be instantaneously free of this complex background? You can be free of it, not to-morrow but in the present, in the now. That can be done only when you realize that which is false; and the false is obviously the analytical process and that is the only thing that we have. When the analytical process completely stops, not through enforcement but through understanding the inevitable falseness of that process, then you will find that your mind is completely dissociated from the past—which does not mean that your mind does not recognize the past but that your mind has no direct communion with the past. So it can free itself from the past immediately, now, and this dissociation from the past, this complete freedom from yesterday, not chronologically but psychologically, is possible; and that is the only way to understand reality.
To put it very simply, when you want to understand something, what is the state of your mind? When you want to understand a child, when you want to understand somebody, something that someone is saying, what is the state of your mind? You are not analyzing, criticizing, judging what the other is saying; you are listening, are you not? Your mind is in a state where the thought process is not active but is very alert. That alertness is not of time, is it? You are merely being alert, passively receptive and yet fully aware; and it is only in this state that there is understanding. When the mind is agitated, blocking, worrying, dissecting, analyzing, there is no complete understanding. When there is the intensity to understand, the mind is obviously tranquil. This, of course, you have to experiment with, not take my word for it, but you can see the more and more you analyze the less and less you understand. You may understand certain events, certain experiences, but the whole content of consciousness cannot be emptied through the analytical process. It can be emptied only when you see the falseness of the approach through analysis. When you see the false as the false, then you begin to see what is true; and it is truth that is going to liberate you from the background.

J. Krishnamurti, THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

On Memory

On Memory


Question: Memory, you say, is incomplete experience. I have a memory and a vivid impression of your previous talks. In what sense is it an incomplete experience? Please explain this idea in all its details.

K: What do we mean by memory? You go to school and are full of facts, technical knowledge. If you are an engineer, you use the memory of technical knowledge to build a bridge. That is factual memory. There is also psychological memory. You have said something to me, pleasant or unpleasant, and I retain it; when I next meet you, I meet you with that memory, the memory of what you have said or have not said. There are two facets to memory, the psychological and the factual. They are always interrelated, therefore not clear cut. We know that factual memory is essential as a means of livelihood but is psychological memory essential? What is the factor which retains the psychological memory? What makes one psychologically remember insult or praise? Why does one retain certain memories and reject others? Obviously one retains memories which are pleasant and avoids memories which are unpleasant. If you observe, you will see that painful memories are put aside more quickly than the pleasurable ones. Mind is memory, at whatever level, by whatever name you call it; mind is the product of the past, it is founded in the past, which is memory, a conditioned state. Now with that memory we meet life, we meet a new challenge. The challenge is always new and our response is always old, because it is the outcome of the past. So experiencing without memory is one state and experiencing with memory is another. That is there is a challenge, which is always new. I meet it with the response, with the conditioning of the old. So what happens? I absorb the new, I do not understand it; and the experiencing of the new is conditioned by the past. Therefore there is a partial understanding of the new, there is never complete understanding. It is only when there is complete understanding of anything that it does not leave the scar of memory.
When there is a challenge, which is ever new, you meet it with the response of the old. The old response conditions the new and therefore twists it, gives it a bias, therefore there is no complete understanding of the new so that the new is absorbed into the old and accordingly strengthens the old. This may seem abstract but it is not difficult if you go into it a little closely and carefully. The situation in the world at the present time demands a new approach, a new way of tackling the world problem, which is ever new. We are incapable of approaching it anew because we approach it with our conditioned minds, with national, local, family and religious prejudices. Our previous experiences are acting as a barrier to the understanding of the new challenge, so we go on cultivating and strengthening memory and therefore we never understand the new, we never meet the challenge fully, completely. It is only when one is able to meet the challenge anew, afresh, without the past, only then does it yield its fruits, its riches.
The questioner says, “I have a memory and a vivid impression of your previous talks. In what sense is it an incomplete experience?” Obviously, it is an incomplete experience if it is merely an impression, a memory. If you understand what has been said, see the truth of it, that truth is not a memory. Truth is not a memory, because truth is ever new, constantly transforming itself. You have a memory of the previous talk. Why? Because you are using the previous talk as a guide, you have not fully understood it. You want to go into it and unconsciously or consciously it is being maintained. If you understand something completely, that is see the truth of something wholly, you will find there is no memory whatsoever. Our education is the cultivation of memory, the strengthening of memory. Your religious practices and rituals, your reading and knowledge, are all the strengthening of memory. What do we mean by that? Why do we hold to memory? I do not know if you have noticed that, as one grows older, one looks back to the past, to its joy, to its pains, to its pleasures; if one is young, one looks to the future. Why are we doing this? Why has memory become so important? For the simple and obvious reason that we do not know how to live wholly, completely in the present. We are using the present as a means to the future and therefore the present has no significance. We cannot live in the present because we are using the present as a passage to the future. Because I am going to be something, there is never a complete understanding of myself, and to understand myself, what I am exactly now, does not require the cultivation of memory. On the contrary, memory is a hindrance to the understanding of what is. I do not know if you have noticed that a new thought, a new feeling, comes only when the mind is not caught in the net of memory. When there is an interval between two thoughts, between two memories, when that interval can be maintained, then out of that interval a new state of being comes which is no longer memory. We have memories, and we cultivate memory as a means of continuance. The ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ becomes very important so long as the cultivation of memory exist, and as most of us are made up of ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, memory plays a very important part in our lives. If you had no memory, your property, your family, your ideas, would not be important as such; so to give strength to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, you cultivate memory. If you observe, you will see that there is an interval between the two thoughts, between two emotions. In that interval, which is not the product of memory, there is an extraordinary freedom from the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ and that interval is timeless.
Let us look at the problem differently. Surely memory is time, is it not? Memory creates yesterday, to-day and to-morrow. Memory of yesterday conditions to-day and therefore shapes to-morrow. That is the past through the present creates the future. There is a time process going on, which is the will to become. Memory is time, and through time we hope to achieve a result. I am a clerk to-day and, given time and opportunity, I will become the manager or the owner. Therefore I must have time, and with the same mentality we say, “I shall achieve reality, I shall approach this energy that brings clarity.” Therefore I must have time to realize, which means I must cultivate memory, strengthen memory by practice, by discipline, to become something, to achieve, to gain, which means continuation in time. Through time we hope to achieve the timeless, through time we hope to gain the eternal. Can you do that? Can you catch the eternal in the net of time, through memory, which is of time? The timeless can be only when memory, which is the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, ceases. If you see the truth of that—that through time the timeless cannot be understood or received—then we can go into the problem of memory. The memory of technical things is essential; but the psychological memory that maintains the self, the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, that gives identification and self-continuance, is wholly detrimental to life and to reality. When one sees the truth of that, the false drops away; therefore there is no psychological retention of yesterday’s experience.
You see a lovely sunset, a beautiful tree in a field and when you first look at it, you enjoy it completely, wholly; but you go back to it with the desire to enjoy it again. What happens when you go back to it with the desire to enjoy it? There is no enjoyment, because it is the memory of yesterday’s sunset that is now making you return, that is pushing, urging you to enjoy. Yesterday there was no memory, only a spontaneous appreciation, a direct response; to-day you are desirous of recapturing the experience of yesterday. That is, memory is intervening between you and the sunset, therefore there is no enjoyment, there is no richness, fullness of beauty. Again, you have a friend, who said something to you yesterday, an insult or a compliment and you retain that memory; with that memory you meet your friend today. You do not really meet your friend—you carry with you the memory of yesterday, which intervenes. So we go on, surrounding ourselves and our actions with memory, and therefore there is no newness, no freshness. That is why memory makes life weary, dull and empty. We live in antagonism with each other because the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ are strengthened through memory. Memory comes to life through action in the present; we give life to memory through the present but when we do not give life to memory, it fades away. Memory of facts, of technical things, is an obvious necessity, but memory as psychological retention is detrimental to the understanding of life, the communion with each other.
J. Krishnamurti, THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Sound familiar?

Sound familiar?


Ever since the earliest Colonial settlements, the so-called New World had been a haven for people whose ideas or religions had been distasteful to the existing authorities. But then, in the latter half of the 1700’s, the hospitality began to wear thin. The Naturalization Act passed by Congress in 1795, although for the most part liberal enough, within a few years all sorts of fears swept through the states—fears that the country was being subverted and that all sorts of conspiracies were being laid against the new nation. France in particular was suspected of meddling in the sovereign affairs of the United States. Meanwhile, accusations of disloyalty were being thrown around and a profound uneasiness settled over the nation. Within a two-month period—June and July, 1798—four acts were passed that were designed to strengthen the internal security of the country but that actually had the effect of adding to the tensions and confusions. Under these acts, visitors or new settlers were under almost constant suspicion and pressure. The president was given arbitrary power of detention or deportation. The image of America suffered abroad. Meanwhile, men that questioned the orthodox view of Christianity, such as the two English scientists and thinkers Dr. Joseph Priesley and Dr. Thomas Cooper, who had come to the United States to take part in a great adventure of ideas, became uneasy and uncertain; though their presents here was viewed as an important gain for America by many, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, the men were caught in the conflict of one controversy after another. Their unorthodox religious opinions produced a storm of opposition, as was indicated by letters written by Jefferson during this time.


Reference: ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’, The Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers, Copyright 1958 by Norman Cousins

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

THE BIBLE SAYS: YOU SHOULD KILL THEM!!!

The bible says you should kill them


According to the bible, if someone turns away from or abandons or renunciates the Christian religion, what should you do if you are a "real Christian"? Even if this person is your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife, or your friend....what should a "Christian" do?

Answer: You should kill them.

6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; 7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; 8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
Deut 13:6-10

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Why we are usually screwed when we contract with an attorney

Why we are usually screwed when we contract with an attorney


Imagine what your choices in shopping, or watching TV, or taking vacations, would be if one of your neighbors whom you hardly know could decide who gets to go shopping, who gets to watch TV, and who gets to take a vacation, and when. You wouldn’t feel very free, would you? Especially if that neighbor could order you to jail if you disobeyed his choice. Imagine further that you were dependent on that neighbor who makes decision for your ability to do any of these things, ever at all. It may be that you CAN’T even imagine a world such as I’m describing, because it is so completely antithetical to your relatively autonomous lifestyle now. You get to choose what you do on a day-to-day basis, and you think of that as your right. Well, the government actually regulates us, a lot, and gives certain corporations a lot of power over us, in fact, but the truth is we still have a lot of choices to make. But not so for the lawyers who litigate in court.

It is a fact not readily apparent to laymen or even to private litigants, but lawyers are controlled by the judges who make decisions in court. Part of being a “good” lawyer is to know or make reasonably competent predictions about what judges will do in certain circumstances. That is how a “good” lawyer can “help” his clients. It is a very limited and restrictive world. And it is a conflict of interest because lawyers are ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT on the judges who decide their cases. Although, typically, in State Court at least, the admission of lawyers to the bar is not directly dependent upon the decisions of active judges, the admission process is governed by each State’s Supreme Court which designates a “Committee of Bar Examiners” or an “Admissions Committee” which is totally dependent on and controlled by the judiciary. This creates a conflict of interest of vast proportions.

Judges, ideally at least, but also as defined by law, are supposed to be “impartial and detached” third-parties who make decisions in cases in which they have no direct interest or personal stake of any kind. And it is true that MOST judges do maintain enough integrity to avoid cases where they are actually related to the parties in some direct way (that is, they don’t preside over cases involving their relatives, closest friends, corporations in which they are shareholders—although that’s more difficult to perceive sometimes and may be abused much more than is commonly realized), but judges do NOT avoid conflicts of interest when it comes to their relationship with lawyers.

This automaton-like control is most readily apparent in the realm of criminal law, where judges see the same team of criminal lawyers in case after case in a fairly repetitive and formalized fashion. Criminal lawyers are thus the most limited and probably least creative of lawyers precisely because they know exactly how certain judges will react in certain cases and situations, and the criminal process in the United States at least has become mechanical and like an “assembly line” in a factory: a factory of prisoners, most sentenced to very long terms (especially in Federal Court, but increasingly also in State Court). Arrest or prosecution for anything, in the United States, almost automatically equals conviction by guilty plea or at best a very brief and summary trial in which the judge tells the lawyers what to do, tells the jury what to do, and in effect, determines the outcome of the case without much leeway. In both the State and Federal systems, the coercive plea-bargain system and almost automatic sentencing leads to no hassle convictions and often prison terms which the judges are happy to impose and the attorneys acquiesce in advising their clients to accept. The ever so popular "consent order" is the fast and easy way of dealing with Temporary Restraining Orders and to get the money and run.

The loser here, aside from any and each of the individual defendants, is the concept of “substantial” due process, fair play, and “justice”— i.e. a truth seeking process. So there in the selection of outcomes, the menu is limited, competition is almost non-existent and meaningless, and the lawyers are there to implement the policies which the judges approve.

But what if lawyers did not owe their ability to practice law to judges directly? What if the licensing of attorneys were controlled, say, by the Executive Branch (like the licensing of motor-vehicle operators, perhaps?)? Or what if there were no such thing as a license to discuss and interpret the law, and appear before the Courts—a position which Montana Senator Jerry O’Neil has championed his entire life, and like Nancy Jo Grant in Florida, and Kerry Craig Walker in Georgia, and countless others, albeit less explicitly and directly?

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, if you think about it appears to describe the practice of law in all aspects except those directly related to religion: covering the rights to speak, assemble, and petition the government for redress of grievances. A monopoly on the exercise of First Amendment Rights is antithetical to the First Amendment’s guarantee of these freedoms, and yet such a monopoly would appear to be imposed by the “integrated bar” theory of judicial appointment and regulation of lawyers. So judges decide who gets to exercise “full” First Amendment rights, and this means, in essence, that NOBODY gets to exercise “full” First Amendment Rights. This is an intolerable situation and demonstrates why our system of justice all too often does not work, and why it needs to be changed.



Note: For those of you who believe that "We have the best legal system in the world"....I have done extensive research on this and I would put the USA down around number 17 on the list of all the countries of the world. We need to stop comparing our country to the worst. When you compare vomit to BM, the vomit tends to look pretty good.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

The truth about religion and this thing called FAITH

The truth about religion and this thing called FAITH

As published in the Cherokee LEDGER-NEWS (except they edited it to leave out the last paragraph)


Dear Editor,
I’ve been reading a great deal in this paper about Jesus Christ and the “truth of the Bible” lately. Having spent the past 30 years studying this subject, and going beyond “self” in doing it, I have come upon the truth. Having read the Bible four times and having done detailed studies of it, and its 6 translations, I have come upon the absolute truth—This is a very wretched book and nothing more than a grim fairy tale.

The truth: Thought has created and invented all the religions throughout the world.

It’s difficult for most people to see this truth and even more difficult for them to grasp it, because in order to come upon truth, one must first realize that we are programmed biologically and psychologically, and this conditioning makes it almost impossible to come upon that which is true beyond all human projections. Putting aside our heritage and our conditioned or programmed brains is the most difficult of all things to do. That’s why it is typical to go around the world and find that the beliefs of a specific culture are the ones that the people of that culture have come to hold on to at any cost.

The truth is FACTS and FAITH are not only at odds with each other, when it comes to religion they have no relationship at all.

In my studies, there seems to be a natural energy of this universe, but it does not demand our worship and it can only be come upon when the human brain has freed itself from all the man made religions of the world and goes beyond the conditioned self and comes to this effortless and natural state of goodness and love. There is nothing wrong with having faith in something because we understand it, but this faith in illusions of thought are, and always have been, ridiculous.

This is the only real truth and it is the only hope for mankind. Search “kerry walker story” and find out what “Christians” in this town have done to my family and me, and be sure to go to “Articles” and learn the complex truth about our country and our existence.

Kerry Craig Walker
Chattanooga, Tennessee/Canton, Georgia

Monday, January 28, 2008

Getting ready to teach another to fly....

This is a picture of me during the short bus ride to the plane on Sunday January 27, 2008. Since breaking my back a few months ago, over the past few weeks I have done five or six hop and pops from 6000 feet with 5 second delays and several AFF (accelerated freefall) working jumps and one freefly (combination head-down and sit-fly) jump...Just call me the come-back kid...or the come-back old man would be more like it. Yee ha!

Flying Again...



This is me flying on the far side of my AFF Level I student...Wow, it's nice to be flying again...and landing softly too.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

The Natural State of Spirituality

The Natural State of Spirituality
By Super Whuffo

What is the natural state of the human being? What does it mean to become spiritual? Is it to endlessly search for some illusion that has been created by thought? The one thing that is clear in all the illusions created and invented by thought is that self is a product of conditioning, of heritage and tradition. We are a product of genetic, biological, and environmental conditioning. Any movement of thought or any effort in any direction to achieve a result in the realm of spirituality only builds the self. Once this is realized, the trick is to be finished with any movement of thought to achieve a result in some attempt to become something other than simply what you are. Then thought has its proper place to be used to accomplish a particular task or to operate in its natural capacity of creativity and intelligence, and this operation goes beyond self and is not burdened by the neurosis of self with its many illusions and desires. You cannot change what you are by self will, because the thought that is used to attempt to bring about this change through effort only builds the self and adds flame to the fire of self deception and neurosis.

What is it that binds us together? It is not our wants and ambitions. It is not our attachment to the past. Neither is it commerce and great industries, nor the banks and financial institutions, nor the churches; these are just ideas and the result of ideas. Ideas do not bind us together. We may come together out of convenience, or through necessity, danger, hate, or worship, or through group therapy or some self help program, but none of these things holds us together. They must all fall away from us, so that we are alone. In this aloneness there is love, and it is love that holds us together.

A preoccupied mind is never a free mind, whether is it preoccupied with the sublime or with the trivial.

We should consider the simple truth about our conditioning and how so many of us have belonged to different churches and religious organizations or some other type of group, and how none of them has given us any satisfaction; but one never stops seeking. We may not take life seriously or we may think that we are serious, but one of the difficulties is this idea of becoming something different than what we are. One aspect may be envy. Most of us are driven by ambition, greed, or envy. Or we are caught in the continuous struggle to maintain our position in life at all cost. These are relentless enemies of man, and yet one cannot seem to live without them. We may try to build various types of resistance against envy or the desire to possess, but in spite of all of our efforts we get caught up in it again and again; it’s like the pollution contaminating the environment, and before we know it we are more envious and more deceptive than ever.

The answer to this is so simple, yet it eludes us again and again because of our conditioned minds and our inability to see through our own self-created illusions. Conditioning, heritage, tradition, are very powerful processes, and, in fact, so powerful that most of us will never be capable of seeing through these illusions, no matter what. When it was leaned that the earth was round and not flat, back in the early 1400’s, it took nearly 300 years for the masses to accept this fact, and those that accepted that our planet was round early on were ridiculed, jailed, tormented, tortured, and even killed for accepting this simple fact. This is only one simple example of the insanity and violence that has been perpetuated in the name of conditioning, most of it through the illusions of religious beliefs.

You must have found that with the desire not to be envious or not to be something that you don’t want to be, there comes the conflict of the opposites. You may have noticed that in your desire for you ambition or your desire to keep your position you avoid the truth about some wrongdoing, because to do so may jeopardize your position, your ambition. So you become part of the deception, yet, at the same time, you try to present yourself as being honest and ethical, and you carry this image of being honest and ethical because you are afraid to face what you are. The desire or the will not to be this, but to be that, makes for conflict. This is so simple and obvious to many, but most of us generally consider this conflict to be a natural process of life; but is it? This everlasting struggle between what you are and what you desire to be is considered noble, idealistic; but the desire and the attempt to be non-envious is the same movement of desire, and this effort to be something other that what you are is creating more conflict and more contradiction. If you really understand this, then there is no battle between the opposites and the conflict of duality ceases. This is not a matter to be thought about and acted on at some later date; it is a fact to be seen immediately, and this perception is the important thing, not how to bring about change.

You may ask, “Isn’t change necessary?”

Can there be change through an act of will? Is not will concentrated desire? Having bred envy, desire now seeks a state in which there is no envy; both states are the product of desire. Desire cannot bring about this simple and fundamental change.

Now some of you might ask, “Then what will?”

Perceiving the truth of what is. As long as you desire to change from this to that, without coming to a full stop and looking at what you are, all actions are superficial and trivial. As long as you cling to your beliefs and to your illusions based on your conditioning, this conditioning and these belief systems will prevent you from ever coming to this effortless state of what you are. The full significance of this must be felt and understood, and only then is it possible for a transformation to take place. As long as you are rooted in some thought created superstition with a mind that is always comparing, judging, seeking a result or locked into some thought created illusion, there is no possibility for change, but only a series of unending struggles which society calls living.

Your conditioned minds pose as much of a threat to the future of mankind as the nuclear weapons. We have evolved tremendously in terms of technology, but our violent actions are no different that the caveman that used the jawbone of an ass to kill his neighbor. Now we have the conditioned forces of these bizarre belief systems called religion, and now civilized man is doing what the caveman did but you do it for the “good of mankind.” Those who hold that their beliefs system is the only true system and that hold that right is all on their side and the belief that their eternal good will burn away the evil of others are the real enemies of mankind and the enemy of all the marvelous creatures on this incredible place we call earth.

We have so many people telling us what we need to do to come to the truth. The Pope tells us his bullshit, or rather he reads what the Vatican tells him to say, and so many of us believe this idiot. We have Martin Luther King and his nonsense, and we put this womanizer and power seeker up on a pedestal, even moreso because he was assassinated. Everyone is telling us how to live and we follow the one that fits our fancy at the moment and then move on to some other fancy that gives us hope. The Christians with their beliefs in some wretched book that they have not even read in its entirety, tell us that we are all hopeless evil creatures and that it is only by accepting this bizarre belief system that we will reach the mansion with streets of gold floating around up there some place in space, which they call heaven. Of course the variety of beliefs from this one religion are enumerable, just as they are from the other major religions and the many bibles that represent them. But I say that the body and its actions are already in unison and that any action of will to change only brings about further conflict, and any actions of will to change or mold the body or its actions only create more disorder and are pure and simple violence. The psyche, or self, or mind, has no existence other that this demand to bring about change in either the material or in itself and the human self-consciousness is matter that is characterized by perpetual malcontent and a self-centered insistence on its own importance and survival. That is all that the self can do, with one illusion replaced by another illusion and one teacher replaced by another teacher. We are all so quick to quote what someone else has said when we should learn to speak from our own hearts. The moment we repeat what someone else has said instead of speaking for ourselves, we begin to follow someone else. If you understand what is said here and want to share it with others, then if you understand, it is now yours so speak it from your own heart as yours, you do not have to give me credit for anything.

We have come to accept religion for one reason, and that is because of our conditioned minds. People accept religion as a premise of culture to find solutions to ease their everyday real problems or for solutions to fabricated problems, namely, the search for spirituality and enlightenment. This drive by the cultural environment, which demands conformity of the individuals, and places in them the desire to be special, but only if this desire meets the conformity of the accepted religion. Consequently, it is this need that is exploited by the preachers or spiritual teachers, or gurus, and all the sellers of such nonsense, who pretend to offer the only way to reach that goal but never deliver, because the goal is itself unreachable.

Now we have this non-sense called meditation, where we sit in a room or lay down for 15 minutes or two hours and meditate and then go out and be the same self-centered person again. There is a story about a man who’s father meditated in a specific room for two hours a day, and one day a child began to cry during his meditation and this man came down a beat the tar out of the little kid until he turned blue. All actions to dissolve the self can only build the self. All self-less ambitions lead to the same old self-centered behavior. It’s like the kid that dreams of being president of the humane society because of his love for animals, and then after 30 years of struggle and pursuit he attains his goal and everyone is so proud of him, and then one day he comes home from the office and his dog jumps up on his bran new $500.00 suit and he kicks the crap out of him!

I have had a difficult life, but on April 12, 1992 something happened to me and I turned my life around and began to live a life that would have been a product of this art of living, but it has been virtually destroyed by church going, bible believing people that called themselves Christians. Ultimately, these people that call themselves Christians killed my mother, who was a woman that lived her faith. I lost a half million dollar home on a virtual paradise at the corner of Lake Allatoona and the Etowah River that I personally designed and built and I would have lived on the street, alone and penniless, had it not been for a shed that I converted to a little cabin in order to survive and to fight my battle against the corruption and crimes the State waged against me, but still there were times that I was penniless and had to depend on the charity of others for survival. Having been the victim of a violent crime and falsely arrested as the perpetrator, and then felony crimes committed by the government in their many attempts to manufacture my guilt, I have been confronted by government corruption and by the actions of a corrupted detective and a corrupted system, most all of whom beat to the drum of organized religion. I won the battle by facing them head on and without fear. This is the power of dying to self and not escaping from anything and facing everything head on. But now how few even care and those that should stand up for the truth of what was done to me are hiding in their ambitions and self-centered world, so as not to be disturbed. I live in a town called Canton, Georgia, here in Cherokee County, and this town throbs to the beat of corruption and its deception of the people is astounding, especially through the local paper called the Cherokee Tribune, and all in the name of Organized Christianity. The papers are famous for showing pictures of the politicians here holding their hand on a bible, as their wive's hold it, and they are sworn to uphold an Oath of Office that they will soon abandon. We have the Ten Commandments posted in the courthouse along with a description from Hammurabi’s Code, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I wonder what they would think if someone used the Holy Koran to be sworn in or one of the other many bibles from any of the other major religions? We have a government that supports this bizarre religion with laws that give credence to it, and now a new law requires the State Board of Education to teach bible classes in schools.

Our entire system of learning and teaching has its foundation in this culture of tradition based on these conditioning processes and is, therefore, for the most part, a destructive process. We learn about history, but only from the perspective of those that have manipulated it to fit their slanted views. We must conform to their belief systems, and, God forbid, that we should be individuals. It’s a game of one-upmanship. All learning, all teachings are within the framework of our culture and our heritage. It’s all about ambition; it all about winning, and the ethics side of it has gotten so clouded that you can’t see it because of the thick fog.

Charity has become one of the biggest scandals of this country, next to government and politics. Every time a charity is investigated it turns out to be just another American scam. First they con people into giving, and then they run their scams to make the biggest profits, then they use the policeman and the government to protect them. Charities are created to prevent the have-nots from rebelling against them. It also makes them feel less guilty. All of this charity is nothing more than another way to make lots of money and all the so-called do-gooders feel so special when they do good. I remember back in 1992 when I had finally gotten clean and sober and I had rented a room in a house. I needed a couch so I went to the Goodwill store in hopes of finding one. They had this old couch, it must have been worth all of $50.00, if that, and they were asking $275.00 for this piece of crap and they could not budge from the price. And did you realize that these charities only have to convert 2 cents on the dollar toward their cause?

I’m not out to change anybody and I accept everyone as perfect just the way they are, as long as they bring no harm to others and are good, honest people. I’m not out to liberate you. You have to liberate yourself, and you are obviously unable to do that. What I have to say will not do it. I’m only interested in describing this state, in clearing away the illusions and mystification and all the nonsense in which those people in the “holy business” have shrouded in everything they do. Maybe I can convince you not to waste a lot of time and energy looking for a state that does not exist except in your imagination. God only knows how much of my time and energy has been wasted. To be an individual and to be yourself you don’t have to do a thing, yet our culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy, the will, the effort, we waste trying to become that or to achieve this! And look at all the energy involved in the discussions and dialogs, and sometimes arguments, in dealing with religion—it’s such a waste of energy. If that energy is released, what is it that we couldn’t do? How simple it would be for every one of us to live in this world! And so many wars would have never been fought and so much violence would have never taken place! And we would live as a community and care about nature and our environment, and the streams and rivers and oceans.

I’m not perfect, but I realize that and I can observe my own neurotic behavior, and this alone brings about an absolute goodness that refuses to be associated with any form of corruption or wrongdoing. I’m not seeking to be put up on a pedestal and I don’t want you to look up to me. I don’t put myself above or below any man or woman. The only message I have for mankind is to say that all holy systems for obtaining enlightenment are utter nonsense and that all this jibber and all this quoting of scriptures to bring about a psychological mutation through awareness is nothing but a bunch of bull. Psychological mutation cannot be achieved by an act of will or by any act on your part; it is impossible. The natural state can happen only through biological mutation and it starts now, but just don’t attempt to hold on to it. It is in this silence that this energy behind all life can be touched and in this silence the mind is part of that energy that is eternal. But this silence cannot be cultivated, achieved. There can be no silence as long as there is a seeker. There is this silence only when the desire to become something other than what you are is no longer in operation. Without replying, put this question to yourself: Can the whole of your being be silent? Can the totality of the mind, the conscious as well and the unconscious, be still?