Try to read and understand the title (mgnfnglshwswrttnlkths)….
Give up.
I was talking to a Christian Egyptian friend in the gym and he asked me what non-Arab Muslims did about understanding the Koran since a great part of the Koran’s wonder is in the language. I explained that the Koran cannot be translated but is interpreted in other languages and in reality the same is true about the Bible.
My friend disagreed about the Bible. He was under the impression that the English translation was in fact a reasonable translation. I explained that this was impossible since the old testament was written in Hebrew which has no vowels (like Arabic anther Semitic sister language). Moreover the Old Testament was written without any spaces between words and no punctuations to tell us where a word began and ended.
So comes the English version of this way of writing. This is an example: mgnfnglshwswrttnlkths. It could be: Mage in fun gals how swear to tan like this.
Or: Mug no fang lose. How’s war to tune lake to his.
In fact it was: Imagine if English was written like this.
I next explained to my friend that this allowed many different readings of the Bible. For example the following is a mystical understanding of the first sentence of Genesis (from Cabala): The beginningness created the heavens, the earths and the Gods.
I love this understanding since it tends to say that there are multiple universes. Also note that there is an unknown (The beginningness - Ein Sauf of Cabala) which created the Elohim (Gods). Again it is important to understand that the God mentioned in Genesis one is the Elohim which is a plural word (hence Gods) formed with a plural masculine ending of a word which is feminine in the singular.
To me this paradox of the word Elohim means that God is beyond gender and any description (plural-singular) and as the Tao Te Ching writes the ultimate reality is ineffable (cannot be put into words) and I suppose the rest is silence….
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In Iran my native country we eat a huge amount of natural yogurt. Moreover, in the Caucuses which have some of the longest lived populations in the world they eat plenty of yogurt and drink huge amounts of tea as well as working on the mountains until the day they die as healthy centenarians.
We don’t really know why these people live such long lives. We believe they have the combination of genes and environment which produces longevity. The genes you cannot change at this time. However, some of the environmental effects you may be able to emulate:
- Lack of stress and slowness of life.
- An active life style - they are shepherds walking up and down the hills and mountains.
- Clear air - the mountain airs are less polluted.
- The food is pure and organic.
- They drink plenty of tea (full of antioxidants) and good mountain spring water - keep hydrated .
- Eat plenty of yogurt - again pure and full of live cultures.
The rest of this post is about the healthful aspects of yogurt:
- Yogurt is the best milk product - full of calcium but digestible - many adults are lactose intolerant and cannot drink milk without bloating and other problems.
- It is not as fatty as cheese. Most cheeses have a huge amount of animal fat - high in saturated oils and hence bad for you.
- Yogurt is one of the lowest glycemic index foods available and thus will keep your blood sugar levels balanced and will help protect you from insulin imbalance and potential
- It is full of live cultures (good bacteria) that will line your digestive system keeping you healthy.
So eat live (live cultures) organic fat free plain yogurt for health. Each of the properties mentioned is for a reason:
- Live - full of the benign healthy bacteria.
- Plain - no sugar or sugar laced fruits - if you wish you can flavor the yogurt with fresh fruits.
- Organic -no bovine growth hormones or other poisons.
- Fat free - way less (about 48% fewer) calories than full fat yogurt.
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Here are some useful facts:
- Chances are no matter how much you pay for your nonprescription sunglasses there’s no guarantee the lenses will adequately protect your eyes.
- If you lease a car and know that you’ll go over the annual millage limits, negotiate the price per mile early on rather than when returning the car.
- Make sure your new car has the right tires from day one - rain tires if you live in a rainy place or performance (Z-rated) for a fast car. Many times the manufacturer will put the cheapest tire which passes the requirements. You may be able to be able to trade in the tires when new or negotiate with the dealer up front. This should be very easy in today’s economic conditions.
- Many special interest groups and think tanks have very misleading names which are designed to fool you into thinking they are neutral and bias free. For example most people know that Project for the New American Century is the extreme right wing neoconservative think tank that got us into Iraq, but they may not know that the good sounding Foundation for Defense of Democracies is another neocon antidemocratic agitprop organization.
- Most municipalities use traffic tickets to try to balance their budget. So the actual ticket cost is way higher than the nominal costs. For example in California the cost of first offense in driving with a cell phone in hand is $15 but the actual cost after the "costs and penalties" is $172 in Orange county.
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There’s an old spiritual joke:
What is mind? No mater.
What is mater? never mind.
Many years ago when I was doing research in the biochemistry of the brain and was thinking about consciousness and the brain (mind/body problem) I rejected most of the philosophical and scientific answers to the qwuestion as being either dualistic (say psychophysical paralelism) or sweeping the whole issue under the rug (epiphenomenalism).
Some behaviorists went as far as actually denying the existence of consciousness. To them only external "objective" behavior had any reality and they totally denied the existence of a subjective universe. To take the mater to the other extreme the solipsists denied the existence of an external world.
Another problem was the emergence problem. If the mind emerged at some point in evolution what happened before then? There were also issues of quantum mechanics with the observer effect. In this reading od quantum mechanics consciousness collapses the quantum uncertainty and if consciousness was an emergent phenomenon, then the whole universe would be Schrodinger’s cat experiment from big bang until the emergence of the first consciousness….
So my solution was to believe that consciousness is an intrinsic property of mater and there is only a single consciousness (hence the I am meditation I wrote about recently).
As time went on and I studied more philosophy and thought about the meaning of quantum mechanics I became more spiritual. One day at the Philosophical Research Society I mentioned that I believed consciousness is a basic property of matter (like electromagnetism, gravity, the week and strong nuclear forces). The lecturer asked, "How do you know that materiality is not a property of consciousness.
And my answer is that I don’t know. This whole thing reminds me of Alan Watt’s statement that the Earth peoples the same way as the apple tree apples….
This morning I was reading a wonderful a book: The Enlightened Heart by Stephen Mitchell 
. In it I read:
Mind is everything; mind is nothing. Mind creates time and space, mind contains a billion galaxies, mind lifts a spoon of porridge to its mouth at breakfast. Mind islife and death. Mind is God and the devil; mind is you and I…
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I recently started a series of meditation articles in our main Life Focus Center Blog:
The "I am meditation" is a very powerful and spiritual meditation:
In the bible is written "be still and know that I am God." Also when Moses asks the being in the burning bush the name, the being (God) replies, "I am that I am," or a better translation may be, " I am becoming that which I am becoming." Either way "I AM" is a concept symbolizing the ultimate reality (God, Tao, Haqh, Infinite Intelligence, The One, Spirit, or whatever name you prefer).
This I am is the source of consciousness. It is the observer which observes the drama (Maya - game of life) of your life but does not interfere. It is the I am which exists outside time and space in total bliss and unconditional love. Each one has the I am within but the I am is much more than any individual. It is the Christ or Buddha within.
In Hinduism the same idea is stated in the mantra: "Tat tuam asi." It means "thou art that." Or the personal self is the impersonal universal Self or spirit. The point is that all is Buddha but some are aware of this fact (awake) while most are asleep.
In the I am meditation you start with making yourself relaxed and comfortable in a sitting or lying down position at a time and place when you’ll not be disturbed.
Now, you start by stating what you have and what you are not - thus say silently and pause between each statement:
- I am not the body - I have a body.
- I am not the mind - I have a mind.
- I am not my emotions - I have emotions.
- I am not my roles (think about some roles you have - parent, child, sibling, employee, employer, etc) - I play these roles.
- I am not my sensations - I have sensations.
- I am not my possessions - I have possession (added for us materialistic Westerners who have an attitude that he with most toys wins.
- I am not my actions - I take actions.
After you state what you are not repeat the words, "I am." Just concentrate on the concept of I am as described above. Allow yourself to be removed from all of the above (body, thoughts, emotions, sensations, roles and so on). Just concentrate on your being as you repeat the words "I am."
At times your mind will wonder and when you notice that you are no longer repeating "I am" gently return your concentration on "I am." Continue for at least five minutes but preferably for thirty minutes. Use an audio with silence and a bell at the end to let you know the time.
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I’m reading a book on enlightenment by the Dalai Lama and in it he writes about the sacredness of all life and the opportunity we have of having been incarnated as human being.
In order to understand the sacredness of each individuals life we have to start with the big bang about thirteen and a half billion years ago. Then we had to have galaxies forming and evolving. Stars had to go super novae so that the heavier elements would be formed.
About five billion years ago our solar system formed out of the products of dead stars forming the planets around it. About three and a half billion years ago life started on earth. Life evolved and about two million or so years ago human like hominids started developing. Some four hundred thousand years ago the first humans lived in Africa and eventually about twenty five thousand years ago our subspecies (Homo sapiens sapiens) started.
History has existed for five thousand years. Modern technology has been around for two hundred years….
So whether this is the only life we have or we reincarnate, it has taken all this time for you to develop and be born. When we look at the universe we notice that most is empty. Mater is very rare. Even so most mater is dark mater which makes normal mater rarer. Most of normal mater is hydrogen (the fuel in stars) or helium (the end result of hydrogen fusion in the stars).
Planetary mater is even rarer. Just looking at our own solar system makes us guess that living mater is exceptionally rare. Now when we look at life on earth we notice that human life is less than one in a trillion.
Knowing this we should appreciate that we are human beings and that our actions (karma ) makes a difference. Statisticaly you would have been born as a single celled being but you weren’t.
You were born as a human being - as William Shakespear says, "The paragon of animals." Understand the opportunities this gives you to live a life of loving kindness and generosity. This also reminds me of Einstein’s statement that human beings exist to serve.
So be loving, be kinder, be more tollerant. Use this great privillage that you are a human being. Respect each other. If you cannot do that respect the spark of divinity in others….
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Recently I accepted a challenge to write one hundred HubPages in thirty days. So far I have written twenty four in seven days. However, I noticed that even though I can reach the goal the quality of the writing started to suffer and this chalenge started to interfere with the rest of my Internet marketing.
Let me tell you a story about goal setting and flexibility in going toward your goals.
Many years ago I belonged to Los Angeles Athletic Club which is and old sports club (like a country club but in the city). One year I noticed that they had an indoor athletic competition called "Tour D’Iataly." It comprised of about five hundred miles of stationary bike, StairMaster, walking/running, rowing (on machine) and so on.
One had up to three month to complete the whole "tour." At first I though I could not do it but I thought I would give it a go. My goal was to complete it in less than the aloted three days.
So the starting day came and I did my best. There was a leader board and by third day I noticed that I was among the people doing reasonably well. I was flexible and changed me goal to coming in the top ten finishers.
By fifth day I was in the top ten and I changed my goal once more - this time to being in the top five and soon as I was still doing well I changed my goal to ending in the top three.
I continued doung well and ended in the second position. Immediately I had the goal of coming first the next year and I achieved that for the next two years (until my job changed and I was no longer commuting through down town Los Angeles and I left the club).
I’m not writing this to boast but just that a great part of goal achievement is to be flexible. So, this morning I decided to change my goal from one hundred HubPages in thirty days to fifty in a month.
Here is a link to one of the better hubs I wrote: It is on the same topic as this post - flexiblity in goal achievement.
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A few questions to ponder
Please give these questions some time and really think about them. They are questions that Plato asked. I’ll later on write the answers he came with and how these answers were developed by later Philosophers.
Is an act moral because God says it is moral or does God recommend the act because it is moral ? Actually Plato used the word Gods since that was the Greek polytheism. In fact his mouthpiece Socrates talks about the point that at times (say the Trojan wars) the different Gods disagreed with each other and were on opposing sides.
The same question may be put another way: Is an act moral because an authority says it is moral or do we recognize an authority in morality because she recommends acts which are moral ? For now is what Nixon said (and Bush and Cheney followed) true, “If the president does it, it’s legal.”
Do abstract objects exist independent of other beings. For examples do numbers exist whether humans, gods or other sentient beings exist? This comes from Plato’s theory of forms.
A final thing to ask is perfection the unchanging or is getting better and change the way of the universe?
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Alfred North Whitehead, the great British philosopher-mathematician, once commented that all philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. Of course he should have said that all Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato, but we all live in our own cultural milieu of prejudices.
Even if Whitehead may have been exaggerating the fact is that Plato is one of the most important Western philosophers and in order to understand Western thought we need to have some understanding of Plato.
Plato wrote many works which can be divided into three chronological groups:
- The first group were the Socratic dialogues. In these Plato was more or less retold the thoughts of his teachers especially his great teacher Socrates. This group contains Apology, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Ion, Hippias Minor, Euthyphro, and Lysis
- Then came middle dialogues which include the Republic which is his best known work. By this time Plato came into his own and was using Socrates as a mouthpiece for his ideas. Other works of this period include such great dialogues as Phaedo, Protagoras, the Symposium and the Phædrus
- Lastly come the later dialogues. By this time like all great philosophers Plato was reexamining his own work and perhaps thanks to the influence of his great student Aristotle, Plato challenges his own "theory of forms".
The myth of the cave appears in book six of the Republic. Here is my version of it (from memory and changed slightly but the message is there):
- Imagine some people who have lived in an underground cave all their lives. They are shackled in way that they cannot move so that they can only see the far wall of the cave facing them.
Behind and above them a fire blazes so the prisoners can only see their own shadows and the shadows of objects that their keepers are passing in front of the fire as puppets. Some of them talk, others remain silent.
The prisoners can only hear the echoes of their own and their keepers voices. Now, would they not suppose that the shadows and the echoes were reality?
Further more, imagine that one of these prisoners manages to free himself. At first he is blinded by the light as he turns around and his eyes have not acclimated to the brightness he sees.
Then he notices the fire above and the keepers with their puppets. Slowly he gets his courage and starts the arduous task of climbing the cave side to where the fire is. After coming to the keepers he manages to creep past them and gets to the cave mouth.
Wow! The blue sky, trees and such a brightness up there. He can never look at the brightness directly but eventually comes to a lake and manages to look at the beauty of the sun reflected in the water. He is so tempted to remain where he is.
But, he remembers his friends, his fellow prisoners. The return journey is just as difficult and hazardous but eventually he gets home and starts telling the truth to anyone who would listen.
Of course, the people don’t want to know. In fact, if he insists on telling them about the real truth he is called insane and even then if he does not cease in trying to remove their illusions, the prisoners kill him.
The implication is that the philosopher (the lover of wisdom) who sees the truth is executed like Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, Al Halge (the Sufi mystic).
I’ll write more about this at a later date. At this time I just want to introduce the idea. Also, as far as I’m concerned the movie. Matrix (the brilliant original one not the stupid sequels), was about this difference between the ultimate truth and the phenomenal world.
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When Oscar Wilde visited United States the customs officer asked, “Anything to declare?”
The brilliant Irish wit answered, “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
While I’m at it here are some more Oscar Wilde quotes (spelling correct that’s to say British - my notes in parenthesis):
- Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
- We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language (note the point about spelling).
- The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Nothing should be able to harm a man but himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance. (He would have been executed in today’s America where the only thing that maters is what a person has….)
- The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything. (How true when I was twenty my father was always wrong - it’s interesting how much he learned in the next ten years…. old joke)
- Men always want to be a woman’s first love - women like to be a man’s last romance. (because men are so unsure of themselves)
- I can believe anything as long as it is incredible. (excess in all things especially in excess)
- Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
- No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
- The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world own shame.
- There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. (I don’t agree fully but so true, my lack of agreement is only that I’m so provincial)
- Who, being loved, is poor?
- I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. (from the importance of being Ernest)
- To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. (same play from which also comes: “I call a spade a spade.” reply “I’m glad I don’t know what a spade is!”)
- A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. (so true)
- Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. (hence TV and Internet - get a life stop being on Internet - stop reading this)
- I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.
- The reason we are so pleased to find other people’s secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.
- All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
- I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
- Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
- I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
- There is no sin except stupidity.
- One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
- Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
- In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
- To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope
- The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
- Ah! Don’t say you agree with me. When people agree with me. I always feel that I must be wrong. (that’s the way I feel about popular things - I’m so glad I’ve never seen American Idol or other “reality shows)
- True friends stab you in the front.
- Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success. (it’s sympathise, colour, aluminium, and football is played with the round ball!)
- Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience
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