English Grammar Integral Enlightenment - Thank You Welcome to Integral Enlightenment! I’m delighted to have you with us in this exploration of what it means to live an authentic spiritual life in today’s world. You can listen to your Free Guided Meditation by clicking on the link below. FREE DOWNLOAD: "Opening to the Great Perfection" (50MB MP3 File) You’ll soon begin receiving our Integral Enlightenment e-newsletter, filled with practical spiritual advice and insight to help you deepen your practice and discover the richness of participating in the great adventure of conscious evolution. I would also like to invite you to join me for my upcoming telecourse, Integral Enlightenment: Awakening to an Evolutionary Relationship to Life. I look forward to meeting you on the path! Craig HamiltonFounder, Integral Enlightenment
What I Saw in America: Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking In spite of the praise for and embrace of “diversity” on nearly every campus in the nation, there is one orthodoxy upon which all campuses now largely and uniformly agree: the aim of a university education is to inculcate among students the skill of “critical thinking.” As various requirements in humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences are eliminated, reduced, or replaced by a set of “distribution requirements,” colleges and universities increasingly signal that it is less any particular content or specific knowledge that matters than the ability to think critically about any and all issues. The skills that one learns in any given course – whether geology, philosophy, literature, sociology, physics, theology or political science, and so on – are fungible and transportable, a set of tools that can be used to analyze any topic or idea that falls within the general family of inquiry that is learned in a given course.
Facebook Timeline Privacy Tips: Lock Down Your Profile Facebook's Timeline is coming, whether you like it or not, to Facebook accounts everywhere - including yours. I've been using Timeline for about a month now, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it's a lot easier to find things -- events, wall posts, etc, because you can now search your Facebook profile by date. On the other hand, it's much easier for other people--friends, strangers, you name it -- to find things, because they can now search your Facebook profile by date. Timeline Tell-all As it turns out, I've posted a lot of things -- not all of which are totally tame and/or work-appropriate -- over the past eight years that I've had Facebook. While it's true that you could technically see these posts before the introduction of Timeline, you would have had to do a lot more work. But now they can just see those posts by going to the right side of my profile and hitting 2006 -- and then choosing the month they want to see posts from. So here's how to fix that. Good Luck
Poetry Season - Homepage - Discover and vote for your favourite poet Inviting Fear Above all, a materialistic society desires certainty—it seeks to guarantee it; passes laws to enforce it; wipes our the pathogens that threaten it; and lets everyone have guns to protect it. Even the seemingly innocuous habits of inking in plans and clinging to beliefs and opinions are the reverse-image of the uncertainties that the heart yearns to be certain about. Yet, if we seek security in that which is inherently uncertain, dukkha, or discontent, is the inevitable result. Fear is a discomfiting friend. The impulse is to get to a place of safety, but where in the phenomenal world—either mental or physical—could that be? The insight of the Buddha, informed by his own experiences of exploring fear and dread, encourages us to make a 180-degree turn. For that which is threatening to the ego is liberating for the heart. By turning to face the inarguable facts of nature, the habit of investing in unstable realms is interrupted. How can we arrive at such security? Where do I feel the fear?
My Journey from Atheist to Catholic: 11 Questions for Leah Libresco Leah Libresco is a writer and school systems analyst based in Washington, D.C. A former atheist blogger and writer for the Huffington Post, Ms. Libresco stunned her readers in summer 2012 when she announced that she was converting to Catholicism. Ms. Advertisement What were your first experiences of religion? I grew up on Long Island, where most of the people I knew were non-religious Jews. The main exposure I had to religion was through politics (I was the kind of kid who hurried home to watch "Crossfire"). How and why did you become a self-professed atheist? There wasn’t really a time when I wasn’t an atheist. As an undergraduate student at Yale, how did you experience religion? Yale was the first time I met and talked to smart, interesting Christians. What drew you to the Catholic Church? Catholicism seemed to be pointed at the same end. What were your biggest obstacles to becoming Catholic and how did you resolve them? Who are your role models in the faith, either living or dead? St. St.
Future - Science & Environment - Will we ever... talk to the animals? History is littered with animals who have "communicated" with humans, but as work with dolphins shows it is difficult to strike up a two-way conversation. “What’s that Flipper? The treasure is over there?” So went a typical plotline for the popular TV series featuring the cute, bottlenosed dolphin who could communicate with his human guardians, and who – in the time-honoured fashion – used his animal powers to apprehend criminals. The idea that animals like Flipper can communicate with humans is not just the preserve of the small and big screen. History is littered with celebrity animals who have communicated with human scientists, with varying degrees of success. Dolphins hold a particular fascination; we are captivated by their intelligence and beauty, and swimming with dolphins features regularly on lists of things to do before you die. One-way chat “Talk” is tricky to define. The idea of talking to dolphins has a long and chequered history. Little less conversation Herzing disagrees.
Innerring - CS Lewis Society of California May I read you a few lines from Tolstoy’s War and Peace? When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. “Alright. Please wait!” he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when he spoke with contempt. When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude, however unlikely the conclusion seems, that you have a taste for middle-aged moralising. It is not, in fact, very likely that any of you will be able, in the next ten years, to make any direct contribution to the peace or prosperity of Europe. And of course everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. In the passage I have just read from Tolstoy, the young second lieutenant Boris Dubretskoi discovers that there exist in the army two different systems or hierarchies.
Future - Science & Environment - Searching for a cure to violence Can science help understand what leads people to commit violent acts... and find ways to stop them? When a crowd attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing several people including the US ambassador, it was initially seen by some as part of a rising tide of religiously-motivated violence. Others now suggest it was part of a planned attack by a militant jihadist group. While US investigators try to pinpoint exactly what happened, a small group of researchers will be watching closely. For Pete Hatemi, searching for answers to these questions has led him to study groups as diverse as Buddhist monks and Palestinian militants. One popular area of research, which Hatemi is involved in, is looking at the so-called “warrior gene”, also called MAO-A. ‘Insane game’ Hatemi is careful to point out that genetics, like environment, is merely one facet of aggression. While Hatemi is traveling the globe looking at the effects of real-world violence, Rene Weber is taking a different approach.
Give it five minutes A few years ago I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I’d think of a way to disagree. I’d push back hard if something didn’t fit my world-view. It’s like I had to be first with an opinion – as if being first meant something. It’s easy to talk about knee jerk reactions as if they are things that only other people have. This came to a head back in 2007. And what did I do? His response changed my life. This was a big moment for me. Richard has spent his career thinking about these problems. There’s also a difference between asking questions and pushing back. Learning to think first rather than react quick is a life long pursuit. If you aren’t sure why this is important, think about this quote from Jonathan Ive regarding Steve Jobs’ reverence for ideas: And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. That’s deep. There are two things in this world that take no skill: 1.