I want a new toy.....

I get a New Toy (oh ay oh), to keep my head expanding (ta).I get a New Toy (oh ay oh), nothing too demanding (ta).Then when everything is in roses you don't get any headroom.Yeh my New Toy (oh ay oh), you'll find us in the bedroom, yeh.New ToyNew toy...
--Lene Lovich

I'd like a partner and a long term relationship and all that but a new toy could be nice too. Narcissists need not apply. The truly lousy in bed need not apply. Maybe it would be shorter to talk about who can apply! The intelligent, fun, caring. You need to be able to play well with me in the bedroom and outside of it. So, fun to play with is the major criteria here.

The Narcissistic Personality

Have you ever dated the narcissistic personality? Has it ever tried to marry you? I just dodged that bullet. I said no. The trick with narcissists is to realize that you have to say no for hours and sometimes days because it takes them a long time to hear the no and actually believe it. First, the narcissist has trouble hearing you over his or her self-absorbed internal dialogue. Second, the narcissist has trouble believing that you don't find the idea of sacrificing yourself at the alter of his or her needs the ultimate in self-fulfillment. They really believe that they are doing YOU a favor by sucking out your ability to experience any happiness whatsoever along with your will to live.

I'm heterosexual so my most recent godawful experience with a narcissist came in the form of a male--I can't say man as he's more like child-man. He really, sincerely believed that I should be thrilled to marry him and take care of his woes. Do I look desparate to you? I'm not.

Don't get me wrong. I would love a partner but the narcissist is incapable of partnership because he or she thinks your ultimate fulfillment should come from taking care of him or her. This guy was just unbelievable to me. He knows me? He never lets me say anything about what I want. It's all about him and what he needs. He loves me? He doesn't know me. I think what really bothered me was that he kept saying that he knew I wasn't like everyone else and wouldn't just be trying to get money or whatever out of him--not that he's got any. So his overall message was that I seemed to be a good person to use. He really believed I should be happy to be used by him. I told him he needed to get away from me. He makes me tense and unhappy because he's constantly trying to manipulate me and coerce me into what he wants. He got so mad he told me that he would not stay in touch with me and you know what I felt about that?

Happy!!

Freedom from Guilt

I've always had an overwhelming sense of guilt about everything and while I usually blame the holy water the Church used to baptize me (Catholics always feel so guilty about everything that I think the Church found a way to liquefy guilt and passes it off as holy water), I know that this is just to try to be funny about my overweening sense of guilt.

Guilt is a perfectly useless emotion. It does no one any good. Consider why someone feels guilt. It's usually because one didn't conform to the expectations of other people, or society, or religion. In other words. we feel guilty for not being perfect in the eyes of external actors and, hence, oneself. That's alot of power to give away to others. Do the truly empowered and self aware feel guilt. Moreover, we tend to love our guilt. We dwell on it and nurture it into a truly raging case of self-loathing. Guilt is useless because it's both self-absorbed and gives us an excuse not to be happy, healthy, and whole. We tell ourselves we don't deserve it. If we deserved happines, we wouldn't feel so guilty. Talk about circular reasoning. Why should anyone feel that they need to sacrifice themselves to be worthy human beings.

I had a small epiphany on guilt this weekend. Someone I briefly dated began calling me rather relentlessly. First it was to get back a bracelet. I don't want the bracelet and managed to drop it off to him. Then it was 'he wanted to see me.' I don't want him at my house. He won't leave and has no problem with using a great deal of coercion to get laid (and he is so bad at this that one would really rather go to the dentist). So I told him he could not come over but if he really needed to see me, I would meet him somewhere like a coffeeshop. The incessant calls stopped. I stopped feeling guilty that I didn't want to make myself miserable so he could use me. Unbelievably, that's what it took for me to really see my problem with guilt clearly. Do I really believe that I should be miserable?

It was a useful lesson though. Today, I'm going for a completely guilt free day. I am doing what I want, when I want--purely to please myself. In other words, I'm going to learn from my cat. Apparently she's smarter than I am.

Islamophobes

Has anyone else noticed the sheer hatred and invecative that Islamophobes will direct at Muslims. Perhaps not. Allow me to enlighten you from the Amazon Islam Forum wherein someone actually says this: "all i have used is truth. why do muslims, communists, pedophiles and homosexuals always portray themselves as poor innocent victims?" This is not a critic of Islam or Muslims. This is someone who has serious pyschological issues. Projection doesn't seem quite right but it's some sort of pathology. The same person tried to say there's no difference between Sunni and Shi'i. I just can't believe that there are people out there who think this passes for any kind of a debate.

Those to whom evil is done

September 1, 1939
by W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Settler Colonialisms and Ethnic Cleansing

Many states that were built through settler colonialisms (frontier state building) have in common a belief that they are God's 'chosen'. From the Puritan belief in the 'City on the Hill' and the need to drive out, convert, or annihilate the American Indians to the Afrikaner belief that Zulus were Amalikites to be driven out or killed to the Israeli belief that the must go forth and take the land that God gave them, settler colonialisms specialize in justifying the eviction, if not annihilation of indigenous people. In fact settler colonialisms often specialize in uniting a diverse immigrant population through aggression against a subhuman 'other'. The commonalities cannot be missed nor are Americans, South Africans, and Israelis it's only practitioners. All settler states have this commonality.

Intriguingly--despite all the hoopla and media-generated fear of some sort of Islamic will to convert or annihilate another people, we've never seen this happen. Settler states seem to have exclusively grounded their ideologies in the Old Testament and European racism. While it's likely this is something of a consequence of European power, it's odd that some people insist upon seeing an Islamic menace for what has been done exclusively by Europeans.

Running Away or Common Sense?

I'm really not sure why but Instant Messenger conversations with Y. tend to throw off my plans to work for the day. Our conversations are usually brief and usually we just update each other and how we both are and what we are doing. Today he was complaining that he might have to go to China--yeah, yeah, I know poor baby! My main concern here though is that I tend to get nothing done for the rest of the day. I really don't understand myself here. I'm not consciously pining for his company.

Maybe it's just sad that our conversations have become so superficial? Maybe it just reminds me how much I enjoyed having him around and regret that I never told him so until after he was gone? Or could it be deeper?

Do I really need to stop talking to him if I want to become unstuck? I question this all the time. Partially because I don't want to cut him out of my life and he gets so unhappy every time I have tried to just remove Instant Message from my computer. I don't like making him unhappy. I'd rather just understand myself better so that my conversations with him didn't send my whole day awry. My day is my responsibility and it doesn't seem as though cutting him out of my life really meets my responsibility to myself. It seems like running away.

Learning from my Grandmother

The most important lesson my grandmother taught me is one I'm still learning--the art of unconditional love. In these days and times of pop psychobabble unconditional love is often confused with codependency. People who do not want to be labelled codependent often fall into the trap only giving love if certain conditions are met. Such conditional love is not love at all and leaves someone with an inner void that cannot be fulfilled no matter which deoderant we buy or haircare product we use.

My Grandmother mastered the art of unconditional love--at least for me. I was a troubled young woman for reasons I'd rather not get into right now and she loved me anyway. She didn't get angry or frustrated with me that I could not love myself unconditionally. Her message was that she would love me without reservation. It was and is because of her that I learned to value myself enough to begin living my potential. If I made a mistake or even failed, I always knew she would love me anyway. It inspired me to see what she actually saw in me that was so worthwhile because, believe me, at one time it was a total and complete mystery to me. Now, so many years later, I begin to see in myself what she saw in me and I know I would not be where I am or even who I am without her.

I am now half my Grandmother's age. I hope I have also achieved half of her wisdom and loving spirit. I also hope that I can, one day, give the love she gave me to someone else so that he or she can also be inspired to love him or herself unconditionally.

Israeli Lies and American Gullibility

Henry Siegman has a terrific article in The London Review of Books called "Israel's Lies." Here's the link:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n02/sieg01_.html

Israeli leaders lie about any number of things but lately their lies about Hamas to the Israeli and American peoples show a great deal of what can only be termed chutzpah (Yiddish has some great words, doesn't it?). The lies are so easily disproven. For example, the lie that Hamas violated the truce is very easily disproven. Israel violated it on November 4--notice the date. The whole world was watching the American elections so it was a great time for a sneak attack. The truce, largely adhered to by Hamas, was also supposed to see the gradual loosening of the Israeli strangulation of the Gaza Strip's economy. This, of course, is an additional violation by Israel as Israeli leaders declined to loosen their grip an iota. Hamas refused to renew the truce because of the November 4 assaults and Israel's failure to comply with the terms of the agreement regarding a little economic freedom. They wanted talks to re-negotiate a new truce. Instead they got a brutal air war and ground invasion. Most Americans are completely clueless about these events--beginning with the strangulation of Gaza. You often hear Americans say something like 'well, if the Mexicans were sending rockets into our territory, we'd respond.' They have no idea of the context. The comparison is apples and oranges. The U.S. has not sealed all of Mexico's borders. We haven't kept taxes rightfully belonging to Mexico. We don't drive Mexican fishers back onto land. We haven't made them dependent on us for gas, electricity, etc. and then withheld these things from them. The situation is not the same for all that Israel and her apologists would like for Americans to believe that they are the same.

So why is the Israeli propaganda machine working so hard to convince Israelis and Americans that Hamas is completely at fault and is a 'terror organization' linked to Al Qaeda (in fact, they despise each other)? This quote from Siegman is telling:

"It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.
These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’ It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.
In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.
Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.[*] They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas."

Democratically elected Hamas will aim for a better deal for the Palestinian people and one Palestinians can and will live with. It is just like the contention of Hamas leaders that it is not up to a political party to recognize Israel but up to the Palestinian people. When Hamas offered to pur it to a referendum they knew exactly how Palestinians would vote (they would have voted to recognize Israel). In fact, if we look closely at Hamas over the past several years we will find a group that has actually tried to act in the interests of the Palestinians. Arab politicians that try to act in the best interests of their people. Imagine that.

The Eternal Now of Love

Law and rules are just excuses; excused for not admitting that we already know.
We already know that all is love. Love is what we are and what we crave. To act in love is our most fervent desire. To be loved our greatest hope
Law like every other dance in life is ritual...a rite, to make us believe we can move, to teach us there is nothing to fear in movement, in experience, in living. It is love that moves us all the same, through ritual or direct loving action.
Crowley claims that "do what thou wilt shall be he whole of the law"..."Love under will".
I say , 'Will under love"--thus there is no law.
Follow love for it is eternity.
Proximate cause is eternal and causes all. It is the present moment. A moment in flux, but not through time. Time is the past and the future, a dream of the present moment--a moment in flux but always now.

You are here now, rejoice in that moment. Fear drives the clock of past to future as a troubled dream.
To be here now is to live in eternity. Clocks are a law and an excuse, for not admitting we already know. The moment is in flux, but always now. Fear is the ticking of a clock. Fear that it's ticking will stop and the moment will be no more. The moment is eternal, the clicking clock is but a dream.

The flesh will come and go, for the moment is in flux. The flesh is but a ticking clock, and the clock is but a dream...a dream of forgetting.

Will Whitten

International Support and Persistant Authoritarianism in Egypt

Although the orientalist fashion is to declare that resistance to democracy is due to Islam, this explanation is actually quite weak. While many factors may inhibit transitions to democracy in the modern Middle East, I want to focus on one factor that meets alot of resistance from Americans--specifically the role played by geostrategic rents to the maintenance of authoritarianism in Egypt.

Despite declining literacy and widespread poverty, Egypt would appear to be a good case for democratic transition. Some popular resistance exists and the Egyptian regime is widely perceived as illegitimate, however, there are no signs of impending collapse or popular revolution. The work of Eva Bellin is instructive here. She examines the relative will and ability of a regime to maintain their coercive apparatus. The Egyptian regime has both greater will and ability than a cursory examination of their fiscal health and relatively high degree of institutionalization would suggest. How can this be?

Geostrategic rents provide part of the answer. The U.S. provides 2 billion in aid every year. This money is used by the Egyptian regime to buy support from key societal sectors and to slow down economic reforms so that economic losers can be deprived of the means to resist and associate while economic winners are incorporated and coopted into the regime's agenda. Continued economic success depends upon regime support. Rather than state-owned enterprises, crony capitalism has found a new business elite that also has no interest in democracy--all those losers with a real vote could cause a loss of special privileges and mean real reform. The security apparatus never suffers from the underfunding of schools or social welfare or even the cuts to subsidized staples that the poor depend upon for survival. The security apparatus gets funded first and most, thereby ensuring that it will function in favor of the regime and against the people. The money provided by the U.S. is crucial to maintenance of the coercive apparatus (although not singular as remittances also play a role).

So why doesn't the U.S. ever hold back aid? We are supposed to be pro-democracy, right? That depends on who would replace the despised and illegitimate Mubarak regime. If it's Islamists, than we're not at all pro-democracy. The Egyptian regime has proven adept at playing this card too. If Americans complain of human rights abuses--well, they're combatting an Islamic insurgency. If Americans suggest more honest and free elections--well, the Muslim Brotherhood would take over and they're radical Islamists that are just like Al Qaida (these two groups despise one another). It might surprise Americans to know that the laws we have applauded Egypt for passing against "Islamic terrorism" are far more commonly used against human rights groups, pro-democracy groups, and even just people striking for better working conditions.

This is how international support inhibits democracy in Egypt. Ignorance and fear rule American policies towards Egypt and, whether we choose to believe it or not, we are supporting authoritarianism in Egypt.

Anger

It might seem altogether odd that it could take me years to figure out that I'm angry about my dissertation, but it has. I just realized today that my problem with it is that I'm totally pissed off about it. Initially, I proposed an International Relations dissertation. I'm not overly fond of Comparative Politics. However, my first proposal defense found two of my committee members leaving the university and, so, I was told to get a couple of comparativists instead and do a comparative dissertation. I did exactly that and, with much difficulty, found a topic that could be done and was somewhat interesting--even if it did jettison my interest in security studies and I.R. I've never been all that interested in the topic. I've never been all that excited about it. Worse still is that it sets me up for a research agenda that I'm not all that interested in. In other words, I went to school all these years to do something that I don't really want to do.

I'm really and truly angry at myself. I should have fought harder to keep my own interests so that I could write a dissertation that reflected those interests and set up a research agenda that I wanted to research. Instead, I listened to all sorts of other people and ended up with something I have very little interest in doing. I was pushed, yes, but I never pushed back. I've had tremendous difficulty writing this dissertation. I have a block about it and I've only now realized that it's because I'm angry that I ended up doing something I'm not that interested in doing. It's all really my own fault. I know that now but what to do?

Getting in touch with my own anger seems to have helped. At the moment I feel like a dam has burst and it's about time. If I don't care much for the topic, why should I worry so much about doing it well? Why should I worry so much about a committee that pressured me into doing something that doesn't interest me? It's all about people-pleasing on my part and that's just stupid. I should just do the best I can and just finish the damn thing. Besides I have finally realized how to use the topic and keep my interest in transnational networks and security studies. Social capital is about networks. The knowledge economy is global. Both have certain implications for security. I have finally figured out how to get around getting stuck with a topic in a field I don't much care for with alot of emphasis on a subtopic that I really hate writing about. All I have to do is get the damn thing done and I can move on to something that interests me and that I enjoy. I'm much less afraid to move on now........

The moral of the story is that I need to be true to myself, my interests, wants, needs, and desires. I got stuck in this position by being a people-pleaser with no will or backbone of her own. I should have pushed back but I never did. I kept changing things to make other people happy. I was wrong and I will not live that way anymore--it tends to keep you stuck in one place and afraid to move.

Reading Rumi

Let go of your worries
and be completely clear-hearted,
like the face of a mirror that contains no images.
If you want a clear mirror,
behold yourself
and see the shameless truth,
which the mirror reflects.
If metal can be polished
to a mirror-like finish,
what polishing might the mirror
of the heart require?
Between the mirror and the heart
is this single difference:
the heart conceals secrets,
while the mirror does not.
From:The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XIII

Israeli Strategic Blunders

Stephen Walt covered "The Myth of Israel's Strategic Genius". You can find it here:

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/01/17/the_myth_of_israels_strategic_genius

While Arab blunders are also many, Walt sticks to discussing Israeli blunders. Despite tactical successes, Israel has consistently failed to improve it's overall security situation. Israeli reliance on force has, increasingly, failed to provide greater security and greater integration into the Middle East region. The U.S. propensity to shield Israel from the consequences of it's blunders means that Israel never learns from its mistakes. The Arab states, with no superpower shielding, have had to learn more from their errors than Israel. So we have this situation wherein the Arab League has offered full normalization of relations with Israel if they withdraw to the 1967 borders and allow the Palestinians a real state and Israeli rejectionism. Israel and the Arabs have shifted positions--Arab states beg for peace and Israel remains unmoved and belligerant.

The U.S. plays a role in Israeli failures to learn from mistakes. As an analogy, we can look at a parent who consistently shields a child from ANY AND ALL consequences, consistently rejects constructive criticism of the child, defends and praises the child's wrong actions of a child, and, finally, convinces the child that he or she can do no wrong and all criticism means that the world is against him or her. If you raise a child in this fashion, what do you get? Sound anything like Israel?

Other People's Stuff

Sometimes I feel as though I'm too worried about other people's stuff to write. Although it would probably be therapeutic for me to write about it a bit, I don't feel I can as I would, necessarily, be exposing other people's stuff. Exposing other people's issues, problems, and worries without their permission is really terribly wrong and, sometimes, just cruel. I don't want to harm others so I write nothing until I can figure out how to write about my feelings and worries about loved ones without exposing their vulnerabilities. You shouldn't betray those you care about even if it's only a blog. Other people's stuff needs to be handled with sensitivity--even when it gets wrapped up in your own stuff.

The Fine Art of Being Selfish

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
--Janis Joplin

‘Loving yourself’ is about treating yourself as you would treat someone who is really, really precious to you. Someone you love so much that you hurt when they hurt, for whom you would move mountains, just to see them well and happy.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Love-Yourself-First---Im-Happy.-Youre-Happy.-Were-All-Happy!&id=61328


I resolved that this year would be the year of me. I always end up explaining that I don't mean that is a totally selfish and self-absorbed way. What I mean is that I have promised myself that I will not sacrifice myself in hopes that one day my needs get met. For example, I was recently asked to fill in teaching for my advisor. The old me would have filled in without question and hoped they would add me to the summer schedule. The new me called and said that I could do it but would have to take time off of paid work and I had seen nothing to indicate that I was going to be scheduled for a summer class--despite previous promises. They hastened to assure me that they were paying (yeah right) and could call someone else. I suggested they call that someone else as he is a noncitizen and may need the money. This is what I mean by the year of me. I will no longer put everyone and everything ahead of me, my wants, my needs, and so on hoping that one day all that self-sacrifice will be noticed and my wants and needs will get met as a reward for many years of martyrdom. In short, I'm getting off the cross and using the wood for a bonfire on the beach.

Unbearable Whiteness

I recently read an article in the Atlantic Monthly, titled "The End of White America" It can be found here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200901/end-of-whiteness

Some white people seem to have taken the end of white America as meaning the end of white people or the end of America. That is not what the author means at all though.

When we think of an American--a typical American--we don't have a picture in mind. Some people in the world do still think the stereotypical American is blond and blue-eyed but really, there is no typical American face anymore. We have become enormously diverse. We are a multiethnic, multicultural country wherein the 'other' is also 'self'.' The self in the other and the other in self gives us a tremendous opportunity to finally be the country we spent the twentieth century claiming to be--the microcosm of world peace. The old ethnic, race, and religious hatred can be set aside here because the other is also self.

That's a really, really great thing that I am convinced will keep this country great if only we can embrace our own diversity as Americans. There is, of course, a segment of white American society, that is just terrified by this change and I feel sorry for them. They think this great diversity means the end of America instead of the end of white monopoly on what it means to be an American. They cannot embrace the other in the self, hence, they've created their own identity crisis.

American tolerance of diversity has meant that we can attract the best and the brightest from around the world and I think if we embrace diversity we will continue to be a success.

Former Lovers and Lessons Learned

I was chatting with a former lover via instant message this morning. While we talk frequently, I have lately had some cause to reflect on all that I have learned from him. The lessons I have learned from him are very important and significant.

I learned from him that men cannot read minds and do not always ask the questions you want them to ask. There is so much that I regret not telling him when change might have been possible in his life. I didn't tell him what I wanted. I expected him to know. This expectation that a man who loves you can read your mind and just know what you want, comes from fear. I was afraid to expose my wants. What if he didn't want what I wanted?

Living from the heart involves letting go of attachment to certain outcomes. Unconditional love means that you do not need to control someone to love that person. If a lover does not want what I want, that in no way negates what I want and it doesn't lessen him either. Someone who loves me would listen to what I want even if he is unwilling or unable to share those wants so the only person hurt by an inability to share is, well, me.

I was afraid to take that intimate step of sharing my hopes and dreams with my lover and I regret that. Oddly, as we grew more distant in space and change in his life became more impossible, I have told him more. He is always sympathetic and caring and I have learned that in my next relationship (and I am confident there will be one) I had better open up and talk. Men don't read minds.

The Art of Receiving

Drop your feeling of resistance when the Universe gives you more than you think you deserve. That's what the Universe does -- it gives us more than we could ever deserve. Open your arms wider and take it all in!
Laura Teresa Marquez
Source: Early Morning

Sufism and the Heart Chakra

"A quote from the Sufi Message of Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, Volume IX, illuminates the Sufi purpose: "If anybody asks what Sufism is, what kind of religion is it, the answer is that Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in which the thing of primary importance is to seek God in the heart of mankind."Hazrat Inayat Khan taught that the Sufi Message was an "inner" Sufism — the mystical core found in all religions. He and Indries Shah emphasized that Sufism was not a religion or a sect bound by dogma or a practice using a regular place of worship, but that it was the heart of all who respected the sacred. Hazrat Khan said there were three ways of seeking God in the human heart.The first way is to recognize the divine in everyone and to be considerate towards every person with whom we come in contact, in our thought, speech, and action.The next way of practicing this religion is to think of the feelings of someone who is not with one at the moment. One sympathizes with the trouble of someone who is with one at the moment, but it is more praiseworthy to sympathize with one who is far away.The third way of realizing the Sufi principle is to recognize in one's own feeling the feeling of God, to realize every impulse of love that rises in one's heart as a direction from God, to realize that love is a divine spark in one's heart, to blow that spark until a flame may rise to illuminate the path of one's life."

http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/feb3/sufism.htm

In kundalini yoga, the heart chakra is associated with compassion, love, and spiritual transformation. Attachments, as in Buddhism, are noted as a shadowed heart chakra. A properly aligned heart chakra is able to love, feel compassion, recognize the divine within oneself and others. The last is key because when we don't recognize and feel the divine in others, we may seek control over them. Control goes along with attachment and is reflects a shadowed heart chakra. When we don't see the divine in ourselves, we may feel unworthy and we may seek control by promoting the attachment of others to us (dependencies).

Sufism emphasizes the heart chakra. It is said to be a religion of the heart. The heart chakra in kundalini yoga is the place of empowerment. The heart chakra is the gateway to the "masculine" or upper chakras. The lower or "feminine" chakras are about claiming our individuality and knowing ourselves. In the upper chakras we are challenged to experience our conncection with others and the Divine. We can't really adequately experience these connections without a grounding and alignment of our lower chakras. We have to individuate fully before we can become conscious contributers to the collective consciousness.

How does sufism define the individual so that he or she can better connect at the heart?

Some of you may enjoy this piece "The Spiritual Significance of Color and Sound"

http://www.sufimessage.com/music/spiritual-significance-color-sound.html

Attachments

Buddhists understand attachment as a root cause of human suffering. What they mean by this is an exaggerated need to be with someone, something or achieve a specific outcome. It's taken me quite some time to understand this as human beings need to form connections and goals to be fully human. Detachment, seemed to me, to negate full humanity. However, I have come to the realization that the attachment that causes suffering is related to a need for control. When we are very attached to someone, something or an outcome, we become control freaks that seek to micromanage another person or thing or control each and every circumstance in order to gain a specific outcome. The problem is attachment that spurs the desire or need to control that which is really beyond our control. Buddhists are not suggesting complete detachment or a lack of goals. Instead they are asserting that if we let go of the need to control everything and everybody in our environments we will not suffer so much.

Meen Erhabe

Who's the terrorist?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqbDiN2uYcQ&feature=related

Who's the terrorized?