The Very Face of Truth

I wanted to share this YouTube link from Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharyaji’s talk on “The Very Face of Truth”.

The search for Truth is a universal phenomenon. Many of us make the claim that we are searching for Truth or for God. However, what would we actually do if we were to come face-to-face with that very Truth? In this uniquely bold and revolutionary talk, Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharyaji answers this very question!

With a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a 33 year career of study and practice of Sanatana Dharma, Sri Acharyaji is considered by many in the Hindu community to be the most qualified Hindu spiritual master in the United States…and for very good reason!  He offers numerous free seminars and courses at the Hindu Temple in Omaha, Nebraska, as well as a weekly meditation at the Om Center.

For more information on the life and teachings of Sri Acharyaji, please visit http://www.dharmacentral.com.

For more videos on Sri Acharyaji, please visit the Dharma Nation Channel, http://www.youtube. com/user/ DharmaNation

Look for an additional hundred videos to be added in the next few months.

To join Sri Acharyaji’s Yahoo forum, please visit http://groups. yahoo.com/group/drmoraleslist

Welcome to the Dharma Revolution!!

Hail to the Redskins

and to Jim Zorn!  Here’s to a great start to the season. And for beating the Cowboys. I cannot stand the Cowboys!

Hail to the Redskins

Hail Vic-tor-y

Braves on the Warpath

Fight for old D.C.

Run or pass or score, we want a lot more,

Beat em’ Swamp em’ TOUCHDOWN, Let the points soar,

Fight on, fight on, til you have WON!

Sons of Washington, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!

The United States of Mind .. a personality decoder

I found this article in the WSJ fascinating beyond words.  Check out the interactive map of the United States and how each state compares in extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism.  As a recent resident to Nebraska, I can tell you that this is a very extroverted state.  Friendlier than any I have ever lived prior (and I have lived in a lot of places!); no wonder it’s number 4 on the list.

This is the kind of research and psycbology that I just love to read about!

The animal lover in me must share …

On behalf of Wayne Pacelle, President & CEO, The Humane Society of the United States, wanted to share his message:

Friday, I won’t be singing for my supper. But I will be dancing with Ellen DeGeneres to get the word out about Proposition 2 — a modest anti-cruelty measure that will end the inhumane confinement of 20 million farm animals in tiny crates and cages where they can barely move for their entire lives.

The YES! on Prop 2 campaign in California is one of The Humane Society of the United States’ top priorities from now until November 4. If we win, it could mean not only stopping cruelty to animals in California, but also triggering nationwide reforms in the agribusiness industry.

Here are two important ways you can get involved this week in the campaign to pass Prop 2:

	Tune in to the Ellen DeGeneres Show tomorrow, September 26th — I’ll be talking with Ellen about Proposition 2, and how it will help millions of farm animals in California and across the country. Click here to see when the show will air where you live. And you can bet I’ll have my dancing shoes on…
	Watch our new video to hear straight from the, ahem, pig’s mouth about how you can help farm animals. It’s a funny animation, with a tune I bet you’ll recognize, but don’t get me wrong — the heinous treatment of farm animals is no laughing matter. Watch this short movie, then be sure to share it with everyone you know.

Agribusiness big shots nationwide have poured millions of dollars into their deceptive campaign to fight Prop 2 — they want to keep the status quo and defeat this commonsense initiative that simply provides animals the room to turn around and spread their limbs. Millions of animals are counting on us to stop them.

California voters care about protecting animals, but our factory farm opponents will try to confuse them about the issue. With just 5 weeks left before the election, we’ve got to do all we can now to get our message out far and wide and ensure they vote YES! on Proposition 2. Please share our video with your friends and family — especially those who are California voters.

Thank you for raising your voice, and for all that you do for animals.

PS — If Prop 2 passes in California, it will lead to more humane farming practices on a national scale. That’s why your involvement is so important — no matter where you live!

Life’s little lessons…

Have you learned something, after the fact, that was completely incongruent with what you were either told or believed?  Here is an odd example, but not the one that is weighing heavily on my mind right now.  In high school, I was told that your score on the SAT was a good predictor of how you would do in college.  I was pretty much an A student in high school, though I never understood how since I rarely studied and was usually doing homework for the next class in the one before.  That is for the classes I showed up for – I was never an early riser and pretty much missed most of my first period econ my senior high.  I had an A in the class but still got detention for missing so much class.

I did not score particularly well on the SAT.  Need I remind anyone that those stupid tests were always on a Saturday morning at 8am, earlier than school started during the week.  I would take each section as fast as I could and then take a nap until the next section. Not a recipe for success.  I ended up taking the SAT three times because my guidance counselor and parents believed I was not performing to my potential.  Well, duh.  My study habits were non-existent and sleep was a higher priority than any test (this hasn’t changed in 20 years).

I took this belief that I was not going to do well in college because my SAT scores predicted this and proceeded to almost fail out my freshman year.  Why?  Because I still hadn’t developed any study skills and because most of my classes were at 8am or 9am, which I generally slept through.  So, was the SAT a good predictor or a self-fulfilling prophecy?  I would say some of both.

However, academic probation will wake just about anyone up to what they want to do.  And since I started the whole college thing and now felt lost, I took some classes that summer at home to get my head in the game. I did really well and then went back to school in the fall more motivated (mainly to not live at home).  I graduated with a B average overall but in the back of my mind, I always felt like I was swimming against the current.

Today, I officially graduate with my second masters degree.  It still shocks me that I pursued the first and graduated.  But to do it a second time is even more shocking as I have definitively proven to myself that some stupid test is not a predictor of anything. Not your academic ability. Or your personality. Or your success.

I never started this quest to gain a bunch of degrees or have initials after my name.  I wanted to learn about specific areas of the business world and wanted to research workplace questions that have bugged me for years.  My full aim was to set out and prove to myself that my ideas weren’t ridiculous or frivolous, as others have always tried to make me believe.

I sit here, looking out the window, listening to great music and my spirit is soaring.  It took a while, but I have completely changed my entire belief about myself academically, despite some deeply held belief that I could never accomplish a goal like this.   Now, if I apply this to another situation I recently encountered and believe it, watch out world!!

Demotivators

I love this site. Check out their latest T-shirt.  Their humor is evident throughout the site.  If you don’t believe me, check out their “customer service” page.

Their tongue in cheek humor gets me every time!  For those who are Hallmark-challenged, they even have BitterSweets® – The Valentine’s Candy for the Rest of Us.

Check out the slight difference in the pessimist mug – love the line that explains the $10 difference!!

I’ve gotten some calendars over the years and they are always good for a laugh! Check’em out.

Retirement Plan Investment Tip – a humorous share

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left.

But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund, you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice:

To to drink heavily and recycle. This is called the 401-Keg Plan

Well Said …

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist, and activist, wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin.

This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving
young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God’s plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list.

The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and
difference.

This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States . She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth. Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God’s name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S. , but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or
whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism an aggression.

If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

Countdown

Imagine my glee. Yes, GLEE!  One more week and school is over.  My accelerated graduate program that I started last May will be over.  I am doing the Snoopy dance I am so thrilled not to have to write a paper every single week on top of the other random papers.   I have to turn in a final reflective paper and my research paper next Sunday and ta-da, DONE.

I will be one happy gal when it’s over so I can reclaim a little bit of my life back on the weekends.  Maybe even catch up on the many movies I have missed this year and read a completely frivolous book instead of a textbook!  Time will never be more sweet than after next Sunday.

Nip in the air

I am in heaven! It’s a wonderful 40-ish outside right now and am just loving it.  I know it won’t last but it’s the first touch of winter and it always delights me.  Football season is in full gear (sorry, bad pun). Can’t you just smell the crackle in the air?