"The Intention Experiment" by Lynne McTaggart

I was introduced to the book by my friend and Muzium/Gallery Director Encik Hasnul J. Saidon who beleicved that it is my cup of tea and so far having read the first two chapters of the book I am hooked! I must confess however that having thus far read the book I have yet to be able to fully, concretely grasp the scientific remifications of this study as I am an artist, not a scientist. Sadly enought maths and science are still subjects that hides behind a veil for my mind too illusive to penetrate but having read saveral books in the past such as those by Stephen Hawkins and Fritjof Capra and the likes of Garry Zukav and Deepak Chopra I am not totally in the dark when it comes to these subjects like quantum physics and the 'relativity theories' of Einstien's. My knowledge of science thus far would hardly make me a rocket engineer but suffice to say that i have enough knowledge to compare and contrast simple premises such as the workings of shamanistic and faith healings and the scientific discoveries that would tend to verify and scientifically authenticate these 'unscietific practices'.
Albeit the discovery of the possibilty of the powers of the mind to control the outcome or the state of matter at its minutest or the interrelatedness of all from the individual to the galaxies as a flux, the book is another step toward the scientific west attempt to authenticate what the eastern minds has taken for granted thousands of years ago. The Hindu vedas have hinted at these possibilites through their analogis and allegorical teachings that most devout minds had be able to accept and put to test but there was not scientifically proven and authenticated experiments carried out at least not for the records to prove these practices were feasible and in line with the discoveries made by modern science.
Islam holds the belive that with all of us is the spark or essence of the Devine light, (Tzat..Allah), that with which man is connected to his Creator (AST). In the Hindu lores the first man or MANU (hence the word Manusia meaning man in Malay and man as in English), was a manifested devine spark that fell from heaven into the Himalayan mountains and upon impact sent miriads of sparks all over the planet and this was how mankind came into being.

" Gary Schwartz had witnessed the coherent photon stream emanating from from the hands of healers. After studying the works of scientists like Popp and Hameroff, he finally had his answers about the source of healing; if thoughts are generated as frequencies, healing intention is well ordered light."
The Intention Experiment, Lynne McTaggart.

The Buddhist Monk Thich Naht Hahn (one of my teachers at SF Zen Center) at ont time talked about the 'Interdependance of Coorigination', as he called it the fact that according to Buddhism the Universe is one complete whole whereby there is an ubroken interrelatedness of all the exist from the Galaxies to the tiniest of amoebas in the form of a dust particle stuck in the toenail of the Buddha. When the dust is removed from its positon the whole universe is symbiotically affected in one way or another, felt or unfelt seen or unseen. Hence the dropping of an atom bomb has needless to say an impact that is umimaginable throughout the Universe and its ripples is perhaps still rolling into oblivion till it settles. The impact was not only physical, it was psychological as well as spiritual in nature that our species has suffered from some reaping positive understanding while others found negative means to exploit human weaknesses through force/fear. No matter how we view the outcome of such cataclysmic event in our history it is a fact that collectively we are affected just as the whole of the Universe is affected. The adverse effects of the climate changes that is becoming alarmingly prevailent is not pure because of the fact that man has been burining too much carbon fuel alone or polluting the rives and oceans but it also is historically connected to bygone acts of stimulating the whole by indiscrimate acts such as nucklear testings and genetical manipulations of nature. Man has often assumed that his existance is independant and superior from the rest of nature and the universe as a whole and thus his actions reflects his inherent arrogance being the only thinking creature that walks the planet. Every once in a while a thought or phenomena,(not unlike a Zen knock on the head), gives rise to doubts about this perception of man in himself and when this happens he jumps at every opportunity to prove himself right or others wrong and in the scientifc realm this is an accepted norm no matter how insignificant the discovery may be, like that made by Cleve Backster of the sensitivity of plants towrds positive and negative stimuli and the ability for the plant kingdom to communicate with our human conciousness.

"Years after he made the discovery...he would think of this moment as one in which his plants picked up a major disturbance in the Force, he had discovered of measuring it.If plants could register the death of an organism three doors away, it must mean that all life forms were exquisitely in tune with each other.Living things must be regitring and passing telepathic imformation back and forth at every moment, particularly in times of threat or death". (In this casethe plant was registering the death of a group of brineshrimp being boiled two doors away).
The Intention Experiment. L. McTaggart.

Dedicated scientists and laypersons such Cleave Backster and Popp who spent a good amount of their time and life experimenting into the mysteries of nature and the simple act of communication has allowed modern man toespecially those in the west to be more open minded with the ways of the shamans and bush doctors, the native hunters and the fishermen whose life is often influenced by superstitions and so called mumbo jumbo by the western thinkers. It is only valid when it is egraved in the stones in black and white, tested and verified and certified before it is legititmate otherwise all thoughts and ideas beliefs and faiths will remain as such.
Despite the prejudices that inevitably has become the norm where knowledge and practices are concern in our civilization the western domination over scientific discoveries cannot overshadow the fact that in the east communing with nature has been a fact of life, that a man has the instinct to know where or what to or not do when it comes to nature is an accepted symbiotic knowledge handed down from his forefathers if notheing else but for his own survival. It is becuase of the lack of faith and later support in the eastern mode of healing and dealing with nature by the west that has inffected the estern minds with the slow but steady loss of their abilities to commune with nature and the rest of the universe which their ancestors had handed down to them. Hence the disregard for the well being of forest and rivers and the financial exploitation of our resources by every means possible regardless of the detrimental effects it creates. Ironically it is from the west that any form of healing towards these malaise would come in the form of knowledge- scientific discoveries and financial assistances as the enticements. It is the old cavalry charge to save the settlers from the impending massacre by the Indians, the west will always act with a certain taint of colonial mentality, the Aryan type superiority complex over the Easterners. The day est and west can come together in a symbiotic merge without pride and prejudice, fears or favors, that would be the day when Global healing can proceed through collective thought processes and hidden latent powers that the ancient ones had been trying to relay to our generation through all the religions and cultural and physiacal practices.
As noble a challenge as it may sound that is to be able to unite the entire human collective conciousness into a healing force in the effort to heal our ailling planet it is yet to be be seen if and when the minds of both eastern and western scientits and thinkers, statesment and religious gurus, shamans and plastic surgeons can at the end of the day come together and unite their thoughts and conciousness and create a Force in the Universe not like any ever encountered before... it might help us save the planet in not the Universe itself.

"You think youself insignificant and small, whereas within you is a Universe far greater than your mind can comprehend."
Saidina Ali (RA).

A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Yes even christmas came and went and I hardly felt any jubilation or anything special on this day that in the past used to be a part of my life where i would look forward to going home and finding my family waiting by the Christmas three and eyballing what was underneath. Nope not this time and far from it my children and i spent our day with me working at my cousin's catering business stirring the pots while my kids kept themselves glued to the TV. No one mentioned Christmas as it I felt would only usher in memories of my wife and how she loved Christmas times. Furthermore i had only four ringgit in my pocket which i left for my children to split between themselves for the day's meal. I latter arrived home to find that they had bought a can of tuna spread and a loaf of bread to go wirth which i gratefully shared with them. Yes life's a bitch and then you have to be thankful for being alive! Yessir! God don't like your complains much less listen to you moan and groan about life all through your god given span of allotted time on this planet! Well tell it to thiose who owe me three thousand Ringgit and decided that it is okey for them to delay the payment so long as i do not make any fuss about it!
Suffering without bitterness a friend once told me and this is a tough act to follow even for the best of us and Allah is the 'Tester' and test us He will to the max untill there is no more room for us to back but the corner where we will have to stand and face the ultimate test or perish there in. There are those the so called luckier ones who breezes through life without too much terpidations or even a minor jolt when it comes to destitution and poverty or social and psychological pressures and often enough they have even paid their dues for a ticket to heaven in the afterlife by their piety and chritable acts in this life. Then there are those who are always at logger heads with their own Maker so much so that as they aged and die their lot never seem to improve but gwets worse as time wore on by. They become more and more dejected and succumb to defeatism and despair. They give up their ability to rebound and take charge of their lives as they once used to blaming it on ageing and fate, I am becoming such a one and how I pray that before i die I will snap myself out of this quagmire and salvage my pride and dignity as a man worthy of calling himself the wholesome person created in the image of the Creator.
My most memorable Christmasses were the ones that I had celebrated in the US especially those I had spent in Green Bay, Wisconsin when I was till married to my first wife and spent the Christmas days with my mother in law and my son present. There was always piles of snow and sliding down the hill or riding slegh rides with son was part of the Christmas package. Later in the evening as almost everyone gathered in the tavern for a get together on Christmas Eve it was like in a whole different world where love and joy and genuine handshakes was for real and everyone was into making eachother happy even if it was for a day or two of their lives. Christmas gifts as commericalized as it seems to be makes everyone felt special to give and receive reagrdless of how small or how great they recieved. It was still an act of giving and receiving and it touched my heart everytime i sat and watched others opening their gifts amidst the warmth of the fireplace and chill outdoors. No matter what is said about Christmas or for whatever reasons it is being celebrated, this once a year celebration has my warmest feelings towards it and all the memories i had connected to it will always outweigh the traversities I am facing today. In shaa'Allah, there will be days like those in my life yet before i give up my holy ghost.
What and when was my my most memorable Christmas?
It was in 1990 and my wife had left for Illinois to spend Christmas with ther parents. I had to work Chrisatmas eve because there was an emergemcy at H&H Ship Services that had to be rectified or we would be facing a loss of a vacuum truck. The problem was that the driver, Norman Peterson had sucked intot he vacuum truck waht was wet cement and which was quickly solidifying insde the tank. had we let it sit we would have a solid piece of concrete inside the vaccuum truck. So we had to work emptying the content before it solidifies and it took us all evening obn Chrismas eve crawling wihtin the comfines of the vaccuum tank scrapping and shoveling sand concrete and water out of the tank.
Whe it was all over i was standing in the middle of market street waiting for the bus to take me home to Haight Street and i had bought some chicken and other stuff to cook myself a Christmas dinner in the form of a chicken curry. As i stood there in the middle of the street where there was an island for the bus to pull alonside I noticed a man half laying on the concrete slab struggling for his breath. He looked like he was having a seizure and no one was paying any attention to him as he laid there his body jerking and I felt sorry for him. I felt after a few seconds that I was in a vacuum where there was no sound whatsoever and i was looking at a silent movies with everyone else moving in slow motion, some walking pass by the man struggling on the slab with barely a change their paces. I walked over to him and dropping my packages began to stroke his chest slowly as I felt his chest was about to explode from his struggle to breath. His hand was clenched in a tight fist and his mouth was foaming with blood dripping along with his saliva. I stroked his chest and whispered into his ears to breath slowly and to stop struggling and as i did this he began to come to, his breathing seemed to slow down and his body started to drop on to the slab. As he began to gain control of himself I notice all the details in his features from the tight frightened painful look his facial line for line began to relax, the panic expression replaced by a calm dignified appearence.His fingers began to uncurl and he was letting go settlin into more gentle rythmic breathing. I kept massaging his chest and along came a police officer who asked me to stay with the man for a little longer untill they got help for him. As soon as I heard the abulance arriving I lifted my hands from the man's chest and as I felt the final contact between the tip of my fingers and his chest I felt his heart beating and it sent chills through me. I grabbed my stuff and head for the bus that was also about to stop at the Folsom and Market Street bus stand.
Sitting on the bus i felt the vacuum around me again but this time I felt strangely relieved of my aches and pains from work and my having to face the ordeal of bringing a man back from the edge. I felt very peaceful inside and outside and when I arrived home there was a kid sitting oin one of the houses with a bag pack beside him. He looked like he too was going to spend the Christmas by himself and so I offered him to join me but he turned me down politely and accepted the wine I had bought for myself when I offered it to him to keep himself warm for the night. I found out he was from Phoenix, Arizona and had just arrived that evening.
Although i had to spend the vening all to myself i was fully contented and the Christmas I celebrated that evening was the most joyful one i ever had after I had finished my plateful of chicken curry and topped with all kinds of spicy stuff i could pick from the grocery store in China Town, downtown San Francisco. That Christmas eve I came to understand how great life is and how fragile we are.
Even if life is a bitch sometimes, there is nothing that is not worth living for if your heart is ever thankful for what you already have.
In Islam we are taught to be thankful always no matter how worse off we are as we know deep within us that there are those worse off than we are. We can bitch and moan about the way life has been treating us the injustices and the insanities but we are humans for so long as we are breathing our life will be like a roller coaster or the wheel of life there days when you are down and days when you are up. When you are down look forward to getting up and when you are up look forward to coming down. This is riding the waves or going with the flow even if as the Buddha has pointed out that life is suffering my good friend Peter Oyimbo reminded me that it is suffering without bitterness!
SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL ADHA!!
A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A PROPEROUS AND PRODUCTIVE NEW YEAR!!

Aidil Adha (Hari Raya Haji)

It came and went yesterday and i hardly noticed it if not for the early morning prayer at the mosque which I followed while half asleep in my bed feeling rotten about myself and how worse off i have become especially in my spiritual being. The Aidil Adha is celebrated primarily by those who have gone on the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and it involves the sacrificing of an animal by those who pledge such sacrifice towards the ALMIghty, Allah (SWT). It has to do with the covenant made between Allah (SWT) and his Prophet,Abraham in the effort to test the later's faith towards his Maker. Allah in this case had demanded that Abrham as test of his faith was to sacrifice his only son to Allah and this Abraham willingly carried out despite all his human emotions and attachments towards his only son, Ismail. Only Allah (SWT) in His infinite compassion at the very nick of time substituted Ismail with a sheep thus sparing the life of the boy. Henceforth, the Muslims had accepted the incident as a reminder in their history of their covenant with Allah through their beloved Prophet Abraham. For more detail and correct information on the subject I advise you to read it from amore authentic source and dont take my story to be exact.
I decided to join the festivity despite my feelings and headed on to the mosque where I learned that they were getting ready to slaughter three cattles in the nearby yard. I had always wanted to do some sketches of these scenes in the past and never got the chance simply because chances were that I would be handling the knife myself lending my expertise as a meat cutter of years gone by. I worked as a 'boner' for almost three and half years in Green Bay, Wisconsin when I first arrived in the US sometime in 1974 onwards. I worked in a packing house where we were packing cold storage meats for the making of hamburgers. If I had learned anything from this experience it was that to keep your knives sharp at all times!! A sharp knife makes a difference between making good tallies or going home with sore arms especially at the wrists. In the effort of keeping the knives sharp four things have to be mastered and that is the use of the grinder initially in order to put and edge on the blade, then the used of the sandstone or honing stone to make the edge last,the third and fourth care of the knife involves the expert use of the 'steel' and the 'ceramic' which helps to keep a sharp edge on the knife for a longer period of time. The mastering of these techniques makes one a master boner. The packing house I worked for at the time used to process about 900 to 1000 heads of cattle a day. The cold condition and the wet floors, the fierce compettition and the nature of the works itself can eventually turn one into a cattle. It was a dehumanizing work but ti was created me as a man who survived the worse that America had to offer for the next twenty years.
So watching my fellow kampong friends slaughtering the cattles did not have much of an impact on me as far as blood and guts goes. I took it all as another visual set of images that is in its raw form both aesthetically and emotionally invigorating. I enjoy the sense of being a part of an age old practice as primeaval as mankind himself except for the use of the chainsaw. The crowd gathered for the occaission were just as pleasing to observe and enjoy and the day went by with somethigbn positive manifesting instead of just another product of a manic depression or even despair for me who lately these days have been waking upon the wrong side of the bed.

Why do I Keep This Justifying Myself?

I am fully aware of the fact that I have been complaining,trying to justify, trying to make sense out of what is the mundane in my life and from any philosophycal or psycological perspective most people would agree that this is not a healthy or productive practice. "No one like to read about your complains or your need to explain your life away." I have been told by one or two close friends and i agree with their views on this matter. Life is too short for one to spend so much of it analyzing and scrutinizing it till there is no more room for one to make any mistakes from it when all is researched and verified. It is not my intention to do this from the start but it seems to have developed along the way as I keep this on going journal, I find that writing about my day to day experience has some form of benifit for me. I am by nature a ver y careless individual and I have always been careless about what my life is all about least of all in trying to explain myself of how or wherefore i am at. I like to believe that i live in the moment like most great philosophers or intellects profess htemselves to be doing but who am i kidding?

KFC Time!!

Saturday! I feel like a fool as I often do whenever I get kicked in my butt and it is always time to reflect upon the small miracles that my Maker awards me with in the nick of time. I got my one thousand ninehudred from my friend Shaparel who got paid for the works purchased by the USM Gallery. The monay was handed me yesterday not half an hour after I had moaned and groaned about how life sucks on the blog. When he handed me the cash for the purchase of my works I felt goosebumps all over relfecting on fast the Al MIghty decideds to teach me yet another lesson on perseverence and of being patient. I have always maitained a love hate relationship with Allah (SWT) throughout my life but I have the feeling that my Creator has more in store for me than meets the eye;He is not going to make it easy for me, nope, not in this life. He tests me every step of the way to see if I would make it or break, if I can remain steadfast or buckle down under a little bit of pressure, if I am greatful or forgetful whenever I am given the bounty that I had received.
Today I spent one hundred and fifty Ringgit worth of KFC for the staff at the Muzium as a token of my appreciation for their help and support of my being in their midst utilizing the facility and all the tools and equipments available at my dispossal. I am very fortunate more than most and realize it and appreciate it no doubt in my mind as in my situation as an artist who for the first time am trying to remain a full time artist earning my daily bread through my works as an artist to support myself and my two children. The rent has be paid in full and my son got his school uniform and his walkman which was waht I had owed him from using his money earlier. I have paid back the ferw ringgit here and there that I had owed people and I feel alot lighter in mind and spirit and on Monday I hope to drive to the immigration office and collect my children's visas and pay the 240RM fee.Oh what a relief it is at least for the moment.

My Son is drifting...

What has he done for his school vacation not too much anything but alot of watching DVDs at home all by himself like he is hoping for something to happen to his mind after all is watched and rewatched for the umteenth times. I am both sad and disturbed by the fact that he has become worse that a couch potato, as we do not have any couches and he watches the movies from the bed instead. I watched alot of times when I am home and we talked some about what we watched I try to slip in a lesson or two in English or geography or sometimes the psychology behind the scene and so on whenever he is paying attention or he ask something. Thers is the pros and cons to this situation as he spends alot of time off the streets and seems to be looking for something is all these. But of the other hand he is not out there like other kids his age chasing girls or building his biceps.
I am a little disturb about my son's lack of enthusiasm in living in the real world and tasting success and defeat hands on. I know he is not unintelligent and as a matter of fact I think he is pretty way out there in his mind except when it comes to doing the simple things in life like picking up after himself. it is a common phenomena for all kids to behave in like manner but some kids are just total loss when it comes to taking care of the little tings in life. Its like they believe there is someone else out there who is assigned to follow behind them and pick up the pieces after them, like their mother or a servant. I cannot blame my son for lack of passion about life as I am not either and this he sees and he hears from me day in day out. He knows the fact that if it is not against my belief and principle and if it is not against the common laws I would have gladly ended my miserable existance right now. I am living for sake of fulfilling my alotted time and hoping for and end as soon as possible. I learned a long time ago that I am a coward when it comes to suicide and so I have become an expert at justifying knowing that I am not convincing anyone not even myself. So it is with my son, I feel sorry for him and the more I watch his condition the more I feel the regret of making the move to return to this country.
It is Friday today and i spent the afternoon at the muzium working on what might turn into my longest painting, a scroll of that will be filled with heritage buildings around Georgetown in black and white. I don't even know why I bother to waste so much time and money over this project but I feel it is keeping my mind from tilting towards insanity if not despair with life and God. It is also perhaps because I was offered the scroll as a challenge to carry out the project by the Dean Professor Najib. I should have gone to pray at the mosque but my heart is bleeding too much for me to concentrate on God and begging Him again to forgive me for my ever incessant weaknesses. I miss my family,my wife, my daughter and even my son who is drifting away from me into his own world of make believe, a safe heaven from the madness that i have dragged him and his sister into after loosing my wife to her illness. Who do i turn to or what do I turn to when even God is not a comfort anymore? I spend my time making pictures and my heart is not into it. It seems Fridays always brings me down, spiritually it is the nadir of my life for the week and as a Muslim it is an irony to be at odds with your Maker on this day or days.

Climate Change continued...

"The bottom line is that the Global energy system is out of alignment with the ecological system that sustains our planet....Realignment will take fundamental shift in regulation, market incentives and international cooperation". So stated Kevin Watkins of the UNited nations intergoverment Panel on climate change. There is an inbalance in the Force! as Yoda the Jedi Master would have muttered to himself with a sad shrug of his shoulders signifying the futility of dwelling upon the inevitable. If it is up to humans this planet would be turned into one huge condominium complete with swimming pools and gymnaziums, a market place and shopping malls, parking lots and garages,(we are addicted to motorised vehicles), if it is up to us humans we would turn this planet into
one huge nursing home for the elderly and whatever else that we deem would serve our purpose in our short span of life on this planet. Balance? What is the need for balance if all our needs are met with and not only are they met with they are met with in style and comfort unparralled in our own history. We are a living organism that has come to realize our potential and that potential is inexhaustable or so we believe. So long as we are hardworking and productive we will keep on creating as we will and manage this planet till there is no more of it to manage.
Does an average man on the street realize the imbalances in the nature of things in this planet of our? Is he aware the the ocean is rising due to the melting of the polar caps and so on? Off course he is and he does care or that is what we who write and read about these things would want to believe but in reality the man who repairs the engines of broken down cars and motor cycles has these thoughts as far from his mijd as the thought of a meteor coming crushing down on his head one bright sunny day. Talk to these individuals sit and shoot the breeze, have a teh tarik and browse upon these subjects and see if there is any concern for them over the matters that you believe is of life and death importance for this planet of ours. It is best to talk of the latest model of cars coming off the lines or the latest sex scandal or the political climate of the kampung and you will find better response, not of climate changes. The most that you can learn from these members of our human race is the fact that it is raining more than usuall at the wrong sides of the mountain ranges for this time of year and that is not good for the Durian trees or for the rice growers.
Those participants who are presently sitting at the conference tables in Bali deliberating the state of the Planet due to Global Warming and Climate Changes have the work cut out for them. Nature is going AWOL, Nature is no more respecting her predestined courses nor is she sticking to her regular schedules. If anyone of those who are there in this Island Paradise is not aware or refuse to acknowledge the state of this planet's well being is in jeopardy they aught to be sent home in a box sooner than they can say Tsunami! Nothing really profound came out of the KYOTO Accord other than the ladaisical smooth talking and lips servicing that most governments gave over the years each dragging their feet towards taking any significant action towrds finding a solution to the predicament mankind as a whole is facing. How many more years and natural disasters, how many more species and land masses are lost before there will be a real collective effort globally to address this impending spectre that is threatening our very planet itself?
Is the planet heating up from within?
Is the Planet heating up from without?
Is man affecting this changes in the planet's climate?
Is there a need to be concern?
Is there a need for change in our mindset in these issues?

What do we leave our future generations and what are our excuses?
What is holding us back from seeing the obvious and acting collectively, intelligently?
What would it take for us to wake up before it is too late.
What is the sense of calling our era a civilized one if we are the cause of our own demise.

The UN Climate Change Summit-Bali

I was at the Kyoto COP-3 UN climate change summit and had not be able to participate because I was not a member of any NGO or any government bodies representing a nation, I was there as an individual artist who happened to have put together a year' worth of Newspaper cuttings frome the Japan Times of anything and everything that had to do with the environment. These were displayed outside the convention center where arriving guests to the convention were able to catch a glimpse of what was going on with the environmental issues at the time. The four pieces of display foam boards covered with the news paper cuttings were later borrowed by an NGO contingent from Washington DC in the USA and taken into the convention center where they were hung on display. I was proud to have done my part and for my effort to be taken further than I had expected by chance. The boards were later sent to me back in Sendai whaere I was living after the Convention was over with a beautiful thank you note.
I had most probably wrote about this episode somewhere earlier in my blog but I cannot help it whenever there is a UN Climate Convention happening I am reminded of my trip to Kyoto curtesy of The Director od the Kawaijuku Bunri in Sendai. Thats who sponsored my trip when I cpould not get the Malaysian Embassy or the Japan Times to do it. I found it hard time and again for an individual tomake any significant impact without some form of support from those who has the means and by humanistic rights should offer help for anyone aspiring to be of use to the benifit humanity for whatever cause. Artists are those who more than often fall into the category of needing help when it comes to this situations. They are most passionate about these issues that often does not attracts the average person on the street as there is no financial gains to be made for one thing and for most there is lack of awareness or even interest. But for the artist and i can speak for myself at least what happens to the environment, the state of the planet as a whole and to humanity in general affects me personally whether I like it or not. I dwell on issues that an average normal person would care less about throughout my life i remember dealing with global issues of one form or another in my mind like trying to find some form of solution to the problem with AIDs and the wars being fought all over the world, the famine and starvation plaguing poorer nations and the impact of global warming upon the planets' well being. I keep reminding myself, how dumb it can be for me to think that there is anything worthwhil that would come out of it except mega migraines at the end of the day. I keep reminding myself that I am no Bodhisatva of Compassion and even if i am the destiny of this planet and its inhabitants are foretold and has to be played out with or without my intervention.
The water will rise and the temperatures will rise and the species will one by one disappeare and there is not much that can be done for so long as there are humans like me plaguing the planet with my needs, my Greed, Hate and Dellussions. I am the thinking creature that is capable to create, preserve or destroy this planet and at the rate and direction my kind is heading it dont seem like there is much to hope for in terms of saving this planet from slipping into darkness. I wish as a collective concious there is some form of telepathic wavelength that we humans could stay in touch amidst all these scream of death and destruction, or thirst for power and lack of compassion. I wish we could all hear the voice of silence every once in awhile so that we could take a clearer look at where we are at at this point in time and what we are doing to ourselves and to this planet of ours, to our fellow creatures and the rest of sentient being inhabitting this small atom in the galaxy of galaxies.
How can we not feel responsible, how can we not feel the loss of extinction of species or the cries of desperation from those that we in our ignorance and lack of awareness have exploited and trample upon just so we can get our wants. We would dare to do whatever it takes to survive but when it comes to the survival of the rest of the creatures we turn a deaf ear and make believe that they dont exist or dont matter in our lives. We would kill in the name of our belief system, our race or religion but we cannot save a tree from being cut down or burnt to the ground just so we can grow crops that financially benifit us and us alone. We can never have enough or play second fiddle to anyone else in appearence or intellect, we are creatures that often forget that we are fragile and that our life can come to an abrupt end at any time and all that we have been craving for, killing for making others miserable for is all an illusion. There is not a dirt or an atom of what we are or who we are remains when it all comes to an end in ourselves. The planet itself may still keep on spinning despite all that is going on aimed at its self destruction but we as individuals matters no more when we let out our last breath of air. Our physical self is left to rot in the ground, food for the miriads of worms and maggots, this body the we so proudly fought and defended, cherished and cared for.

Blogging under scrutiny?

The Star Sunday 2 December-Focus article entitled 'Caught In a Web- Spin' is the latest take of prominant leaders on the pros and cons of Blogging. How it affects the polls or the individual characters who are the loudest in the country, the way the government is run or the fish is bought and sold legally or illegaly on the the high seas. Blogging had captured the attention of the who is who in the itellectual as well as the government bureaucracies just like the illegal processing of belacan in some off the road hidden boonies. Just as bad belacan affects all of us lovers of the fermented shrimp paste that is most popularly used in making The Sambal, blogging is becoming a threat to many who is feeling insecure from having to share their sense of well being and intelligence, their limit of understanding and compassion, their comfort and security living within ivory towers. The Blog is becoming like the Blob! It is becoming a boogieman that spells danger, that is beginning to be seen as somethig that can shake the foundations of higher learning around the globe as it is the result of collective universal thoughts that will eventually be expressed when all is said and done in the blog! The blog is within the Net or Jala!or Jaring! You need to pick up one strand of the net and the whole comes up at you with its force and weight, here you are dealing with the ultimate collective Mind! It may not be as apparent as it is now but in time all decisions made concerned with humanity and its self preservatiion will come via the blogging or better programes yet to be discovered by the collective unconcious. The Blog is only the beginning just as the Net itself was a beginning. Welcome to 'Cyber Space!'
There are and will always users and abusers just as it being the case of alcohol or drug users in the human realm, there will be morons and geniuses out to proof their points, let the world know their existance and how great or how small they actually are. But all in all the Universal Collective Spirit, the Collective Mind that rules the Net even at its subconxcious state is the ultimate Creator and Preserver of the sanctity of the Blog.
A comment by the MCA Kota Melaka MP, Nai Chee is and for sometime from now be the normal stance to be taken by those who feels the need to make comments or be heard on matters,
" The Government is still trying to live with the new development. We are still in the infancy stage but one of the guarantees of the Multimedia Super Corridor was not to curb the internet content except maybe using certain legislation to control the situation."
Here is the kind of oxymoron that we humans in our present state of mind still live by, it is the few attempting to silence a storm that the very few hard helped to generate in the past. The few whose thinking process is haunted by insecurities of their own positions and advantages in this day and age and cannot see beyond the sense of letting things grow into its own maturity and drop to the ground of its own without any form of control or force.'...maybe using certain legislation to control the situation', control what? Governments has done nothing but strived to control anything and everything that it cannot understand, refuse to understand or assumes that it understands in history often enough failling to realize that the very act of controlling itself is what fuels the growth of what is deemed needed to be controlled. Only the insecure and comfortably positioned individual would resort to such antiquated ideas AND THE NET IS NOT AN ANTIQUE, IT IS AN ALIVE AND EVOLVING ENTITY! If you are not par with the thoughts and ideas that is floating around in the blogs today you had better reserve making any judgment about how to control it. By reading and analyzing a few politically motivated entries by individuals whose narrowmindedness could only see the means to exploit and abuse any god given grace to their own benifit one has failed to understand the nature of the Blog.
Nai Chee went on to admit to this as he said,
"We can't control it, we just have to acclimate ourselves to it."
Acclimate ourselves to what is currently floating in the collective expression of the universal mind is more acceptable a statement from a minister than suggesting control. The need to control has its validity when it concerns the exploitation of net by unscrupulous degenerates such as those that ply their sexualy oriented wares making it sure that even children can excess them or those who has no sense of self respect voicing out obscenities so the world can hear their grievances, but these too has their rights in the scheme of life it is for those who makes the difference in making decisions that affects other lives to seive acclectically through what is acceptable and what is not. The politician is a genius when it come to politicking just as a fisherman is a genius when it comes to fishing and the two has to learn to respect eachother's roles in life without taking advantage of the empowerment of status or positions one has in life to dictate.

I have been writing these thoughts of mine for almost three years now and have almost become addicted to it. It seems to grow upon me and have become a part of my creative repertoire the collective expression of my thoughts and ideas about life as I see it. Having had the opportunity to live in the US for 21 years and 3 years in Japan and having travelled to twenty odd countries in between my mind is no ordinary mind that simply likes to sit a weather away with age into oblivion. My mind is in a constant state of aggitation and flux and when it sense that there is an injustice or a radically wrong stir in the heavens or a bad taste left in the mouth, it rings out to be heard, to manifest its own obeservations in the hope that it can calm itself down with some form of sanity or peace. MaKING SENSE OUT OF NONSENSE, most of the time I write to myself just to help clear my own cobwebs that is constantly accumulating in my head. A futile effort at cleaning up my own clossets, my own toilet, my own soul before I am called to account for what it was that I was created to do in the first place or who am I or what the hell am I?
So I blogged! I keep on rambling of things that I doubt if it matters anymore one way or another so long as my mind sees the need to express itself. And why Not! Just got done reading Alan Watts's article ,"The World as Emptiness", from his seminar given on the subject of Emptiness. It is ironic that after having read this whole article I come to realize that what i am doing is actually emptying my mind, letting go of whaever that is stuck in there or got attracted along the way like having read the Star news paper article on Blogging! It is not the most important thing in my life at this moment to view my thoughts on the subject but it is something to do. I would rather very much like to sit somewhere doing a sketch on my piece of scroll given to me by the Dean Encik Najib but I am procrastinating for no obvious reason and i hate to push myself to become involved in creating when my mind just could not get it together in the first place. Creating has to happen without any formn of compell or coercion, it just has to happen and for it to just have to happen there has to be an empty space in my mind or my being devoid of transgressions of feelings that is occupying my mind. In other words i have to find peace of mind a mind free from worries of what is beyond my control anyway. To do this I have to sit and let it go and all these while i have been sitting and letting it all go through writing all these that i have written. Now i feel a little empty and enlighten! if anyone had the nerve or taken the trouble to follow this piece of scatology he or she might have caught a little of the wisdom beyond wisdom of the whole principle of form and emptiness. I may have procrastinated about doing the sketching but i have sat and wrote a long piece of my distorted view of life, sat out of harm's way for the day and caused no grief or commotion to anyone but myself and watched another day passed getting me closer towards my self anihillation and becoming one with the void.