Shambhala — music fest/spiritual retreat

Shambhala music festival has been my yearly escape for quite a few years now (I’m gonna say 6). It’s nearly a week long, camping in the forest next to some big ass stages and loud music. There are people high on everything you can think of, dressed up in costumes, naked, dancing, celebrating. It’s absolute chaos. But it’s well organized, safe, and I love it. I find peace within it. It seems like a lot of people do. It’s hard to explain, but the air there is electric. The mood is contagious. Even though we all spend our completely separate lives doing whatever completely different things we all do, when people come to Shambhala (for the most part), the environment changes them, even for a few days, into happy, peaceful hippies. It’s absolutely beautiful.

This is my new year. The middle of the summer is my birthday, and it used to be the divider between grades, so this time of year has always felt that way to me. This has always been my new year.

From tomorrow until next Monday I’ll have barely any cellphone service, definitely no internet access, and probably some chemicals flowing through my system, though I’ll admit, I’m not really the type of person who ‘parties’ very hard. This ‘retreat’ gives me the most of both socialization (there are people everywhere, friends, friends of friends, stranger friends) and contemplation, because inside the solitude of my tent, and even with the distant beat of four or five different stages at nearly 24 hours of the day, my mind is rarely so calm and clear.

Shambhala is a vibrant, and I’ll admit, sometimes overwhelming display of the human spirit. People there are rarely afraid to talk to strangers, they’ll make eye contact, we don’t know what it is, but when we’re there, we all understand it (anyone who’s ever done mushrooms or acid knows that feeling…), even if that understanding is sometimes fleeting, forever striving for it allows each new experience to teach me something. And shambhala is an experience I look forward to every year.

peace. be back on monday :)

and while I’m away don’t be scared to share any of these video’s and posts with your friends.

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Voice of the Homeless (from invisiblepeople.tv)

I quickly put this together after finding this channel on youtube. I couldn’t stop watching these interviews… to see what these people are going through…

visit their site: www.invisiblepeople.com to see more interviews.

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my last two videos

haven’t been posting them…

we are winning:

talk to people:

visit my youtube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/saydaysago2008

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the answer to 1984 is not 1776

I saw this slogan on Alex Jones’ Facebook page a couple days ago and it’s just been sitting strangely with me ever since.

I’ve never understood the mentality of wanting to resurrect the past, because we as a species are constantly learning. Think of how many things that are possible now that weren’t possible in 1776. Shouldn’t we look towards the future instead of the past?

There is a lot of amazing insight in the US Constitution, and 1776 was a great triumph of freedom over all kinds of unruly controls, but maybe a small part of the reason that the US, Canada, the world, is in this position is because we all rely on these immutable documents, like constitutions, which then become enforced by laws. My point being that one immutable document is NEVER going to be able to lay down the rulebook of a perfect society. By saying we should go back to 1776 is to say that we should go back to what got us into this mess in the first place.

A lot has changed since 1776, when they said “All men are created equal” they meant all white males. We now understand that statement should read “All human people are to have equal rights and freedoms”, or something similar, since even the language “are created” assumes a religious pretense that may not be all inclusive. And if you take the non-religious meaning of creation we know we weren’t all created equally [doggy, missionary,etc]. sorry.). We’ve updated our understandings, and that’s why a constitution, any constitution, will eventually create a failed state.

Here in Canada, until 1913 (which interestingly, but maybe only coincidentally, coincides with the establishment of the US’s Federal Reserve bank) the Federal Government had the authority and the responsibility, to control and issue our money. They were given an unlimited supply of debt-free money with which to operate the country, thus eliminating the need for direct federal income tax. All they had to do was print it. And that’s what they did it for the first 46 years of our country. But, in 1913, our parliament passed an amendment to the Bank Act, without referendum, giving to the banking system the sole right to create money. And they charge interest. Since then our national debt has grown from being 463 million dollars to over 1 trillion dollars in 2009. In this case, our constitutional rights were subverted by underhanded legislation, but that happens all the time, in every country that operates a monetary based democracy the democratic principals will always be undermined by greed. That’s another understanding of ours that has been updated since 1776.

So I’m just asking people to keep in mind that if things get bad enough that there is some sort of armed revolution, like the one of 1776, (and I sincerely hope they don’t, but if they do get that bad… ) an answer isn’t going to be found in old constitutions and old documents. Dogmatic doctrines like constitutions and religious commandments never stand the test of time, this is why society after society fails, because they all think they have the answer. There is no one ANSWER, there is only a constant stream of possibilities from which we can pluck only some, but an ever growing amount, of answers.

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Lawrence Lessig: Re-examining the remix

This isn’t just about remixes, this isn’t just about copyrights, it’s about freedom to create and share ideas. This talk hits right to the heart of the issue… money, again, but more importantly it explores why this openness is important and inevitable.

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is it really spiritual if it doesn’t do anything?

“I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm,
to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow,
to feel inspired,
to fathom the power,
to witness the beauty,
to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on a spiral,
to swing on a spiral,
to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.”

-Tool (Lateralus)

Is meditation spiritual? Is it more spiritual than giving a gift to someone you love? Or better yet, someone you don’t even know, or will never know you. Is a monk sitting around in a mosk somewhere helping anybody in any tangible way? They aren’t feeding anyone, they aren’t even exchanging ideas with anyone… they’re achieving inner peace, that’s great for them, but it has no function for society. It helps no one.

I believe true spirituality has a function. I believe true spirituality has a greater purpose in improving the spirits of others. And if our spirit is really nothing more than our psyche, our mental state at a time, then functional spirituality has to do with improving the mental conditions of others, which is directly related to their poverty levels (ie: let’s get our shit together and feed our starving brothers and sisters in Africa), among other things of course.

The notion that our ‘spirit’ somehow exists separately from our mind I’ve come to see as one of the greatest follies of our species evolution of thought. The greatest moments are always those of complete union between body and mind, working together. Your mind responding to all sensory (bodily) input, awareness, those almost transcendant times when I feel whole, complete, unseparated. The complete inegration of body and mind, as one whole being, as it was meant to be.

“Over thinking, over analyzing,
separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, leaving opportunities behind.”

Maybe this is why people have such a history of feeling dispotic and lonely. We’re yearning for this spirit, this nothingness that only leaves you continuing to search, when what we could be doing is forming connections with other people, exchanging ideas, one of the ultimate acts of functional spirituality. Perhaps once we stop searching for the spirit, we can embrace the physical, the reality, the present.

The only true physical reality is the present. The past and future only exist as thoughts in our minds. History and possibilities. The present is the only physical reality. When my mind becomes lost in the past or future, I ignore the present and end up DOING NOTHING… being invisible. Achieving nothing. Serving no spiritual purpose.

In my subjective experience, feeling more present in your body (not feeling like a separate entity that exists somewhere outside or inside of yourself) and more present in the physical world overall creates a more healthy perspective and a more healthy method of thought and of interaction with others.

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my third video: the reason my site’s become a string of random youtube clips

because I spend all my time editing this shit for you guys so like it bitches. :)

Criminal Reality (Imprisonment pt 2):

Not sure if it’ll stay working. Youtube was giving me some shit when I first uploaded it because it somehow auto-detected that simpsons clip at the beginning, copyright infringement and all that. Should be fine though, it’s all fair use as far as I can see.

visit my youtube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/saydaysago2008

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charlie of the love police topping himself again.

amen brother. sorry kay.

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sorry, not many posts….

been working on the new video, also just taking some time to pull back and decompress. love everyone.

complete site makeover (i know i said it before but it’s coming) and new videos all coming down the pipeline.

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The Love Police — AMMERRIKKA

I’ve seen a few people taking the Love Police idea and doing their own videos, but this is by far the best I’ve seen yet.

I fucking love the internet. I love global communication and community.

Oh and my friend just bought a megaphone… I’m gonna see where that takes us.

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