Last week i got hurt when i had taken the decision to pay for somebody's studies.
Somebody else asked me whether i would indeed really do this, and asked to think it over first.
The amounts mentioned are negligible compared to my income, and that remark really hurt.

Later i found out that it hurt because really deep i must have thought: "why would anybody challenge my image of being a good person?"

After realizing this, i sighed, and went for a walk outside, head down.

Some time ago Mrs. T wrote the following remark:

>> .. it seems to me that the teenagers upon this planet are desperately in need of some light and hope and guidance ... The fact that they are the future of this planet can be a scary thought when I hear what a lot of our youth occupy their time with and get up to these days. <<

And there is no simple answer to this fearful thoughts ... except ...

Our parents ... and their parents  :-) said the same thing about the youth of their days.
And I feel this is not entirely correct. At a certain age we lose contact with the youth of today, and then we don't see clear anymore what they are really doing. We see exagerated fragments of a complex society. If we try to come closer we get an entirely different picture:

There is an innate drive or desire in people for creativity and spiritual light. This is more apparent in our youth. The rave parties they go to are an expression of that. Temples they are. We don't offer them contemporary spirituality anymore so they make their own, sometimes fatally. They reach altered states of awareness by the boom sound and the use of recreational drugs.

They want to belong somewhere. Some religions offer that, if only, these religions were more tolerant to the mind.  The book says there is a god. The mind says "is there a god?". Some doubters hide their doubts carefully, and continue to belong (half-heartedly), a majority turns their back and make science and technology their new religion. That religion is materialistic. It is however a strong believe in abundance.

Young people are crowding the anti-globalist movement and are attracted to the environmental issues. Many really mean it. They will become nice political leaders in a near future.

A few of them look further and come into contact with the plethora of contemporary spiritual movements on earth. They will become beacons of light, but it will take many years. first they will have to discern what is the right path for them to later find out that there is no such thing as the right path.

People only learn from their mistakes. Young people have to make many mistakes to learn to live

The unfortunate never get all that and still want to belong somewhere, so they become gang members. Can you blame them. Their education stopped somewhere - too early. They have the mind of 7 year olds. They act accordingly: narcissistic, impulsive, very emotional. Our societies offer them nothing at all.

This mosaic we cannot simply see as one block, but as colours of that beatiful rainbow we ourselves belong to.

There is one big difference however. Young people have the ability to jump colours. At a given moment in life this ability gets into hybernation and only very strong disturbing events can awaken it again. That is adulthood. We stay in our own system.

Rebuilding your system from scratch takes courage, time and often despair - which we want to avoid. Teenagers cannot avoid these rebuilding, they are right in it. They rebuild a couple of times.

In fact my oldest daughter has reached the first level at age 10: Knowing that the teacher is not always right is not a happy thought. Getting to know that the world is often a bad place is not an encouraging thought. Learning about global warming, petrol depletion, inapt world leadership, children's suicide, is not creating hopeful thoughts for the future.

Can we blame the media for confronting everyone with disaster all of the time?

I don't watch TV-news anymore for a long time now. I stay informed through the internet, and select the items i want to know more about. I cannot help tsunami victims by watching depressing images on the news for more than a week. I cannot help victims of the Darfour war by looking at the pictures of swollen corpses appearing on my TV.

In my work I don't see many teenagers, but I see many young adults. They have aims in life that are not interesting at first, but if we look a bit deeper ....

Kenny (22) might be a good example: he was hired to teach some introductory courses.
On his facebook web page one gets struck by foul language and an invention he calls his bangbike. That material is highly pornographic. Once you break through this wall you meet a youngster with many ideals. He wants to discuss literature, and is positively involved in philosophy.
This environment where we work was however not right for him. The hierarchy he rebels against is everywhere, and they called him extremely lazy. He is! So they fired him. And he got a slightly better job elsewhere.
But touch the right part of his brain and he becomes a workoholic. He prepared a lot of class material for me, unasked for, and became this totally unexpected kind being. But only to the students, not to the hierarchy. Since I don't belong to the staff, as a freelancer, i have the freedom to think what i want. And I became "one of US" not "one of THEM", and got treated accordingly. In 10 years time he'll be able to look over his own walls and see that all of US or all of THEM is just the same.

WoW I wrote a pamphlet in favour of young people. I loved writing it. We all have been young. Only we have forgotten how difficult it has been. 20 years ago the world was not favourable for young people either. Nato was putting cruise missiles in our backyard then. Tatcher attacked Argentina and the war between Irak and Iran made the oil price higher than today (if you take inflation into account). Terrorism was just as rampant as today, and acid rain was on the agenda. I filled 5 years of my life with 35 barrils of beer, wondering why life was so meaningless, and losing all the ideals my parents had carefully programmed me with during my childhood. We got pushed into adult life. Whether we liked it or not. We didn't talk much to people around their forties then either, so the adult population then had preconceived but incorrect views about us too.
...

Love and Light to all

bert

I have been blogging before about my daily adventures on the train to and from work. Since monday morning, there is a new attraction: A crashed cargo JumboJet. Luckily no people where injured. The five crewmembers escaped through the window. The plane crashed sunday afternoon during take off when one of the engines made serious trouble and the pilot cancelled the take-off. At that moment the plane was already on speed and it ran from the runway. That nobody got hurt is a real miracle. the plane is now actually hanging over one of the railways. If it would have slided 10 meters further it would almost certainly have become a huge fireball.

I moved this blog entry to where it belongs ...

http://dharma800.gaia.com/blog/2008/5/buddhism_the_end_of_my_suffering 

this article found another space on gaia --- >>>

http://dharma800.gaia.com/blog/2008/6/empty_thoughts_on_emptiness

Somewhere in the month of march a young person from India said something very strange to me: "What else to expect from those people; they are really low cast, they think differently. Most people of that family think like that. It is passed from generation to generation." I protested of course, because I think all people deserve to be treated equally, and generalisations don't work. But moments later it struck me that the cast system was nothing more than spiral dynamics in a different era. And ... this era is everywhere, also today. Replace the words "low cast" by "different social class" and your mother in law could have said this.

So we have a beautiful example of spiral dynamics, solidified in a society. And that solidification is of course different from the intentions of the proponenets of SD(i). Because the cast system is not a spiral anymore, but by stretching it has become a system of concentric rings.

Todays philosophers and sociologists should however be very aware that spirals are easily stretched, and that the connections between the layers can break. Even a perfect implementation will after some time change shape. The Weimar republic became a national socialist state only 70 years ago. The best intentions of Lenin and Trotsky became the horror of Stalin, and I'm sure, also Pol Pot was implementing an ideal society by the most attrocious means.

Maybe in a not so far away past, the cast system was an invention of progressive philosophers in India. Only the Brahman cast, on the top of the hierarchy, combined with the right political powers, might have thrown the spirals in a bath of concrete, to spell the fate of paria onto generation after generation.

Could this be the mean side of the yellow meme?
And if so, how can we prevent this to happen, if SDi (remember the Strategic Defense Initiative) ever gets on the political agenda of the nations of this world?

I sometimes think i need new glasses,
but it might be better to take mine off

I sometimes take this road. today i took my bike.
This choice was very bad, the path not fit for tires of truth.

My patience was rewarded, and i met the long forgotten friends:
the pinball wizzard and the porsche girl, they pointed far ahead.

Further i went, my bike on my hand. The path becoming narrow and dry. A stonebed of boulders, inside a dry mountain riverbed. I looked at the map and noticed it was not far at all.

There were two more highways to cross. The destination in time said 30th of june. Graduation day of past, present and future.

I saw some places where i had been long ago. Maybe i came there before i turned into a servant of time. I finally subjected to time to become its friend. But that i found out only after years of fighting the endless line.

Today i came back: full circle. That's where and when i met the master.

I have not had the time to add any blog entry in the past 14 days. Subjects enough. Time is restricted. Family comes first, then my students. They did their exams, and all but 2 found a job. These 2 will soon find one, if i see the efforts they undertake to get one. There are also customers with problems related to firewalls and printers, and putting their server of the power supply. There is nature calling for long walks. There are many creative thoughts, desperate thoughts, consoling thoughts, happy thoughts. There is also reading.

I will soon post something about spiral dynamics and the indian caste system. Call it the mean yellow meme. Sounds like a good title. I'm also breeding an article about hate, which has many forms, and is not the opposite of love as many people think.
I will post some pictures.

To many 'i' here and 'good' intentions.

Now, let me continue restructuring the course material for the next group of students, who will arrive next week on monday.

Now and then, one has to drive around and visit customers. And so i did today. I went to the "cities over the water" and brought my hello's to Carla, Adrian and Ariadne. Trouble with printers, viruses, printers and yes printers. I had a nice day of work, and everything went to plan. Up till .... 6pm: TWO unexpected road accidents.

I only lost 30 minutes at the first one. I had followed my intuition and never stood still. I passed the debris ... and crossed the rivers.

In Luny-Woods there was another standstill. No movement. No movement at all. The radio said police had completely blocked the road 5 miles ahead.

I was standing at a traffic exchanger and finally decided to leave the highway and risk a drive into no-man's land. Places I had never seen before. I refuse the use of GPS devices. They take away all the fun.

And so I drove through: RichFroggs, East-Funny and SourTown. The moon was full (eclipsed later that night) and gave me directions.

And then i saw her.  Me waiting for a red traffic light, she crossing the zebra with a packet of french fries. A spark of recognition. 20 years untouched. The Girl with Red Hair. She recognized me too. A bright smile on her moonlit face. A "WOW" experience. Nothing more to say, we only exchanged innocent smiles for 3 blue moments and a bright comma. Then we continued our roads in different directions. Just like 20 years ago. ... when she forgot to give me her phonenumber and not enough clues to find her.

My wheels continued for the port of HandsThrown. My memories elsewhere. 30 minutes later i safely arrived home.