Day 45: The Desteni of Living - My Commitment of Principle

Wherein I commit myself to Living, Investigating and Implementing these Principles into my Daily Living -  if not already, as a Living Commitment to giving myself the Gift of Life and to be a Living Example of Standing as Principles.



1. Realising and living my utmost potential.

2. Living by the principle of what is best for all – guiding me in thought, word and deed to always in all ways direct problems to the best possible outcome for all.

3. Living by the principle of self honesty – to ensure I am pure in thought, word and deed: that my within and without is equal and one. Who I am within is who I am without and vice-versa.

4. Self Purification through Writing, Self Forgiveness and Self Application – the action of realising I am responsible for my own thoughts, words and deeds, to forgive myself for transgressions and change myself to ensure I take responsibility for who, what and how I am and through this know that I can trust myself to always be honest with me and so others.

5. Living the principle of Self Responsibility – realising only I am responsible for what I accept and allow inside of me, my relationships and my outside world and so with this responsibility: only I have the power and ability to change that which I see is compromising who I am, what I live and how this affects others.

6. Realising that who I am in thought, word and deed affects not only myself – but others as well and so with Self Responsibility in thought, word and deed – I take responsibility for myself and so my relationships to be Self Aware in every moment and live in such a way that is best for me and so others as well.

7. Living the Principle of Self Awareness – to be aware, to see, to recognize my own thoughts and Mind, to be self honest to the extent where I can take responsibility for when I see my thoughts / Mind is not what is best for me / others and commit to immediately take responsibility and change for myself and so for others.

8. With taking responsibility for myself, becoming aware of myself – take responsibility and become aware of others in my life, to assist and support them as I am assisting and supporting myself – to give as you would like to receive and do the extra bit every day to see where I can contribute to other’s lives and so my own.

9. Living the principle of self trust – as I commit myself to remain constant in my living of self honesty, self responsibility and self awareness, I stand as an unbending trust that I always in all ways know who I am no matter what I face and that in this I know, as proven in the constancy of my living that I will always honour and stand by what is best for all and so best for me.

10. Making Love Visible – through me not accepting/allowing anything less than my utmost potential, I support those in my life to reach their utmost potential, to love them as I have shown love to myself by gifting to me my utmost potential, the best life/living experience and show others as I have shown myself what it means to LIVE.
 
11. No one can save you, save yourself – the realisation that the tools and principles of Desteni is the guide, but I must walk the path myself. We are here to assist and support each other in this process from Consciousness to Awareness/LIFE and what it means to live – but the process itself, where you are alone with yourself in your own Mind: is walked alone.

12. Not waiting for anything or anyone to take responsibility for me and this world – but that I realise I have created who and how I am in this moment, therefore I have the responsibility to change who and how I am and so the realisation that we as a collective created how and what this world is today and so it is the responsibility of the collective to change how and what this world is today.

13. Honouring the life in each person, animal – everything from the great to the small of earth, that we expand our awareness and responsibility to creating the best possible life for everyone and everything and so ourselves.

14. Relationships as Agreements: individuals coming together using agreements as a platform to one-on-one expand, grow and develop as individuals in life and living to support/assist each other unconditionally to reach their utmost potential where the agreement is a coming together of individuals understanding what it means to stand as equals and to stand as one.

15. Sex as Self Expression – where sex is an united expression between individuals in honour, respect, consideration and regard of each other as equals, two physical bodies uniting in equality and oneness – a merging of two equals as one physically.

16. Realising that by the virtue of me being in this world – my responsibility does not only extend to my own Mind / my own Life, but to the minds and lives of everything and everyone of this earth and so my commitment is to extend this awareness to all of humanity to work together and live together to make this world heaven on earth for ourselves and the generations to come.

17. I must in my thoughts, words and deeds – but most importantly in my living actions, become a living example for others in my world that is noticeable and visible when it comes to the potential of a person to change themselves and so change their world. So that more people can realise how we can change this world, by standing united in our self change within the principle of what is best for all to bring heaven to earth.

18. I am the change I want to see in me and my world – to bring heaven to earth is to bring into being, into living the LIVING PROOF of a PRACTICAL HEAVEN that can be seen and heard in our actions and words. We are the Living Heaven that must come into creation in this living world. 

19. Through purifying my thoughts, words and deeds – my inner self/ being becomes my outer, so I bring into creation me as heaven into earth, realizing it is not enough to ‘see the change / be the change’ – for change to become REAL it must be a constant, consistent living of me through the words I speak and the actions I live visible and noticeable to all in every moment of breath.

20. Realising that my physical body is my temple – my physical body is the living flesh through which and in which I will bring into being and create / manifest heaven on earth as me in my thoughts, words and deeds and so I honour, respect and regard – nurture and support my physical body as I would nurture and support me as equals: my body is me.

21. We are the change in ourselves and this world we have been waiting for: and so I commit to dedicate myself and my life for each one as all to realize this, as nothing will change if we don’t change in all that we are, within and without.

22. The realisation that for me to be able to change myself in thought, word and deed to the most effective living being that I can be and become – I first have to ‘know thyself’ and so commit myself to investigate, introspect and understand how I became who I am today, to prepare the road before me into self creation of a responsible, aware, self honest and trustworthy person for myself and so for all.

23. The realisation that for me to be able to contribute to change in this world – I have to get to ‘know thyself’ as this world and so commit myself to research, investigate and introspect the inner and outer workings of this world and align the systems of today to present and give the best possible life for all on Earth.

Day 44: My Digital Self and the Illusion of Privacy

 "Today, alongside each one of us, there exists a second, electronic self, created in part by us, in part by others. This other self has become de facto public property, owned chiefly by immense data-crunching corporations, which use it for commercial purposes. Now government is reaching its hand into those corporations for its own purposes, creating a brand-new domain of the state-corporate complex." [1]

It is a Brave New World, at least, it is a brave, new digital world where we as a race have given birth to what Jean Baudrilliard would have termed the hyperreality (that emergent dysfunctional and handicap where one's consciousness cannot distinguish between this physical reality and the simulation of reality). Of course, nobody reads Baudrilliard, so let's just say I'm speaking about that alternate version of ourselves that exists in that strange dimension called, the surveillance net... errr, I mean, the Internet!

The world's most famous whistle blower, Edward Snowden, has revealed that the United States is far more advanced in its electronic capability of societal destruction through government control, surveillance, misinformation and media manipulation than any Commie - flavored sinister police state fiction that George Orwell could have ever dreamt up. Snowden pulled open the drapes wide and revealed, probably for all time, that the conceits of our collective "benefits" and "rights" of the institutions Americans believe we enjoy that has been proudly enshrined in such quaint and curious documents like the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution - no longer apply and in all likelihood, will never be reinstated. [2]

I find myself caught in the horns of a dilemna. The more I participate in the various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like, the more it seems to me that through engaging within this brave new world and its digital, electronic dimension of relationships, information, sights and sounds - this electronic, digital, hyperreal version of myself in attempting to create a space of sanity for myself and others, I am convinced that the powers that be are quietly working behind the digital scenes instituting even more draconian and super - secret methods in establishing its controls even more completely. 

What is contributing my online paranoia are the memories I have of my life before the Digital Age -  that soon - to - be - forgotten era of rotary phones, phone booths, audio cassettes, VCRs and a world where there existed only 3 or 4 channels on television. Once my baby - boom generation becomes swallowed into that cultural/historical amnesia vortex, destined to be forgotten forever, nobody will recall what it was really like to live in an age where there was some semblance of privacy. That sense of privacy may have always been an illusion, and it is infinitely more so these days with our participation on the  social networks, where our digital selves are tracked, traced, bought and sold to nameless corporate interests. Privacy no longer exists except for the mysterious brains who pull the levers of survielliance and spying. Nobody knows what the hell they're up to. Must be nice to live in the shadows like that. Then again, maybe privacy is overrated. It really only exists so people can do their shameful deeds hidden from the views of others. That's why nobody talks to their neighbors anymore. It's none of their business if I beat my kids or cheat on my wife, is it?

Kinda ironic (thanks Mr. Snowden) the biggest secret in the world was the titanic extent of the reach our governments have into our every corner of our lives. We already knew that our smart phones could track our movements much more efficiently than any microchip, but we had no inkling at how much information about our daily lives is available to certain parties that are only interested in making a buck and keeping the seats of power safe from the unruly, uneducated and easily - programmable mob.

I'm sure you've heard (I'm taking it for granted that my faithful readers are hip to most of the curious legislative bullshit that passes for settled law in this country) about the concept of corporate personhood. Let me refresh: sometime during the 1800s in America, corporate interests even then bought enough lawyers and judges to agree on the legal principle that corporations (a fictional organization typically defined as a group of people acting together as a single entity in order to conduct business) are entitled to enjoy the same legal status and protection of living, breathing human beings. Fast forward 200 years and you can see how that brainstorm worked out for the American People. People make such a big deal about separation between Church and State and they think nothing about how better off this democracy would be with separation between Corporation and State. The corporate interests have long controlled the seats of power in this country and granting the corporations personhood status went a long way in establishing the corporation's ascendancy to power. Indeed, the Corporation's interests and that of the State are indistinguishable. 

I brought up corporate personhood to bring up this point: what rights does my electronic self enjoy (Jeez, talk about your First World Problems!)? Is it time to draw up a Bill of Rights for our electronic selves that exist on the surveillance net... I mean, the Internet? How can my digital self can be traded, traced, tracked and in all ways treated like a commodity without my permission, and more important, without me getting my cut??? Hell, my digital self must be worth a few 100, 000 bucks at least! 

People, we need to get together and assert our electronic liberty and our digital personhood rights, before it is too late! 

Oh, and please Like and Share this blog. Thanks! 


[1]Jonathan Schell, "America's Surveillance Net," The Nation, (June 19, 2013)

[2] President Obama, that nice, handsome man who promised change and hope, openly confesses to murdering and imprisoning fellow American citizens without due process. Ah, yes, political repression and the destruction of our democratic process, there's your "change," folks.

Day 43. "You Can't Pay Rent with a Credit Card."

Whenever I speak to somebody about the Equal Money System, the Living Income Guarantee or constructing a far more sane world where everyone has their needs met, I usually receive from the person I'm speaking a pair of raised eyebrows, a smirk or a facial expression that suggests something the recall of an unpleasant or contemptible memory. Then invariably comes the typical response:

"Well, that sounds nice, but people are too selfish. You can't undo millennia of an accumulated human nature that has at its core the survival of the fittest!" 

While I concur that the current condition of human behavior prevents the possibility of granting a dignified life to everybody, we tend to forget (conveniently) that human behavior does not develop in a vacuum. It is taught and transmitted through agents of socialization (parents, education systems, peers, etc.) and is not some undeviating native default psychological state that people are born with. The real flaw with systems of thought like libertarianism or "freedom" or "liberty" is that people tend to believe the ideas they hold in their heads are real when ideas are merely illusions until they become manifested into reality through physical action. 

"No, no, no, no, no, mo, no. Let people be responsible for their own actions!"

An assertion of this nature can only be made by someone who is so satisfied with their current life situation, that they cannot consider any possibility of people having little no options in their life. It is the justification for the abuse, inequality and the enslavement to systems to continue. It is impossible, currently, for some starving child in a Darfur  refugee camp to become a Nobel Prize winning physicist. That child was born without any options to be responsible for - other than to instinctively cling onto life as long as possible. Do people really believe that everyone gets a fair shot at life? Of course they don't. So why are we pretending that equal shot exists for everyone? And why is it so hard for people who see all the inequality and inhumanity to come together and help provide a solution that is best for everyone? It's like we walk around with virtual fish bowls on our heads, and we view and judge the world through the prism of this bowl that is filled with a mental reality that has been transmitted to us and assured is as real as that the physical reality we exist in. We are not even aware of the massive disconnect between our reality and the thoughts, opinions and beliefs about that reality.

Maybe, just maybe this disconnect between reality and our thoughts about "freedom" (for instance) has been caused by the social programming of the citizenry into accepting without question the lies and distractions of the technological bread and circuses in exchange for authoritarian creep in our government systems and precipitous claw back of civil liberties. And although we have been programmed into living as isolationists within our homes, we also could stand having our sense of brotherhood reawakened as well. If we can conceive a Heaven on Earth, it is not impossible.