New website!

I'd like to let you know about my new website www.TowardsPersonalEmpowerment.com.

The website expands and develops upon the ideas expressed in the book, to form a new framework to structure this philosophy. The content from the Being Human Today blog has been transfered to the new website which is where the blog will continue going forward. There will be no further posts at this Being Human Today blog location but existing email and RSS subscribers will automatically receive new posts from the new website.

It will be great to receive your comments on the new content. You can login with Facebook and express your thoughts. The content will be continually developed and refined, so I would love your ideas to help shape it. Hope to see you there :-)

Tinkering

Whilst I'm doing some tinkering in the background, the main address beinghumantoday.com will cease functioning. However, this blog will still be available at beinghumantoday.blogspot.com.

Link: Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

Link: If You Want To Be a Rebel, Be Kind

The police had declared Monday, November 14th of 2011 as the day of the raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment. It was the first Occupy site to call for a general strike that shut down the fifth largest port in the country; it was also the first Occupy gathering to report a shooting and a murder, as police violence also reached new heights. With tensions mounting amidst political chaos, police escalated their violent crackdowns and the narrative of fear. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in preparation for the raid, police from around the state were called in, and uncertainty filled the air.

The night before, Pancho Ramos Stierle heard about growing tensions in the community and thought, "If police are stepping up their violence, we need to go and step up our nonviolence." So on that Monday morning at 3:30AM, Pancho and his housemate Adelaja went to the site of the Occupy Oakland raid. With an upright back and half-lotus posture, they started meditating. Many factions of protesters were around but the presence of strong meditators changed the vibe entirely. Around 6:30AM, the police showed up in full force. Full-out riot gear, pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas. All media was present, expecting a headline story around this incredibly tense scene. Instead, they found 32 people, all peaceful, with Pancho and Adeleja meditating with their eyes closed in the middle of the Plaza. As the police followed their orders of arresting them, people took photos -- particularly of two smiling meditators surrounded by police looking like they're ready to go to war. Within a day, that photo would spread to millions around the world, as Occupy Oakland raid ended without any reported violence.

Read the full storey here... http://www.dailygood.org//view.php?sid=127

Link: Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Link: Are you being had?

Link: Tolerance

Someone who has tolerance won't even say "I have to tolerate," because that implies they are feeling sorrow. Instead, they will say, "It's not a problem. There is something for me to learn in this." Whatever the situation, tolerance enables me to learn. Perhaps I need patience, or humility, or understanding. Tolerance allows me peace and my love to stay constant. That way I stay connected with the Source of all that is good, so that I can help both myself and others.

http://www.thoughtfortoday.org.uk/

Link: 29 Lessons From Travelling the World

Eight years.

That’s 416 weeks, or almost 3,000 days.

This is the amount of time that I have not had a fixed home; moving to a new country, culture and language every few months and taking absolutely everything I own with me. It has been a significant percentage of my life, and it’s still long from over.

I had actually done some travelling before - a couple of summers in the states, and an entire month already in Spain. But about this time back in 2003, on the week of my 21st birthday, I left Ireland for good. I had graduated university a few days before, and knew that I’d only be coming back “home” for visits (I’ve never once missed the family Christmas dinner). But it’s not really my home any more. Since then, “wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home”.

After devoting my life to them, university and schools had taught me nothing of any real importance. I had gone through as many books as I could and thought I knew it all, but the fact of the matter is that I have become the person I was meant to be in the last 4/5 of a decade, while on the road. And I certainly still have a lot left to learn.

Since yesterday was my 29th birthday and this week is my 8 year “travelversary”, I thought it fitting to share 29 of these revelations with you of things that I have learned on this journey. Many of them are about life in general, but these are actually my observations after meeting many people from all over the world:

Read the full post here... http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=71

Link: Time banking

Video from KarmaTube

Link: Breaking Free From Consumerist Chains

We are not consumers. We are people.
We are not living lives meant to earn money in order to support a shopping habit, or a large home and two cars, or lives of luxury eating and entertainment.
We are not living to support the corporations. And yet, if you were to take an objective, outsider look at our society, it would seem that we are.
We spend our childhoods — precious years that are far too fleeting — in schools geared to give us the best chance at getting a job. We then graduate and are highly pressured to go to college (getting into large debt in the process) so we can have the best chance at getting a good paying job. Then we claw at each other for the coveted but limited good paying jobs, and the winners are rewarded with big homes and SUVs and nice clothes (and lots of debt to go with all that). The losers are stuck in menial jobs they hate, envious of others they see on TV with luxury lives, eating cheap fast food and consigned to shopping at bargain outlets.
Either way, we find our path as consumers. And everything is solved by consumption — when we’re stressed, we shop. When we want to be entertained, we buy the entertainment. We buy our food in packages, we fix our failing health by buying exercise clothes and equipment. We fix our debt by buying personal finance books and taking out a second mortgage.
Our lives are beholden to our shopping habits. We are slaves to corporations, doing work we loathe for stuff we don’t need.
What if we could break out of it?

Read the full post here... http://zenhabits.net/free