Validate Your Life

Polemics, Plausible Progress, and Protuberant Projects

Accessing the Core of Spirituality: Religion in Equus

Accessing the Core of Spirituality: Religion in Equus

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2009/05/24 at 6:04 AM Comments (8)

The Power of “I’m not Interested”

“I’m not interested”. “I love your energy and you’re doing a great job selling, but I’m not interested, mate.” “I can tell you REALLY want me to, but not interested. Thanks though! Happy travels!” “No, zero interested”. There’s magic in those phrases. There’s abundant, liberating, FREEDOM in those phrases. What do those phrases do? Those phrases reclaim your time. Those phrases reclaim your life. In life, all you really have is time. It’s arguable that you have decisions and time, but for someone committed to taking action (less decision-making), you truly only have time. Utilizing your time with the right decisions will earn you money, put you in the best place in the world, where you want to be.

If you don’t have the capacity to say those phrases, and control YOUR time, do you know how dangerous life will become??!!! Your life will become someone else’s life. Some salesman who invites you to test drive his car, or some teacher who wants you to pay them to take her class…all of those things you will do and people will drain you of money, drain you of time, drain you of life.

People may get offended if you politely tell them you’re not interested. Guess what? Their feeling offended is NOT your problem! If someone says to you “I’m not interested” and I feel offended because someone expressed their opinion about an offer, I’d have a seriously low-esteem or “taking things personally” or confidence problem! So honor someone being offended by you politely saying “I’m not interested, but I appreciate your offer” as some problem THEY have!!

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2009/05/24 at 3:43 AM Comments (0)

Get er Done! Why Sign and Utilize Contracts?


In the business, professional, internet, or any world with which you associate yourself. Professionalism, formality, closure and safety are all important. Read on to see why contracts move goals forward!

1. Formality. It adds to the REALNESS of the coaching relationship for BOTH the client and coach. As a coach I don’t want some client joking around wasting my time if they aren’t committed to changing. I take coaching VERY seriously. I’ve deliberately started and stopped smoking for 2 month segments specifically for the purpose of learning about the addiction so I could educate myself on how to help clients break it! I take coachign incredibly seriously and I need clients that are committed to changing as well! From the Client POV, I’m sure a sincere and focused client who’ serious about achieving his/her goals WANTS a serious coach who’s determined to make them realize their goals and potential!! A contract creates this formality to the coaching-client relationship.

2. Closure. A contract creates closure and certainty on the duration of the coaching. This is ESSENTIAL for goal-setting because it shows the coach and client how fast they ahve to move and what they will have time to cover or not. If the coach and client only have 2 coachign sessions, they’ll most certainly have to focus on different things than if they had 10 coaching sessions. A contract creates closure.

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2009/05/24 at 1:07 AM Comments (0)

Self-Love and Jinana: The Symbiosis of Desire and the Mind

John Kuczmarski

11/03/05

Hinduism

Professor Coleman

Self-Love and Jinana: The Symbiosis of Desire and the Mind

When the major cities of Harrappa and Mohenjo Daro collapsed, the Indus Valley Civilization became extinct, resulting in a large migration of strongly militant, Sanskrit-speaking western people into the Indus Valley (Olivelle xxv).  The link between these people and the origin of the Upanisads and other Hindu texts is unclear.  However, having been recorded in 1200 BC and 800 BC, the Rig Veda and Upanisad scriptures, are 3,200 and 2,800 years old, respectively.  Their depth, significance, and historical placement in forming the Hindu religion from the emerging Hindu philosophies are without equal.  The Yoga Sutra, written by the great Indian philosopher, Patanjali, is from a much earlier era, but carries a similar amount of monumental significance in shaping the Hindu traditions and beliefs.  Amongst the origin of existence, earth, and man, these scriptures also discuss the details of the development of deities, such as Agni, the god of sacrificial fire, Yama, the death god, and Indra, the warrior god.  However, one of the reoccurring, almost thematic, explanations in the scriptures is the concept of desire.  Theses texts frequently reiterate and re-examine the origin of desire, it’s relationship to the mind, and its link to suffering and fulfillment.

A universally paramount message found in world religions is the necessity of restraining desires.  In Hinduism, over-indulgence of the sensual desires results in bad karma, suffering, and the consequential samsara; in Christianity, over-indulgence causes sin and then a descent into Hell; in Islam letting your chariot of desire be guided without restraint results in neglect of the five Pillars – Shahada (declaration of Allah), Prayer (five times a day), Zakat (obligatory tax of giving about 2.5% to the poor), Ramadan (month-long fasting), and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) – and the consequential departure from salvation.  Desire threatens to hinder the progress of the ultimate goal of salvation in other religions, as well.  However, it is only Hinduism that validates the importance of desire.  

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2009/05/22 at 9:13 PM Comments (0)

Hold Your Breath or Embrace the Process: The Bhakti and Moksha Feast of Rama, Rhada, and Ramprasad

John Kuczmarski

11/16/05

Professor Coleman

Hinduism

Hold Your Breath or Embrace the Process:  The Bhakti and Moksha Feast of Rama, Rhada, and Ramprasad

In March of 2002, “vengeful Hindu mobs burned Muslim homes” and ended up killing over three hundred people in Gujarat, India (Dugger 1).  In 2002 Muslims launched a terrorist attack on a Hindu train traveling to Ayodha; Hindus responded with retaliatory riots.  These Muslim attacks on the Hindu train, however, were retaliatory in themselves; because Muslims were responding the demolition of a “16th century mosque that was razed by Hindus in 1992” (Dugger 1).   This ping-pong game of back-and-forth retaliatory destruction has become detrimental to both religions by destroying the presence of safety as well as sanctified temples and buildings.  Is it possible that such violent outbursts could be prevented with a greater emphasis on dharma and, more specifically, bhakti in the Hinduism faith?

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2009/05/22 at 9:12 PM Comments (0)

Moby Dick: Capturing the Geist of the American Renaissance through Melville’s Transparent Eye

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2009/05/22 at 9:11 PM Comments (0)

The Necessity of Emotional Authenticity: Gabriel’s Deteriorating Sequence in The Dead

The Necessity of Emotional Authenticity: Gabriel’s Deteriorating Sequence in The Dead


 

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2009/05/22 at 9:08 PM Comments (0)

Some Excerpts of Beginning Fiction Writing I Did

John Kuczmarski

Beginning Fiction Writing

Beginnings 250 (Perspective w/light)

June 7, 2005

Rekindle the Rapport

The reflection of the office lamp on the window made it nearly impossible for Rebecca to see out into the ghostly summer night.  Not that she was concerned with the arid desert evening; she was fervently pecking away at the conclusion to her “Metaphors of Sexuality in American Society” thesis.  Because there was no way for her to see out as he looked in, the one-way window transparency did, however, benefit her colleague, the spying Samuel Gervin, whom she knew before she moved to the vacant desert of Montana.  His hesitation before entering wasn’t voyeuristic.  Instead, Samuel — nervous about rekindling any relationship, be it business-related or long-time friendship — had paused in awe of the strokes of undulating reminiscence that bombarded his conscience when he saw her assiduously typing away.

Samuel and Rebecca had been friends for almost all of the two-year experience at the small Stone Child College near Box Elder, Montana.  Samuel had always considered their relationship as something more than companionship, but was complacent with their rapport, which was generated by doing field research for their ecological final, studying for finals, and attending most classes together.  The waves of college memories — from getting lost in the Appalachians during their research project, to surviving the car crash on I-191 near Harlowton, to Rebecca’s graceful smile of gratitude whenever he reminded her to take her insulin – almost made him dizzy with glee to see her.  Taking a deep breath, he balanced one crutch against his hefty body, opened the screen door, inched his broken leg inside the doorframe, and was about to rap upon the window-pane of the door, but paused.  An uncertain, icy panic besieged him; “maybe I shouldn’t visit her,” he thought at the last minute.  “Maybe she doesn’t even want to see me in the middle of her work”.  Too late — the squeak of the screen door had alerted Rebecca, who twisted in her chair, squinting out into the dim night to determine the source of the disturbance.  In an embarrassed fluster, Samuel simultaneously realized his impending obligation to, now, knock and enter and his desire to bolt away from the porch and abandon the visit entirely.  He awkwardly wheeled around his body, wrenching his leg forward, and rapped twice on the door, only to snag his crutch on the screen door, tripped, and fell into a pathetic heap on the porch just as Rebecca opened the door.

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2009/05/22 at 9:04 PM Comments (0)

Want to Mate, Men and Women? Be Confident for a Change!


I stumbled across a flirting, date “tip”. This was phrased as a tip and it was about self-touch. It detailed that if a woman is interested in a man, she will touch her chest, leg.

I know (because I’ve dated women and we’ve discussed how they don’t subscribe to that) that some women do not touch themselves ad a part of their body and then expect a man to obsequiously sidle up to her because of HER romantic interest. And as a male, I personally don’t subscribe to that either. Why? Because the times that I observe with my fairly advanced body-language observation skills that a woman is doing some peculiar array of gestures and contortions that she is convinced is supposed to “express her romantic interest” (when in fact walking up to me and saying “I’m romanticlaly interested in you, want to chat?” would be the most phenomenal turn-on possible!) I was repulsed with how little confidence such a person has.

I guess my question is, doesn’t that seem awfully reflective of the woman not having confidence? What’s stopping the woman from boldly going up to a man that she’s interested in and introducing herself? Why must she do this bizarre courtship ritual where SHE touches her self because SHE is interested in a man and instead of acting on HER romantic interest, she feels imprisoned in a set of cultural customs to passively “lure” her sycophantic romantic “prey” over to her? What percentage of women subscribe to such nonsense? I have absolute certainty that it’s no 100% because I’ve met women who laugh at those tactics. What’s frightening is that I think the percentage is quite high. In many ways, doesn’t this passive, low confidence, indirect role that such a high percentage of women play ultimately condemn their outspokenness, their directness, their assertiveness in the relaitonship?

As homo sapiens were consciously are endowed with teh capacity to NOT resort to bizarre ritualistic courtship mating drills like the ones birds resort to that involve a flashing of colorful feathers and an exotic dance. As humans, we have the capacity to see the inherent ridiculousness in and the confining ramifications of courtship “drills” and even gender roles. And with our consciousness, we can live more full and complete and more importantly, more direct with our emotions in a way that relinquishes us from “moratorium of hte unknown”.

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2009/05/21 at 7:50 PM Comments (0)

Wanna Observe like Sherlock? Holmes’ Elementary Meta-Strategy!

Holmes’ Meta Strategy!
This is the transcription and reflection on Robert Dilts’ Strategies of Genius.

Perception of Clusters of Details —> Behavioral Observations + Environmental Observations —> Inferences —> Combinations of inferences —> Conclusions

Cultural Assumptions & Facts are matched up with the observations to draw inferences, then the inferences are “compiled” to generate conclusions.

Why is Holmes Strategy so useful to learn?
Well, for one, Sherlock Holmes (although fictional) is the greatest observational-deducer probably ever to exist in our imaginations or out of it. The fact that he’s fictional does not prevent his techniques from being genuine, applicable, and highly useful. The observational-deducing strategies used by Sherlock Holmes seriously fall in the category of something expansively NLP because it increases the options you have in life. You can (and will) draw these truthful, accurate conclusions seemingly from thin air. Yes, that is impressive and makes for a great trick, but also for your own awareness and heightened observational skills this is extremely potent. It’s so valuabl eto understand how we go from submodality observations and asking the who, what, how, where, when (and sometiems why) questions to arrive at the causes and behavioral conditions and capabilities behind what we see. Wolves are notably more intelligent than dogs because of their 30% increased intelligence and heightened “observational learning”. Observational learning means that they’ll figure out how the cage they’re in works, and can quickly escape than anything without observational learning. Similarly, learning and Applying Holmes meta-strategy for drawing deductive conclusions from heightened observations frees you and expands your life MUCH more than the person who does not use this strategy. Ultimately, by using and applying Holmes’ filtering and questing and tying up observations with cultural assumptions, imaginations, and facts to reach inferecnes and then conclusions from the summation and formulaic equations of those inferences, you truly will lead a more liberated, more full, more complete life than someone who does not use these strategies. So learn on! :D

The fusion of cultural assumption & Fact with the observation is key and often the overlooked step.

If you see someone lightly hesitantly putting his hand on a woman’s shoulder (observation), it’s likely it’s their first date (inference) because if they had gone on many dates, there likely would be no hesitation (cultural assumption)!

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2009/05/19 at 6:26 PM Comments (3)

Liberating Self from Religion 2.0

As a followup to this post, I don’t think ANY post on these theme of liberating yourself from religion could be complete without Mentioned Richard Dawkins. Read Richard Dawkins. I just finished his book The God Delusion and hearing such a massively well-scholared intelligent dissection of religion and the commitment to understanding truth restored my faith in humanity and mankind.

Some notes on Dawkins’s work.

  1. Richawrd Dawkins. (anti-religion YAY!) To cap it all, Adam, the supposed perpetrator of
    the original sin, never existed in the first place: an awkward fact -
    excusably unknown to Paul but presumably known to an omnis-
    cient God (and Jesus, if you believe he was God?) – which
    fundamentally undermines the premise of the whole tortuously
    nasty theory. Oh, but of course, the story of Adam and Eve was
    only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic? So, in order to impress
    himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious
    punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent
    individual? As I said, barking mad, as well as viciously unpleasant.
  2. George Carlin (in Richard Dawkins Book God Delusion). “Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible
    man – living in the sky – who watches everything you do, every
    minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten
    things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten
    things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning
    and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer
    and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the
    end of time . . . But He loves you!” (lmao. great ridicule).
  3. GREAT Atheist Commandments (BEST!!)
  1. • Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to
    you.
    • In all things, strive to cause no harm.
    • Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and
    the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and
    respect.
    • Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but
    always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and
    honestly regretted.
    • Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
    • Always seek to be learning something new.
    • Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and
    be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not
    conform to them.
    264 THR GOD DELUSION
    • Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always
    respect the right of others to disagree with you.
    • Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason
    and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by
    others.
    • Question everything.
  • Dawkins’ Atheist commandments GREAT!
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    2009/05/19 at 5:58 AM Comments (0)

    4 Methods of Responding to Questions.

    “There are these four ways of answering questions. Which four? There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that]. There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms]. There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question. There are questions that should be put aside.
    These are the four ways of answering questions. ”
    – Buddhist Quote

    Redefine-Straightup-Counter-Discard = 4 Response!

    Straigthforward-answer, redefinition of terms, counter-question, neglect/discard the question = Straightup beverage, “what ingredients are in that drink?”, “is that the best drink on the menu? Have you tried..xyz?” “i’m not thirsty”. I LOVE This because it gives you permission to understand that questions are really truly what we make of them. and we don’t have to make anythong of them (discard), and can answer them if want (direct), or change them (redefine), or simply bounce them back (counter-question). I always thought I had to choose between categorically (directly) answering a question or not. Now I realize that was only 1/4 of my total options!

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    2009/05/17 at 8:57 PM Comments (0)

    Is Everything for Romance? Even with Successful Careers



    just woke up, just water, wore black (Great), no food, no coffee before, energizing awesome convo. good. I saw a darren brown and david tennant clip (for darren’s tv show) and I relized that they went out into public to have a woman draw a picture and david was supposed to have predicted what she’d draw, but the interesting thing was how it almost seemed like david and darren were competing for the woman’s attention to impress her! LOL these two HUGE awesome dudes and names (darren brown and david tennant) with huge massively successful careers, were almost primarily focused on this woman’s attention. I mean i have a ton of respet for david, but my reverence for darren (he’s just so gnalry) is off the charts, so seeing both these two extraordinary guys doing very unextraordiariny stuff (trying to impress a woman and have
    vulnerability in that — or maybe that is extraoridinary too!! ;D) was an eye-opener.

    I mean Tennant is THE Dr. Who! How much more cool and successful and impressive is that from a sci-fi POV. And Darren….well that guy’s just unfathomably cool and he represents the apex of all the skills in which I have been and currently training. So DB just operates on this unimaginably awesoem level of success. But so here were these two amazingly successful people whom I have massive respect for, doing something very common and normal — kind of “flirting with a woman”!! :D These guys were just doing what any normal guy would do — flirting with this woman! I mean I guess I figured at some level of success I erroneously thought you wouldn’t have to worry about those htings (flirting, courtship, etc) but while I’m sure those guys don’t worry about them, they still DO them. Romance is alive for every person regardless of their level of success. In many ways I htink romance is kind of the common denominator that makes someone’s career or their image etc, operate from a baseline: yeah we are all human, we all have human emotions. Cool! But it was something to which I could relate. I could only look up to their careers — wow, db’s nlp skills insane! etc — but when I saw them flirting with this woman, I was like “Hey!! Hey! Hey, I’m on the same level with them in that regard at least!!” :D

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    2009/05/15 at 1:56 PM Comments (0)

    Heroic Journey of My Coaching Process

    First off I noticed that the ICA Coaching Process Diagram resembles Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces 12-phases of the heroic Journey. Joseph campbell is an author of mythology and kind of mythological dissection. He went back and scrutinized myriad myths and plugging in some Jungian archetypes extracting some archetypes, he extracted these 12 stages that occur in almost every myth be it 1970s star wars or a 500 bc folktale. And the phases involve a departure, encountering obstacles, tests, helpers, return, seizing the elixir and others. so the coaching process resembles the heroic journey that a client will go through and experience!

    The most fascinating connection I saw was that in 1998 I made an abstract self-portrait that strongly resembles the ICA coaching process! Except that mine utilizes more color, which I like. I have a confusion, dark cloud on the left side which is where the client starts — from confusion, muddled doubt, fear, and its a rough, grey-black textured part of the abstract canvas. Then there’s an up and down energy line which reflect the heroic journey and the end result is this warm smooth, red and yellow chunk that represents the achievement, the kindness and love. ST. Ambrose said, “Faith is in the beginning and love is in the end.” On my coaching journey process, Love is truly the the end result of the coaching and the energy-heroic line has greens, reds, blues, and many colors of change. What’s interesting is that instead of pillars I have 3 slivers of red and yellow surrounding the main sphere (the client’s core and their compassionate reservoir which always stays the same and contains their infinite potential). Those slivers represent passion, love, and joy that are ALWAYS with hte client throughout the entire journey!! Unlike the pillar where they’d go through the truth-telling and listening phases and then a questioning phase, my model of coaching (that I painted 11 years ago) has these empowering qualities ALWAYS with the client throughout the entire journey that they can and should and do draw upon!!

    So the Beginning of my client process starts at “muddled confusion and doubt and fear”

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    2009/05/14 at 6:06 PM Comments (0)

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