ALEX NOBLE - WRITING JOURNAL-2015

Want to Write Children's Books?

 

 

Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.

 Winnie The Pooh

 

The Institute for Children's Literature

For more than 40 years, the Institute of Children’s Literature has offered the premiere writing course to adults interested in learning how to write and be published for children and teens.  The hallmark of our course is one-on-one personalized instruction from an impressive faculty of active professional writers and experienced editors.  College Credits are available for our course.  Instruction is conveniently available everywhere via the traditional home study method – with lessons exchanged through the mail or via the Internet.

 

This site offers information on our course, Writing for Children and Teenagers, on our teaching methods, and on our faculty of professional writers and editors. The objective of our course and instructors is to train you to create manuscripts for today’s publishing market.  Please go to the Short Story or to the Full Story for details on our course and how you can benefit from it.

For fun, you may want to go immediately to "Our Instructors". We're very proud of our instructors because they are all established writers or editors. They've been there; they know how it's done; and one of them would be your teacher and mentor all the way through the course. Check them out.

 

Ready for Your Own PERSONAL Satellite?

 

 

Assignment:  Take notes in your journal about all the things you can think of that you would do with your very own satellite in earth orbit?  You could also create a "fleet" of satellites with friends and associates!  Write Now!  GO!

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Would you like to have your own spacecraft in space?

Video at: www.kicksat.org

I’m Zac Manchester, a graduate student in Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. Over the last several years a few collaborators and I have designed, built, and tested a very tiny and inexpensive spacecraft called Sprite that can be built and launched into low Earth orbit for just a few hundred dollars each!

 

Consciousness, Occupy Movement & Planetary Culture (Lecture)

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Johnson of EL interviews one of our greatest scultural historians, William Irwin Thompson for a fascinating discussion about the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, digital culture and planetary crisis.

What is the role of myth and mysticism in the new planetary culture?

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Biography of William Irwin Thompson:

(See Below)

 

 

"Where is God Not?" - A Mullah Nasruddin Story

 

Mullah Nasrudin

 

Assignment: Where is God for you? Write a reflection on the Presence of God in your life. Write Now!  GO!

 

From Mullah Nasrudin Stories:

My beloveds, I travelled again to the village of my friend Tekka, after years away. He had become very devout in his ways, sometimes a little pompous, but still the kind soul I had loved for years.

I visited him, and we picked up our friendship as if we had never been apart.

"Nasruddin, you are a light to the eyes," said Tekka, "Please stay with me. I insist."

I accepted his kind invitation. He showed me my sleeping room, with a window to the east, and the bed made up. "I have arranged it so your head faces toward Mecca," he said proudly. "You must always sleep with your head toward Mecca, out of respect for the Prophet, on whom be peace."

 

KIDS: The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes

 

 

 

A young girl from Canada addresses the UN Conference on the environment

in Brazil.

Assignment:  If you had only 5 minutes, and could address a major conference on the environment as she does, what would you say? Write Now! GO!

 

 

Planet Earth - The Most Beautiful Places in the World

 

 

Assignment:  Watch these gorgeous images of our Home Planet, and write a poem, prayer, or meditation on the feelings and memories that these photos bring up for you. Think about the happiest memories you have of being immersed in nature, and feeling at one with all life.  What was it like for you? What did you feel? If you are not feeling poetic, just write a list, and try to capture the magic and beauty of those times.Write Now! GO!

 

 

 

RELAX! Return to Freedom - From the Wings 2002 Album "Return to Freedom"

 

 

 

 I dream of home wherever that is, of a tree as green as thought in a canyon as red as iron.

Edward Abbey

Hafiz - All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.

Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.

From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'

Translated by Daniel Landinsky

 

    

Coyote - The Native American Trickster

 

Assignment:  Does your life need some Coyote Medicine, some beneficial chaos?  Where might you take on the role of Trickster, and create some useful mischief which promises to bring transformation and perhaps a new world view?  Are you tired of being in a rut?  Call on your Coyote nature and stir things up!  Write Now!  GO!

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In Native American thought, it is often the trickster, Coyote, or some other animal who brings a chaotic element into the otherwise orderly world. Ruled entirely by his passions, both cunning and credulous, and forever getting into trouble, Coyote often acts entirely counter to social and sacred order.

In that role, he makes it possible to experience in speech actions that are not permitted to humans. The trickster, however, though he looses disorder upon the world, is not evil or a devil. He is truly a necessary figure for understanding the sacred.

As the Chumash, and indeed the Hopi, stories about Coyote and Sun illustrate, not only does the trickster by his contrary actions illuminate the proper way by indirection, he also reflects an awareness of the nature of the chaotic element.

Hopi Creation Stories: The Four Creations

 

 

Hopi Spider Woman Kachina

 

      The world at first was endless space in which existed only the Creator, Taiowa. This world had no time, no shape, and no life, except in the mind of the Creator. Eventually the infinite creator created the finite in Sotuknang, whom he called his nephew and whom he created as his agent to establish nine universes.

Sotuknang gathered together matter from the endless space to make the nine solid worlds. Then the Creator instructed him to gather together the waters from the endless space and place them on these worlds to make land and sea. When Sotuknang had done that, the Creator instructed him to gather together air to make winds and breezes on these worlds.

      The fourth act of creation with which the Creator charged Sotuknang was the creation of life. Sotuknang went to the world that was to first host life and there he created Spider Woman, and he gave her the power to create life. First Spider Woman took some earth and mixed it with saliva to make two beings. Over them she sang the Creation Song, and they came to life.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

 

 

What Would You Take to a Desert Island? (New Yorker)

 

Assignment:  When asked what he would take to a desert island, Playwrite George Bernard Shaw replied: "Seven blank books."  The article below details what a number of folks would take to their island, and is entertaining as well as informative.  This is a most useful thought exercise, and makes for a useful journal entry, as one realizes how one's chosen items may change over time.  So here we go: What would YOU take to a desert island, using, if you wish, the specifications set out in the article below? Write Now!  GO!

 

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Seven Decades of Desert Island Discs

Posted by Judith Thurman

January 30, 2012

 

 

Yesterday morning, as dawn was breaking in Manhattan, and Londoners were enjoying a late Sunday breakfast, I tuned in to BBC Radio 4 to hear the seventieth-anniversary broadcast of “Desert Island Discs,” an hour-long, live interview show that first aired on January 29, 1942.

      For seven decades, “Desert Island Discs” has been introduced by the same theme song, “By the Sleeping Lagoon,” composed in 1930, by Eric Coats, and every week a new “castaway” of distinction is asked to name the eight tracks of music, one luxury item, and one book that he or she would choose to be marooned with. (One also gets the Bible, or its equivalent, and the complete works of Shakespeare.) There are only two longer-running shows in radio history: a British program of religious music, and “The Grand Old Opry.”

 

Think About: Your Choices

 

Assignment: Make a list of the three most important choices you can make right now to add more joy to your life.  On a blank journal page, (use one page for each choice you have selected) write down three headings: PLUS, MINUS & INTERESTING.  Fill in as many thoughts that come to you for each category, and be honest.  Almost always, it is the items in the INTERESTING column which will be the most determinative of the choice you make.  Write Now!  GO!  And make the choice!

 

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Dr. Shad Helmstetter on Choices

1 “No one else can ever make your choices for you. Your choices are yours alone. They are as much a part of you as every breath you will take, every moment of your life.”

2 “You may think that in life, a lot of things happen to you along the way. The truth is, in life, you happen to a lot of things along the way.”

3 “Choosing to live your life by your own choice is the greatest freedom you will ever have.”

4 “It is only when you exercise your right to choose that you can also exercise your right to change.”

More About Choices:

Need a Home? Join the "Small House" Movement!

 

Journal Assignment:  Think about what home means to you. Jot down notes in your journal as to what an "ideal" home would feel like, what qualities would it express, how would you feel when you are living in your dream space.  Now, think about the least amount of space you could actually live in, and learn about the new Small House Movement, which is gathering steam to help people build more efficient and affordable dwellings. Write Now! GO!

 

Start by Ordering and Reading The Small House Book:

 

www.tumbleweedhouses.com

Some of what you’ll find in
your copy of The Small House Book

• How to build a small home for just 20 grand! • 196 full-color pages. • You’ll discover why you really don’t need to own land to call one of these small houses home. Jay’s portable homes can be put nearly anywhere. These structures have been placed in backyards, RV parks, rural settings, and even in a National Park. Imagine the freedom of being able to pick up and move as you wish. Tired of your neighbors? Don’t like your view? Just pick and move.

The Blossoming of Creation - Visionary Artist Leigh McCloskey (TEDx Talk)

 

 

 

 

An artist must always strive towards what he does not know.

On a certain level IDEA gives rise to a form or vessel within which to explore its creative potential. This form can be a sound, a symbol or a universe depending on the strength of the idea. This is the basis of my work as a painter and as a creator of forms.

The creative force behind my art transcends any definition I apply to explain it. Art cannot be explained so as to compress it into obeying the intellect. It can only be draped with meaning for the sake of economy. If a painting is good it will not remain static or secure for long.

Any appearance of solidity or stability is a mental composition made up of an infinite number of bits of information. Without conscious work to try and continually push the parameters of thought and form awareness becomes congealed. Awareness is based upon ideas which in and of themselves possess a force or will to expand and grow. When this force is too quickly inhibited by the intellect or a prevailing belief system it dies leaving only a sense of the structure which the idea possessed, but not its living insight which would have continued to lead to new awareness.

 Leigh McCloskey

www.leighmccloskey.com

 

WE ARE NOT BORN INTO TIME WE ARE BORN INTO CREATION

WE ARE EACH A PHOENIX A UNIQUE BLOSSOM OF CREATION

WHOLE-HOLY-HOLOGRAPHIC

EACH OF US WEAR THE ROBES OF OUR SACRED DNA

AND LIFE IS OUR INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCESTORS

LET US BE WORTHY OF THEM

AND THIS GREAT, DIFFICULT AND NOBLE ADVENTURE IN CONSCIOUSNESS, ART

AND MEANING CALLED BEING HUMAN.

 

What Is Your True Joy In Life?

 

 

 

 

Assignment:  Today, give some careful thought to what is your true joy in life, and perhaps write out your answer as a poem or a short vignette.  Surprise yourself!  Be honest. Write Now! GO!

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Here is some inspiration for you from George Bernard Shaw:

 

"This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

Ten Commandments for A Good Life

 

The Ten Commandments for Kids

 

Assignment: Listed below are "10 Commandments for a Good Life."  Before you scroll down and read them, take a few minutes to create your OWN 10 Commandments for a Good Life, and write these in your journal.  This is a most useful, and often surprising exercise.  It will give you an appreciation for the trials faced and victories won, and the wisdom which informs your life practice.  Once you have created your list of 10 (and you may want to work on this for a few days), consider sharing it with friends.Write Now!  GO!

 

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"10 Commandments for a Good Life"
by Marc

MIT Offers 2100 Online Courses - FREE!

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Campus

 

Assignment:  Think about what you would like to learn if you could study at MIT.  Let your imagination loose!  Pretend you are going back to school.  Explore what is available from the MIT online catalogue, and create a curriculum for yourself, or start with just one course that you feel passionate about.  Write Now! GO!

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From: Smart Planet:

The disruption of higher education just got very interesting. It appears that the disruptors — private, online universities — are being disrupted at their own game. One of the pantheons of traditional on-site learning, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has announced it will be launching online courses that will be free and open to the world. And, in the process, plans to offer certificates to students successfully completing the coursework. 

What Is Worth Fighting For?

 

Assignment:  Do you agree with Samwise Gangee's statement, below, that "There's some good in the world, and it's worth fighting for?"  What greater good is calling to you?  What do you care about with your whole life?  What cause or causes do you find irresistible, compelling, and necessary for the fulfillment of what you define as your personal Grail Quest, Heroic Journey, and Soul Mission?  Write Now!  GO!

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Sam: "It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?

The Web's Secret Stories - Jonathan Harris (TED Talk)

 

 

Please, please, please watch this!  It is wondrous. It will cheer you up!!!

Assignment:  Enjoy this inspiring TED Talk by Jonathan Harris, on his remarkable project, "We Feel Fine."  In your journal, write a short entry in terms of how you are feeling right at this moment.  This is a good bit of Soul Yoga to do regularly. 

The Mystery of the Singing Maya-Aztec Skulls

One of the most fascinating subjects of 21th Century archaeology concerns thirteen crystal skulls of apparently ancient source that were found in parts of Mexico, Central America and South America in the 1900′s.

 

These skulls, found near the ancient ruins of Mayan and Aztec civilizations (with some evidence linking the skulls with past civilization in Peru) apparently hold a profound mystery.  Some of the skulls are believed to be between 5,000 and 36,000 years old.  Mayan pottery and Mayan masks as well as Aztec pottery are replete with skulls.  Indeed human skulls are one of the most pictured objects dealing with religious rites of pre-Columbian cultures.  But the crystal skulls are different.  They seem to defy logic. Everything that is known about lapidary work indicates that the skulls should have been shattered fractured or fallen apart when carved.

The Local-Global Flip or "The Lanier Effect" (Edge)

 

 

A Conversation with Computer Visionary Jaron Lanier [8.29.11]

 

Source:  http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip

"If you aspire to use computer network power to become a global force through shaping the world instead of acting as a local player in an unfathomably large environment, when you make that global flip, you can no longer play the game of advantaging the design of the world to yourself and expect it to be sustainable. The great difficulty of becoming powerful and getting close to a computer network is: Can people learn to forego the temptations, the heroin-like rewards of being able to reform the world to your own advantage in order to instead make something sustainable?"

 

"I strongly urge you to read this truly epic interview with Jaron Lanier at Edge. ... It's an extraordinary interview, packed with insight and often grimly funny." Matt Zoller Seitz, Salon.com

"Fascinating conversation with Jaron Lanier, influential computer scientist. On economics of the Internet – implications of networked technology, destruction of middle class and dark side of new media". — Writing Worth Reading, The Browser.com

 

What is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation ? (Edge)

"The World's Smartest Website."

— John Naughton, The Observer 

Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true."

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT,
OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?

Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena.

[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson for their ongoing advice and support.]

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Andrei Linde

Father of "Eternal Chaotic Inflation"; Professor of Physics, Stanford University

Excerpt: To summarize, the inflationary multiverse consists of myriads of 'universes' with all possible laws of physics and mathematics operating in each of them. We can only live in those universes where the laws of physics allow our existence, which requires making reliable predictions. In other words, mathematicians and physicists can only live in those universes which are comprehensible and where the laws of mathematics are efficient.

One can easily dismiss everything that I just said as a wild speculation. It seems very intriguing, however, that in the context of the new cosmological paradigm, which was developed during the last 30 years, we might be able, for the first time, to approach one of the most complicated and mysterious problems which bothered some of the best scientists of the 20th century.

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Why Is Our World Comprehensible?

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." This is one of the most famous quotes from Albert Einstein. "The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle." Similarly, Eugene Wigner said that the unreasonable efficiency of mathematics is "a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Thus we have a problem that may seem too metaphysical to be addressed in a meaningful way: Why do we live in a comprehensible universe with certain rules, which can be efficiently used for predicting our future?

One could always respond that God created the universe and made it simple enough so that we can comprehend it. This would match the words about a miracle and an undeserved gift. But shall we give up so easily? Let us consider several other questions of a similar type. Why is our universe so large? Why parallel lines do not intersect? Why different parts of the universe look so similar? For a long time such questions looked too metaphysical to be considered seriously. Now we know that inflationary cosmology provides a possible answer to all of these questions. Let us see whether it might help us again.

Retelling the Past & Reimagining the Future: A 2012 Dialogue with Daniel Pinchbeck and Graham Hancock

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:  Pinchbeck and Hancock discuss the implications of the Mayan Calendar "end-times" date 2012 which Hancock first drew to the attention of his readers in Fingerprints of the Gods published in 1995. Hancock's evidence for a great lost civilisation wiped out in a global cataclysm 12,500 years ago is explored in depth together with his suggestion that the survivors of that civilisation may have sought to pass down a message to the future and indeed specifically to us in the twenty-first century -- a warning that the next great lost civilisation may be our own.

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This unique dialogue brings together two leading counterculture thinkers, Daniel Pinchbeck author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age, and Breaking Open the Head, and Graham Hancock author of Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural and most recently the fantasy adventure novel Entangled. Pinchbeck and Hancock discuss the implications of the Mayan Calendar "end-times" date 2012 which Hancock first drew to the attention of his readers in Fingerprints of the Gods published in 1995.

The Mayan Songs of Dzitblache - Flower Song

 

The Tzolkin Mayan Calendar

 

The Songs of Dzitblaché include most of the ancient Mayan lyric poetry that has survived. In these songs, the poet speaks of personal feelings and ideas, of love, philosophy, ancient rituals and spiritual values.

The original title page reads, "The Book of the Dances of the Ancients that it was the custom to perform here in the towns when the whites had not yet arrived. This book was made by the honorable Mr. Bam, great-grandson of the great Ah Kulel of the town of Dzitbalché in the year 1440." The title, "Songs of Dzitbalché," was given to the collection by the first translator into Spanish, Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, and it is by this name that it is generally known. Written above the title is the word kolomché - a ceremonial dance.

Source:  http://www.red-coral.net/Dzit.html

 

FLOWER SONG  

  The most alluring moon has risen over the forest;

it is going to burn suspended in the center of the sky to lighten all the earth, all the woods, shining its light on all.  

Sweetly comes the air and the perfume. Happiness permeates all good men

Paolo Coelho on Internet Freedom & Links to Free Books

Excerpt: When you’ve eaten an orange, you have to go back to the shop to buy another. In that case, it makes sense to pay on the spot. With an object of art, you’re not buying paper, ink, paintbrush, canvas or musical notes, but the idea born out of a combination of those products. ‘Pirating’ can act as an introduction to an artist’s work. If you like his or her idea, then you will want to have it in your house; a good idea doesn’t need protection. The rest is either greed or ignorance."

"My Thoughts On S.O.P.A."
by Paulo Coelho

"In the former Soviet Union, in the late 1950s and 60s, many books that questioned the political system began to be circulated privately in mimeographed form. Their authors never earned a penny in royalties. On the contrary, they were persecuted, denounced in the official press, and sent into exile in the notorious Siberian gulags. Yet they continued to write. Why? Because they needed to share what they were feeling. From the Gospels to political manifestos, literature has allowed ideas to travel and even to change the world.

I have nothing against people earning money from their books; that’s how I make my living. But look at what’s happening now. Stop Online Piracy Act (S.O.P.A) may disrupt internet. This is a REAL DANGER, not only for Americans, but for all of us, as the law – if approved – will affect the whole planet. And how do I feel about this? As an author, I should be defending ‘intellectual property’, but I’m not. Pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written!

Mayan Prophecies & Crop Circles: An Extraordinary Connection

 

Awaken Your Inner Travel Writer! Discover World Hum

 World Hum: The Best Travel Stories on the Web

 

 

This is D. Mack's All-Purpose Travel Postcard Template.  He's on a campaign to make handwritten postcards and letters cool again, and would love to receive one from you -- for more information, please visit his blog.

 

Writing Assignment:  Awaken your Inner Travel Writer and write a short poem or story about a memorable experience from your travels.  If you are planning a trip, be sure to take your journal and note special experiences, events, and happenings. Write Now!  GO!

For examples of some of the very best contemporary travel writing, take a look at World Hum:

www.worldhum.com

 

Here is an item from World Hum about Pico Iyer's new book:

Write & Share Your Life Stories!

 

Writing Assignment:  From the life-history questions below, choose one and write a short vignette focused on this subject.  Over time, using these questions, you can create a collection which can grow into a full memoir.  Or, you may wish to just create stand-alone life stories in your journal.  Write Now! GO!

Consider: Choose events to write about from your life as it is happening right now - small life stories which can eventually become part of  a memoir.

The questions below are from  Write My Memoirs, a site dedicated to supporting writers who wish to create an autobiography.

Read more at:  http://www.writemymemoirs.com/index/about_us.html

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How many people lived in your family home when you were a child? Did your extended family – grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins -- live under the same roof, or very near by?

Khan Academy: A Free Education for Anyone Anywhere

 

A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

 

What Do You Want to Learn?

SMASH Books - Another Way to Keep a Journal!

 

 

Check out a whole lot of SMASHBook Stories at:

 

http://www.smashstoriesblog.com/

 

Read a SMASHBook story from Charlotte in France:

 

Money & Life: The Movie

 

 

Writing Assignment:  Reflect on your sense of abundance, and your relationship with money.  What opportunities may exist to upgrade this relationship in the midst of the current global financial crisis?  Are you finding that there are things you can do without, while at the same time improving your quality of life? Are you finding that you are placing less importance in material wealth, and spending more time cultivating spiritual and creative resources?  Is it possible that as there is less money to work with, you will discover more of what matters most in your life? Are you finding new ways to experience abundance, and share this with others?  Write Now!  GO!

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Can we use the opportunity of the economic crisis to heal our relationship with money and re-discover true wealth?

Got a Secret You've Never Told Anyone?

 

Discover Post Secret: The Blog, The Books, The Community!

 

Journal Assignment:  Think of a secret that you have never told anyone, and write a poem, postcard or short journal entry about it.  Alternatively, send it in as an anonymous artwork to Post Secret. Write Now! GO!

 

A Note to the Founder of Post Secret

 

www.postsecretarchive.com

Dear Frank,

Just a note to let you know how much the Postsecret App has changed my life. November 4, 2011 I attempted to end my life. I've since spent a lot of time in psychiatric treatment as my world came crashing down around me. My psychiatrist encouraged me to journal because it would be "healing". I've tried and I've tried but every time I put pen to paper nothing comes out.

But I post secrets.

Dozens and dozens of secrets. Some are funny, some are shocking, some are vulnerable, and some even surprise myself. But they are mine to release anonymously and I shared them with the App. And the replies? Oh the replies! Complete anonymous strangers come together in humor and in sadness and you find that you aren't alone.

Through posting these secrets and sharing others, I've started to discover myself again. It's still going to be a long road to recovery, but there is hope. Last night when I logged on to read the Sunday secrets I smiled through the tears. I was happy I was part of the fleeting project of the PostSecret App. It was the shining star in the dark night of my depression. Thank you Frank for bringing people together. I will continue to log in every Sunday and read the secrets. Happy new year.

What is Post Secret?

Alone Together: Why We Expect More of Technology and Less of Each Other

 

 

 

Writing Assignment:  As you watch this video, and read the overview of Alone Together below, reflect on your current relationship to the tsunami of digital technologies that threaten to overwhelm us.  How are all these tools affecting your life? Are they adding to your sense of peace and happiness, or detracting from your quality of life?  Are you wanting more connections via these many options, or are you starting to unplug?  if you are serious about being a writer, or even about being able to think clearly about your life and make intelligent decisions, you will need to create boundaries for yourself in terms of how much time you spend absorbed in the brave new  Orwellian digital world.  Write Now!  GO!

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Sherry Turkle's New Book:

Alone Together: Why We Expect More of Technology and Less of Each Other

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Facebook. Twitter. SecondLife. “Smart” phones. Robotic pets. Robotic lovers. Thirty years ago we asked what we would use computers for. Now the question is what don’t we use them for. Now, through technology, we create, navigate, and perform our emotional lives.

2012 Pole Shift - Gregg Braden

 

Crop Circles: The Movie - Suzanne Taylor

Excerpt: 

What would give us the sense of being one humanity, where service to the whole would be the master game? All thoughts for the new website or otherwise are welcome.

See: www.theconversation.org

Making Sense of These Times

May we help the world see Earth as part of a greater reality!

 

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Coming into the New Year I’ve been looking beyond my crop circles movie for how to help the situation we are in where we need to uplevel our operating system here on Earth.

See: www.cropcirclemovie.com

Given a worldview in which we are so violent with one another and so abusive to the planet, I deal with the crop circles because they might lead to reconceptualizing ourselves. As the only higher intelligence we have nothing to compare ourselves to, or to rub against, to hone us or to challenge us to become more conscious and more compassionate. If we knew the circles were coming from other intelligence, just from sensing ourselves as one humanity in relation to “the other” we would rethink everything. That ground of being would enable us to work together, giving us our best chances to solve the challenges we face as we run out of resources and heat up this living planet.

So, what more for me now? How else can I help to bring about a change of worldview?

Be On Your Own Side

 

 

Writing Assignment: Take notes on how you might be sabotaging yourself by clinging to outgrown or untrue concepts.  Write Now!  GO!

Source:  www.mindmagicprogram.com

Music for Reflection: On the Road Again - Bob Seeger

 

 

 

Journal Assignment:  Music can be a powerful catalyst to evoke memories, moods and hidden feelings.   I have always loved what I call "Road Songs", which would include the Eagles, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and many others who sing compelling songs of the open road, of freedom, of being out on the long blue highways of the Soul. 

How to Accomplish Your 2012 Goals - Bill Harvey

From Bill Harvey at:  www.mindmagicprogram.com

A highly incomplete checklist

The year has just started and already you are creatively adapting to the unexpected, steering around unexpected resistances, and still feeling cocky about taking the hill you’ve assigned yourself for this year. Good.

This cursory reminder list of methods is passed along to keep handy if and when you run up against a boulder that frustrates you, casting a dim light over achievability of the year’s target. The list can also be used proactively even during times of smooth sailing to notch the game up a bit.

I.  Creativity

1. Doodle a schematic of the situation and its players. These could be business or personal relationships that you are navigating. Engaging spatial mind centers in the right brain is a prime directive in terms of overcoming the bias of the time i.e. Acceleritis.
   1. What would be the ideal “win” for each player in the diagram? Getting down to the human motivational level immediately is a typical mensch method. This engages your own feelings, rebalancing you out of leftbrain dominance.
   2. What action might each player take in the situation, and how would other players react? “Consequence thinking” engages the prefrontal lobes. The more your brain is fully engaged the closer you get to Holosentience.
   3. Have you left anyone out of the diagram so far? Who?
   4. What would be the ideal outcome of the depicted situation from the standpoint of a hypothetical Universal Consciousness?
   5. (See more below)

 

Continue reading "How to Accomplish Your 2012 Goals" »

The Most Difficult Game on Earth - Bill Harvey

Excerpt:  Happiness cannot remain up the trail somewhere, an elusive thing we are working toward. Not good. Outdated idea. Time for the new idea. Happiness now. In every now. Now. And now. And now. Happiness all the time, internally controlled, internally generated, by an act of will. Infernally difficult but we cannot abandon this game as we possibly always have before. Now is the time to face it — fight it — and win. And keep winning. Because the game is not won once, but continuously. That’s what makes it so hard.

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From Bill Harvey's Blog:  www.mindmagicprogram.com

Last week we published here the Human Effectiveness Institute’s “highly incomplete checklist” of things to do each day in 2012 to define and meet your goals for the year. One could write a book on each item in that list. For starters, here’s a drill-down on one item in the list that in a way underpins all the other items on the list.

Item III.1 on the list describes why you should be enjoying the moment and provides ways to get yourself into that headspace. Ironically, this is the most difficult game on Earth.

In some version of this universe, it is natural to be in that state all the time, i.e. happy doing whatever you are doing at the moment, or not doing anything but just being there. Why not be happy? If it’s what you’re doing that is blocking happiness, do something else. Why were you doing it in the first place if it didn’t make you happy?

The ego is what gets in the way. The ego is the be-all and end-all of unhappiness. You can choose happiness or at least neutrality in any moment no matter what is being inflicted upon you against your will, to pick an extreme case. If you’re being waterboarded, okay, neutrality is probably the best you can hope for. But such an extreme case illustrates that by an act of will and focus we can indeed choose our mental emotional state. All of us can. There have been times when we’ve all had an opportunity to prove that to ourselves. Nonetheless, it’s the most difficult game on Earth.

Death is Nothing At All

 

Time Out! Do Nothing for Two Minutes

 

 

http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/

 

 

 

 

The Long Now Foundation - Ready for Long Term Thinking? Like 10,000 Years?

 

 

Journal Assignment:   Come over and take a look at Stewart Brand's Long Now Foundation:

www.longnow.org

 

Challenge yourself to think in terms of 10,000 years in the future.   How about just 1000 years?  If this opportunity inspires you,  do some imaginative thinking about how we and our home planet might change, what values will endure, how we will live, what kind of communities we might have, and whether or not we will be able to reverse the destructive patterns that are now in play.  Take notes on what you would LIKE to see here in 1000 years, and then stretch out to 10,000 years.  Write Now! GO!

 

The Clock and Library Projects

Below is an essay by  founding board member Stewart Brand on the need for, and the mechanism by which, The Long Now Foundation is attempting to encourage long-term thinking.

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth. It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis :

 

Who Are You? Quotations from Erich Fromm

"If I am what I have, and I lose what I have, who then am I?"

- Erich Fromm

Journal Assignment:  The works of Erich Fromm are filled with inspiring and provocative thoughts, such as the one above. If you need a catalyst for some introspection and reflection, use your journal to write something in response to the quote above, or pick one from  the collection of quotes from Fromm, below.  You might ask yourself: "What am I afraid of losing? What would I be if I lost this thing (or these things) that seem so important?"   What if a forest fire was approaching your home, and you had to walk out and leave everything? Who would you be if it all turned to ashes?  What would be left?

Poet Antonio Machado writes that "What the poet seeks is the deep YOU."  What is the 'deep you'?

Spend a few minutes writing a poem or passage which describes what would be left if you lost everything?  Write Now!  GO!

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More wisdom from Erich Fromm:

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves. ”
― Erich Fromm

On Courage and Risk: Afterthoughts to What Should I Do With My Life?

 

Journal Assignment:  As you read the comments from "On Courage and Risk" below, write down the most important risk you can take right now.  If you take this risk, what is the best thing that can happen?  What would be the worst?  Do you have the courage to step into the Unknown, realizing that taking this risk could change your life forever for the better? Write Now! GO!

Po Bronson's book "What Should I Do With My Life?" is a classic - transformational, inspiring, and highly recommended if you are feeling stuck, lost, or trapped.  It is filled with encouraging stories of courageous people who woke up and demanded better for themselves, reminding us that we can demand better as well, and get it.

 

From Po Bronson: Afterthoughts to the Book: What Should I Do With My Life?

www.pobronson.com

Excerpt:

If there is a message to the book, I hope it's the message that's never stated but present in every single chapter. So often, people feel stuck. They feel trapped by inertia or by financial constraints or by a lack of experience, or the simple shortage of hours in the day. In traveling across both oceans, being welcomed into the lives of strangers, investigating so many domains I had absolutely no prior experience with, I was demonstrating that the world is a far more open book that we usually imagine it to be. The world is full of incredible, rich opportunities. If you strengthen your curiosity as you would a muscle, by exercising it regularly -- if you can empathize with the lives of others, if you are willing to see a potential friend in the face of every stranger, if you are willing to suffer some embarrassment and discomfort, and if you are patient -- you will not be stuck forever.  

 

On Courage and Risk

You can make decisions to pad your wallet. You can make decisions to maintain proper appearances. You can make decisions because they're safe or predictable. You can make decisions because it'll keep your parents off your back. You can make decisions simply to delay making harder decisions. I began this book because I was drawn, artistically, to those who've made decisions to serve none of those ends. I was interested in people who resisted those pressures and made a decision simply because it was good, or right, or true to their nature - and were willing to be challenged by the consequences. 

As I wrote in the introduction, "Nothing seemed more brave to me than facing up to one's own identity, and filtering out the chatter that tells us to be someone we're not." 

Advice to New Writers from Po Bronson

 

Full Biography and other information about Po's books and articles at:

http://www.pobronson.com

 

Excerpt:

Find a few good role models. You only need a few, maybe only one. Let them inspire you. Art reacts to art. All good books are a work of art that is a creative reaction to other art.

Always tell a story. It grounds the reader in a shared experience.

Understand voice. Write the same sentence ten different ways by imitating the writing voices of ten different writers. 

Practice plots. Understand different ways to tell the same story – the difference between hiding a surprise and foreshadowing it, for instance. Starting a story in the middle versus its natural beginning, et cetera. Learn what creates suspense, forward lean, keeps the pages turning.

Journalism first or fiction first? (Grad school in Journalism or Grad school in Creative Writing?) There is no way to answer this. This is an artificial question. It reveals a thirst, a hope, that the journey can be shortened, that there is a shortcut. It can’t. Journalism (facts) or fiction (style)? Both. Both. Both. In no particular order.

Don’t be a snob. It’s good for people to read, so whatever they read, no matter what it is, be glad they're reading.  

No matter what your style or genre or form, even if it's journalism, read John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" very carefully and try some of the exercises. Realize that once you command these skills, you can break every rule he teaches, but these are the basic skills.

Work on your weaknesses. Find out what you’re hiding from.

Stop looking for shortcuts.

Change Your Words, Change Your World, Shape Your Future

 

Journal Assignment:  Make list of 10 words which are holding you back from greater happiness and success.  For each word, change it to a dynamic, positive word.  Review this list often, and see how much better you feel when you use the transformed words!  Try it!  Write Now!

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From Joel Osteen:

It's Time to Use Our Words to Declare Good Things

I once read an article about doctors who incorporated "talk therapy" to treat patients suffering with depression. Instead of medicating the problem, the doctors instructed the patients to start making positive declarations over their lives, saying such things as: "I have a bright future. People like to be around me. Good things are in store."

 

CowBird: A Small Community of Storytellers

 

“Of all our truest hopes and desires for our work is that, what we find, we ourselves never knew. It came as a shock. It came as a surprise. It was new. We could never have known what we were going to do before we did it, and in that sense, we discover too. Here is what I’ve got to say to you: there are things in your life you will see; there are stories you will hear; if you don’t write them down, if you don’t make the picture, they won’t get seen, they won’t get told.”

Emmet Gowin

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What is Cowbird?

Cowbird is a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web.

Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life, and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching “sagas” that shape our world today. Sagas are themes and events that touch millions of live and shape the human story.

Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.

What can I use Cowbird to do?

Martin Luther King Jr. - He Had a Dream - What's Yours?

 

 

He Had A Dream - What's Yours?

 

Quotations from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.


A lie cannot live.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

A right delayed is a right denied.

A riot is the language of the unheard.


Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.


An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.


Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.


Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

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Continue for music videos celebrating the life and accomplishments of Dr. King:

James Carr - Freedom Train

Nina Simone - Old Jim Crow is Gone

 

 

Waking Up: The Enterprise... Is Exploration Into God

Claude Monet - Les Glacons - The Ice Floes

 

 

Dark and cold we may be, but this

Is no winter now. The frozen misery

Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;

The thunder is the thunder of the floes,

The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to face us everywhere,

Never to leave us till we take

The longest stride of soul we ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise

Is exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes

So many thousand years to wake,

But will you wake for pity's sake!

 

  Christopher Fry

From "A Sleep of Prisoners"

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Alex Noble:  If ever there was a year to "wake up," this is it. Though we may feel we have insurmountable challenges, though we may look all around us and see nothing but a vast wasteland, though suddenly we may feel alone in a way we have never quite felt alone before, though dreams we had cherished for years may have fallen through or vanished like phantoms, though friends may betray and enemies slander, though we may feel as though we have lost everything and and have to start all over again...