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Thursday, November 28, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving --

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 28, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

May you NEVER grow weary of feeling grateful for your abundance

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 28, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Thoughts to Ponder about 'Failure' and Success




In her book, The Way of Failure – Winning through Losing (Prescott, AZ:  Hohm Press, 2001), Mariana Caplan poses several thought-provoking questions.
"What if failure was a wild disguise for success, and success for failure?  What if God, or Truth (knowing how badly human beings wanted to succeed yet knowing how often they fail) hid true ‘success’ within failure so that everybody—no matter who they are or what their circumstances — may have the chance to discover ultimate victory?  What if failure is what we really have been looking for all along?  After all, the Bodhisattva of Compassion sacrifices his [her] own enlightenment until all human beings have been liberated, while knowing full well that this will never happen.  His [her]willful failure is his [her] offering to all of humanity  When we allow ourselves to be heartbroken by the sorrow and joy of the human condition, just as it is given to us, we share in the Bodhisattva’s commitment and thus open ourselves to the nectar and joy of true compassion.  What if that is what failure was really about . . . ?"
Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 20, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Self-Transcendence


Self Transcendence. – What does it mean?


Going beyond previous limits. Within each individual there is a desire for going one better and improving our situation. It is the driving force behind evolution; it is what encourages people to train and improve their physical capacities. This inner aspiration for self transcendence is an important feature of human nature.
“What do we long for? We long for self-transcendence. ..We all need self-transcendence and, at the same time, we fervently long for it.”   Sri Chinmoy (1)
Physical Self Transcendence. Self Transcendence can most easily be measured through improvements in physical achievements.   In running it involves trying to break new records in both time and speed. The beauty of self transcendence is that it can be practised by anyone; we need not compete with others, we can just compete with ourselves. From this perspective we can get great joy by surpassing our previous personal bests. As Sri Chinmoy suggests.
“Self-transcendence gives us joy in boundless measure. When we transcend ourselves, we do not compete with others. We do not compete with the rest of the world, but at every moment we compete with ourselves.” (2)
Spiritual self transcendence. Self transcendence is a concept that is incorporated into different spiritual traditions. In this regard we are seeking to go beyond our limited state of ego to expand our own consciousness. When we identify only with the body and ego it is a limited perspective. Spiritual traditions suggest we are more than just a frail body. Through practising yoga and spiritual traditions we learn to expand our consciousness and feel our connection with the universal self.
 

Physical and Spiritual Self Transcendence. There is no need to separate the physical self transcendence with spiritual development. They can harmoniously work together and complement each other. One notable example of this is the 3100 mile Self Transcendence race founded by Sri Chinmoy. The 3100 mile is an epic race which can take competitors between 45 – 60 days to complete. To run such a mind boggling distance requires the cooperation of both body and soul. By completing this act of physical transcendence we are going beyond the limits of what the mind may think possible. By stretching our physical capacities we also delve into a different understanding of ourself.
 

A sense of Oneness with others. Usually as humans we identify with first ourselves and then perhaps our country. If we practise spiritual self transcendence we feel we are don’t just belong to one country or one culture, we feel we belong to the whole world.
”I am neither an Athenian or Greek, but a citizen of the world” – Socrates.
This is a practical and spiritual manifestation of self transcendence.

By: Tejvan Pettinger 01/02/2008

SOURCE: http://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/articles/self-transcendence.html


Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 20, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

It's really quite this simple -- INDEED!!!

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 19, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Monday, November 18, 2013

Interview with Dr. Vikter E. Frankl, I, II, III


Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 18, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

The Legacy of Vikter E. Frankl -- Self-Transcendence

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

 “By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

SOURCE:    http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2782.Viktor_E_Frankl

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 18, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

 

The Sacred Power of 'Listening'

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 18, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Sunday, November 17, 2013

These Alarming Facts Essentially Say: Women, You're Collateral Damage

These Alarming Facts Essentially Say: Women, You're Collateral Damage
Also -- check out  http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/the-index-rape-in-war-october-2013the-index-rape-in-war-october-2013

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 17, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Doesn't It Make You Wonder --


"Darwin & the descent of man
"Charles Darwin’s theories of natural and sexual selection apply to humans as they do to any other species. Recent editions of his most famous book, On The Origin of Species, often feature a schematic of human evolution on the cover. In fact, there is little mention of human evolution in this book. Despite writing about the implications of his ideas for the human species very early, Darwin chose not to include the topic in his great masterpiece except to say that ‘light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history’.

"Eventually, twelve years after The Origin was published, Darwin did publish his thoughts on human evolution in The Descent of Man in 1871. In this book and his 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin helped lay the foundations for modern biological anthropology, the study of human variation and evolution. But what did Darwin really say about human evolution? Why did he not say it in The Origin? And how has he exerted such an influence over the last 150 years of anthropology?"

SOURCE: http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/pages/index.php?page_id=c8

 
Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 17, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Ongoing Republican 'War on Women' Debacle

  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/raw_story_logo.png  

 

 

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Democrats threaten ‘nuclear option’ over Republicans’ war on women Obama nominees


By David Ferguson
Friday, November 15, 2013 16:05 EST

  
Elizabeth Warren on the Senate floor Nov 14 
  


Democrats in the Senate fumed this week as Republicans blocked another of President Barack Obama’s nominees to sit on a federal appeals court, the third woman in a series of legislative obstructions. Members of the Senate Democratic caucus have even begun to talk about invoking the so-called “nuclear option,” which would allow them to approve nominations on a simple majority.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that Republicans “may not like” current U.S. laws like Wall Street reform or the gender and ideological bent of Pres. Obama’s nominees, but that eventually the GOP will have to end its temper tantrum and allow the American people’s business to proceed.

According to the Guardian, Georgetown University professor Nina Pillard would only have been the sixth woman in 120 years to on the U.S. court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit. That court, the paper noted, “is known as the second highest court in the land due to its key role in ruling on legal challenges against the US government.”

By now the pattern of blanket obstruction to any measures proposed by the Obama administration should come as no surprise, but it is particularly galling to Democrats that even as they strip away women’s rights to choose and even make it more difficult for them to vote in states like Texas, they are opposing the ascent of any women nominees to federal judgeships, charging that Obama is trying to stack the courts with ideologues who will unthinkingly do his bidding.
 [To read the full article, click on the following link]

SOURCE: democrats-threaten-nuclear-option-over-republicans-war-on-women-obama-nominees
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/15/democrats-threaten-nuclear-option-over-republicans-war-on-women-obama-nominees

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
November 16, 2013
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/