The 10 reasons I love Pakistan are not about the food, though the food is tempting. The food ostensibly was meant for kings and queens who die at 45 after producing the next generation. The real reasons I love Pakistan are as follows:

1. Hardly anyone thinks. This actually makes life simple. You nod at the right places, you use a few arabic words ‘jazakalla’, ‘alhamdullilah’, ‘shukr allah,’ and ‘allah’, and that’s it you are now part of the group.
2. Hand made glass bangles. Pakistan makes the most beautiful traditional, hand thrown glass bangles still. Glass bangles are a rarity in the region but you can still find them in Pakistan. The old artisans pass on this knowledge down generations. Those same people are treated as lesser people by those people who don’t do much work but control all the resources. Glass bangles tinkle and blink in the light. To me they are the quintessential symbol of femininity and a sign of the endurance and sheer tenacity of a woman’s strength.
3. Henna. Pakistani is a girly girl place. Even though the feminine is loved, but not respected, girls tend to bond together. Which means that girls get together to have a ton of fun! I have photos hanging out with the most fun and good girls you will ever meet. Of course their parents were very careful that I don’t make the girls think, and my opinions–which were left off liberal my whole life, didn’t affect anyone.
4. Cats. Pakistani cats are active, ferral creatures who know how to survive. When given a bit of love and food, they grow into extremely intelligent and loyal friends. Those cats are awesome.
5. Men. You see a lot more men in Pakistan than anywhere else. If you like men, go to Pakistan. Pakistan is a land for men. The leaders are men, the business men are men, the politicians are men and the few women in any position, are an anomaly. A woman’s life is dependent on the men. Nice rich man, nice life, not so nice men, not so nice life. On her own a woman is unthinkable as the spiritual teachers will often tell you freedom of women is a sign of judgement day, westernization and the terrible curse of Allah–in fact one maulvi went so far as to say that Allah just doesn’t like women….and he wasn’t taken off the air. As long as someone says the word allah, and grows a thick beard or wears a hijab, he  or she can get away with ANYTHING.  Here’s a tip for the US CIA. If the CIA wants to take over Pakistan, please send a spiritual teacher down who is partial to your interests. Don’t tell anyone I told you. Oops maybe you already do that?? you never know these days, but dang it, the Pakistanis like I said earlier, don’t think, so they can be manipulated CONSTANTLY.
6. Family. Generally, there has to be some kind of man attached to a woman’s identity. Otherwise she is vulnerable and under constant threat of being considered a ‘bad’ person. Fortunately, the men are nice. err. very nice. You get the picture? I sing odes of appreciation for the lovely lovely men in my family….I pray for their long life. Its about survival, status and respect. Its not that women don’t provide or sacrifice their lives for the kids, but they do it, under a stigma of being divorcee’s, separated or widowed. In other words, it isn’t cool that they are courageous and strong, but a social ‘lack’, like a slight limp.
7. Generosity. People give a lot. The richer you are, the more food and gifts they give you. Of course if you are poor, they don’t care as much. In fact they want you to work 12-16 hours a day and eat less than them. So, if you have some money you can have more money easily, than if you have no money. Its kind of cushy if you are born on the right side of the money divide.
8. Youth and Children are very smart. Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world where 50% of the population is below 25. This means that you feel very old:) if you are older than 25. On the other hand, the under 25 crowd rocks. My best and most interesting conversations are with the under 30 people. These guys know how to navigate Pakistan and still have fun. Hats off to the ingenuous and interesting youth, who have figured it out! they respect their parents, but do their own thing! far better than our generation, who sacrificed their lives to please their parents and still feel we didn’t do enough along with the angst of never quite living our own life.
9. Friends care. Pakistani friends are loyal and incredible people who will care enough to tell you when they think you aren’t doing the right thing. You may not agree with their choices and you may be angry when they butt into your personal opinions, but heck you can’t deny that they care enough to speak up. So much so that they bring you down, while trying to fix you, but that’s another story. Then there are those friends who reach out despite the difference in our political and ideological thought, and care. They take my breath away, because just when I think I am destined to fight my whole life alone against injustice and for my pains to be told there is something wrong with me, there is a hand on my shoulder, appreciative comments, agreement and support.
10. Parents. Parents sacrifice themselves for you. They live through you. They make you their most important investment. Your life is their problem. Sometimes they never sever that cord and kids don’t either. Its strange, but beautiful at the same time, that human beings could get so attached to each other. But, heck, when I got broken, they were there to pick up the pieces, take care of my child and tell me, We Love You and Believe in You. I don’t ever feel that I deserved the mother and father I have, but its the grace of that invisible force.

Somebody could say, heck that sounds like pan flavoured hell. Yes. It is. It was. It is unforgettable, like living dostoevesky or anton chekov in real time.

Pakistan is the name of a place of pain. Its my homeland. Its my sorrow, it is my identity. And in case you think this is about you–because you also happened to grow up in Pakistan, it’s not, never was, and never will be. Its my story. It’s my Pakistan and I will remember it the way I feel it, a crack in my heart with a golden light. I can’t remember it in your ways. For me it is not ALLAH HAFIZ, it is KHUDA HAFIZ. For me it isn’t the dupatta over my head, but the glass bangles on my hand that are Pakistaniyat. Yes,  I know people  took the religion and the bull shit of its demented ‘spiritual’ teachers, and made it your identity. Me, I didn’t do any of that. My love is direct, not through a fake made up identity. It is for the land, the water and the people. I am ok with its colonial history, I love it in fact. I am ok with its Hindu past, I love it, in fact. I am in fact ok with most of it, except its fake morality.

Happy Birthday, my Pakistan.

Cheers

Saima

Hearing that Thay (Thich Naht Hahn) was ill, brought tears to my eyes. There is a sadness about this illness, not quite the gentle transition of a monk ready to leave, as if something is still left for him to do.

Buddhism came into my life through a series of coincidences. A friend  took me to a buddhist temple. Another friend who brought me a singing bowl, when I had no idea how to play it. Still another friend who gently taught me how to breathe into the play and play the sounds that bring a mind into harmony. And the coincidence that led me to a little book that had slipped in to the back–a book titled,  “The Energy of Prayer”. Thay was pictured on the book. He is a little man, with a giant humility, and just his body language was enough to tell me that I had a lot to learn from him. In that book, he gently talked about prayer with total humility. Not as a formula for success, arrival in god’s heaven, a command, but as a heart opening to receive a gift. I secretly studied Buddhism for years. But I never understood a thing until I started to meditate. Perhaps the greatest advice for any endeavour is to do or do not, there is no try. 

I read that book end to end, and learnt to pray in the way Thay teaches. Not a grovelling request to a god sitting somewhere in the sky writing our fate, but an unfolding of the heart. Meditation is a direct communion with a divine stillness.  It is necessary to have empathy to be able to talk to the divine. Repeatedly, in every book, every description of god, I have heard the words that god is compassion. Then why do humans make their children afraid of god? God is a friend, a well wisher, an unconditional empowering love, that protects and heals our soul for the journey on Earth. Kindness is the language of God.

When we heal spiritually and emotionally, we heal our body. Our emotions aren’t there to be fixed but to be understood as yearnings of the spirit. True healing can only really happen at the spiritual level. At the spiritual level, we are light. Thus only light can heal us.

This ‘light’ is channeled through many practices that were part of ancient traditions and religions. Meditation is the core practice  used to channel light. There are probably 1001 ways to practice meditation. Even prayer is one of them. But there are some necessary conditions for light to be channeled. These are the necessary conditions, as I see it:

1. Intention. Intention is a word, but it has within it many things. One of them is the soul’s realization that the world around it is an illusion. Without this knowing, a real appreciation of what that means, it is almost impossible to channel light. In many religions, faith becomes a part of rituals. But faith, is not static, we have varying degrees of faith. We can spend a lifetime struggling to have faith, but it is natural and not a sin to have days where we believe and others where we just go hah!. This is ok. It is a journey of faith, not a destination.

2. Similarity of intent. The people who come together for healing must have the same intention. If the intention is healing, then both frequencies must match. If one is open to healing, the other is doubtful, healing can’t begin. So the healer has to ask the heart,  are we ready? A sufi whirling teacher made me realize the importance of asking the heart. Far too often I would say yes to things just because they seemed fun, but struggle to do too many things. Asking the heart, helps to know if your spirit is in alignment with what you plan to do with your time. If they aren’t in tune, then it is such a waste of time! Living wholeheartedly isn’t easy to master, but once we get there, there is no other way . Living life in a state of flow, without doubt, without the mind going nuts, is the meaning of freedom.

3. Accept the realization that you are a piece of god. When people start out with energy healing, one of the hardest struggles is the realization of a force beyond ourselves. It challenges the materiality that we assume about the world around us. It changes how we think and act out our values. It is empowering.

4. Making peace with outcomes. Understand how to let go of outcomes after conducting a healing. Outcomes aren’t in your control. The healing comes, the healing goes. You have to learn to just observe as impartially as possible. When you are impartial, the healing begins, otherwise you are not witnessing. One of the best ways I find is to detach, is to watch my own reaction to someone with kindness. As we do that, we go into deeper state of stillness, where nothing is in opposition to the other.

5. The vibration of the healer must resonate with the receiver. This is a psychological and physical issue. If you can’t relate to someone’s suffering or hear them without judging them, then you aren’t in emotional resonance with their pain. This form of healing can’t happen. Yes, you can give them some kernels of wisdom. but energy healing happens at an unconditional level, where both people are in total energetic connection, one doesn’t resist the other.

The world soul (Latin: Anima Mundi) is, according to several systems of thought, an intrinsic connection between all living things on the planet, which relates to our world in much the same way as how the soul is connected to the human body.  (Wikipedia. Google, Anima Mundi for more). This idea is part of ALL pagan spiritual traditions on the planet and Eastern spirituality. Thousands of years ago, people worshipped nature by calling it a feminine goddess energy. Human beings lived with a sacred reverence for life.

The world soul was the ancients way of talking about the electromagnetism of the planet. This concept is shared across the world from native cultures  to Indian/vedantic cultures. It is a shared knowing.

This concept of nature having power, or that it is sacred, and our lives are about service to nature, died out after the entrenchment of Abrahamic religions. It is a moral hypocrisy that human beings are more important, and nature less important. How can it be?

To think that we are here for the purposes of human aggrandizement is a grave error in conceptualizing the purpose of our existence.

Unlike what Donald Trump would have you think, we aren’t here to make money.

Abrahamic religions don’t openly express reverence of nature and think of nature as subservient to human needs. The concept of a remote external masculine entity as God who approves and disapproves, rather than an experience of Oneness as God, is perhaps why human consciousness slowly disconnected from nature and started to take it for granted.

Having said that, there are Catholic, Jewish and Muslim practices that work with electromagnetism, but that is not their focus and over time the whole idea of Gaia or world soul was subsumed under the concept of God. I won’t say it died, but became over ridden.  Nature became pagan…and not part of religion, per se.

But, why is it important now?

Other than the realization that climate change is happening because of man made pollution and we should either conserve, ignore or change our technology, there is a key reason as to why nature is so important right now.

That reason is electromagnetism.

Science shows us that our heartbeat resonates with the magnetism of the planet. For the last while, the Earth has been losing its magnetism.

Electromagnetism is  the bio-electricity that connects the Earth to the human heart. The human heart  works because of electricity. The source of its electric charge is the connection with the planet. The heart is the first thing to form in the womb, and beats in time with the mother’s heart beat…which beats in time to her mother’s heartbeat, but the thing that is making all the hearts beat as one is the Earth. The Earth is a giant womb, a mother, who teaches all the women on the planet to be mothers, simply by synching her energy with our energy through the heart.

The feelings of stability, security, love and compassion come from the planet, and are expressed through the nurturing given by the mother.

As the planet is losing its magnetism,  the human heart is feeling the changes. All spiritual practices from sufism to yoga to organized religion is the way we are trying to keep ourselves sane, as we watch the destruction of our food source. It causes great grief and at a soul level, people realize that we have to acknowledge our existence and relationship with something sacred.

People think they are helpless, but they are not. People think they can’t do anything, but they can. The only issue is not being able to connect the dots, because it is such a big planet with so many diverse belief systems.

Because the planet is dying, there is an incredible emptiness in the heart that can be filled only with spiritual practices, because these practices reset the rhythm of the heart, and bring it into resonance.

It comes in stages, someone said to me. First, the realization that we really need a sense of faith in something other than the dollar, then the searching, then something shifts, and as the pain body heals, the truth dawns. Money is a fiction, a badly written one that needs a correction.

From the arena of politics to the arena of health, the old way isn’t working.
For far too long, the political policy has been to run the economy through the power of oil and petrochemicals–the story goes, make more plastic stuff and ensure you have total control on the oil. Forget the planet, that’s a problem we can’t solve.

This is how the world has been run for far too long. It is time for a change. It is time to remember nature. Whether we do that through this myth or that myth, or this way or that way, the point is to realize that we are all part of the spirit of nature, the collective intelligence that is behind all the food and abundance that we see. Instead of dividing the human experience into this religion or that way of life, we have to expand our consciousness and see the universal in our ways.

If you think you need resources to be able to re-write the fiction of money, or that you need the same awful money that is creating havoc on the planet, you are wrong. You don’t need money, money needs you! Money works because you accept it. When people come together, and share resources, they create alternatives to the monetary fiction.
The definition of wealth itself–the GDP needs to change. It isn’t about making more money, but about having safety, security, community and health, which can come from a clear understanding that the planet and human beings are one.

Don’t make your soul expression, conditional to having more money. You have enough, Gaia says, haven’t you taken it all? isn’t it enough to realize who you are?

This is a personal account of how I said goodbye to a plastic lifestyle and actually made it happen.

No, it wasn’t easy.

At least, 15 years ago, when I became convinced that our health was being affected by plastics and petrochemicals in the environment. Now it is much easier.

It appeared that plastics and synthetic chemicals were working for everyone, except me at that time. I was sick almost every day.

I started to scour websites and books for information about the latin names on personal products and remove them from my home. I looked up all the chemicals in over the counter medications and threw them away. I threw away my ‘plasticy’ athletic wear and wore clothes that my mother stitched for me in Pakistan. I was that weird yoga instructor who didn’t wear lululemon, and taught yoga as if you are a soul. My hair turned a loverly burnt orange from henna as it greyed.

I turned to yoga, meditation, food and Homeopathic remedies and took all this hippy stuff very seriously.

I was called all kinds of things. Tree hugger. Hyper. Emotional. Weird. Sensitive. Rich. Some comments hurt, and I knew that people who don’t support you, in your efforts to improve aren’t real friends.

15 years later, people want to learn how to take care of themselves from me. But, at the time, when I actually made the changes that I knew were essential for whole living, I was that wacko person. I don’t use exotic supplements or crazy naturopathic expensive stuff. I learnt the real knowledge and applied it.

Over time, I saw how things changed. How organic became normal in Costco. How companies who sold organic vegetables sprouted up. How juicing and vita-mix blenders became ubiquitous. How natural health food stores became popular. But, I had learnt my lesson. Keep quiet, don’t say anything, do your own thing and just don’t talk about it too much.

It meant that I get used to solitude and my own company:) for a very friendly woman this was tough learning. Years passed before the world changed and I met a bunch of other very genuinely committed people, who knew and practiced that life isn’t about making money, but about living. Isn’t it incredibly sad how we confuse the two? Those are the values that have led to the total exploitation and destruction of the planet.

Somehow we have to fix this grave error in thinking. We have to rewrite this story–(Charles Eisenstein).

People are so hypnotized by the fake glamour and glitz of corporations that I am often labelled as that wacko person. I was used to it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t suffer.  Somehow any new idea seems to be better received if a white man talks about it. But, I wish that more talked about it and used their power to affect real change.

I see the power games, but they didn’t stop me from doing what I believe is right for the bigger picture–our beautiful planet Earth–our home.

Just because there is entrenched racism, doesn’t mean that I allow it to influence my values. Just because the powerful are ignorant, doesn’t mean that I become ignorant. The most that anyone could ever do to me was ignore me or exclude me. But because of the internet, anyone can do anything from anywhere.  People would find me. I’d find them, because deep down we know something that goes beyond time and space. We are one soul. One planet. One human race.

Because of this core vision or core value, I learnt how I need to change myself and become less attached to people’s opinions, approval and outcomes, and instead focus on the work that I signed up to do by agreeing to be born here.

Yes, I turned to spirituality. Over and over again. Not just one path. Not just one teacher. I needed all the faith and more to get here. I took energy, blessings and hope from any teacher who would give it to me. I shared it several times over. I know that there are many many more who are working on this huge project of re-writing our story. I meet more every day through social media and through my ever growing circles of hope.

They say that if you take one step towards truth, truth takes 10 towards you. They also say that unseen help comes to those who follow their heart.

I teach whatever I know—I share my heart and my energy, with the whole world, wherever you are, whatever your beliefs.

Despite our problems and maladies, we  have an almost magical power to get better and to heal. It comes from source. I believe in that. I believe that we can change how we treat the planet. We can conserve our food source. We can save our home.

To learn more about my workshops, blogs, ecourses and circles of meditation and inner reflection, please visit: http://www.saimameditation.com

(c) Saima Shah.

Today’s food is tomorrow’s flesh, bones, skin, teeth and hair. The energy you take in transforms into matter. Look at the matter, and you will know if the energy you took in was really good quality. When we eat, we think we are eating a food item only. Milk is milk, egg is egg. But more than the actual food, the way we eat also impacts our body. Food isn’t just the food you eat, but the feelings, environment and intention with which you feed yourself. Your relationship with food cannot be hidden and it is a clear mirror of the relationship you have with yourself. The way you eat, can show how you are coping with the primary instinct — survival. Any subconscious doubts about survival or safety can pack on dozens of pounds.  Here is a list of questions worth answering.

1. Do you eat in spurts? or do you follow an eating schedule?

2. Do you eat the same kinds of foods over and over again.

3. Do you eat alone or with people?.

4. How do you feel while you are cooking?

5. Do groceries feel like a chore?

6. When you buy food, are you thinking of yourself or your family?

7. Do you like to try new foods or generally stick to what your mother cooked?

Food is Energy

The foods we automatically want are a clue to our physical energy. What kind of foods do you crave? Sweet. Light. Deep fried. Spicy. Cold. Hot.  Deep fried foods slow us down, they create sluggishness and prevent movement. They give the energy of slowness to people who move too much. They help in grounding. Light and cold foods, cool us down and they are great for people who tend to get angry or live in hot climates. Sweet foods make us feel loved. Perhaps that is why children’s diets in North America are full of sweet. Instead of the emotion of love, people take it from the sweetness of food. Spicy foods create energy and movement. They are great for people who are naturally very sluggish. Spice combined with heavy foods tend to neutralize the energy impact of the fried foods. Whether you crave hot or room temperature food or even cold food is a clue to the metabolic rate. People who prefer cold food, have a higher metabolism and more digestive enzymes.

List Those Cravings

Cravings point to nutritional needs in vitamins, minerals, hormonal balance, metabolism and digestive issues. A good diet full of minerals, vitamins, fruits, vegetables can remove cravings within a month.  If you can’t switch to awesome food, try an excellent set of vitamins either liquid or via IV for maximum absorption.

Here’s a list of typical cravings and the nutritional needs:

1. Chocolate: Magnesium and Calcium. Women suffer from this–even though magnesium is present in all kinds of foods, because most women are on a diet and quite likely DON’T eat enough food. In fact women are usually eating 20-30% below their daily requirements because they are 80% of the time on some kind of diet or ‘healthy’ eating regimen. Over time, this signals the body to slow the metabolic rate, which eventually means that women who are trying to lose weight GAIN even more weight the next time they eat to their hearts content.

2. Sugar: Sugar craving simply points to not getting enough calories from real food i.e., not eating enough real food.

3. Chips and Nachos: Carbohydrate cravings are about calming down. Chronic anxiety and stress trigger carbohydrate cravings.

4. Fried foods: Fried foods calm people down and slow down their energy, plus the dense calories mean that people can go longer without eating.

In a nutshell, food desires are about your physical energy trying to balance itself or compensate for a disturbance in the energy field. When you try to over correct, what is essentially a correction, you risk not only making it worse but also creating even more layers of problems. Not to mention a terrible dis-service to your self esteem and your actual health–i.e., the stuff that matters more than 10 pounds here or there.

Instead of fixing yourself or your weight problem, practice happiness. Love yourself. Make every minute of your life beautiful. Create as much happiness as you can. It is a 3 step process…lol:)

1.Stop worrying about your weight. Practice relaxation or exercise.   Eating is often a way to stop worrying.

2.Do what you love 2-3 hours a day.

3.Develop a loving relationship with food.

4. Exercise is a whole different thing. Don’t exercise for weight loss, DO exercise for the fun of it and because it feels good. Pick something you like to do, versus focusing on the outcome.

5. Don’t look at the scales. Instead start to practice active listening to your body. Before, during and after eating.

6. Find other ways to nurture yourself and feel safe. Because food goes into the mouth and reminds people of the nurturing they had as infants. It can be often traced to unmet survival, safety and security needs that began a very long time ago indeed.

7. Try hypnotherapy to figure out why your subconscious has decided to create a cushion around your body. Hypnotherapy can address the deep trauma associated with imbalances in weight and also change habits in a very pleasant and effective way.

8. Remember that your body is unique, just like you are. Your body’s healthy weight may be totally different from another persons. Instead of comparing yourself, appreciate the differences.

By, Saima Shah

Clinical Hypnotherapist, Yoga Instructor & Energy Intuitive and Healer

1. It is imperialistic.

Definitely not, consumer capitalism is simply a way to ascribe a dollar value to human endeavour or work.

2. It can provide stability.

No, no and no. Consumer capitalism economies are by nature unstable. Even though a lot of goods and services are produced, there is no way to hold on to the wealth. Instead the wealth is constantly under threat because of other people wanting what you have.

3. A high savings rate isn’t possible in consumer capitalism.

Not true. There are some countries that combine consumer capitalism with high savings rate, thereby spreading the wealth through society via micro loans, and other consumer oriented debt schemes.

4. Consumer capitalism cannot solve problems of the environment, governance or quality of life for old or infirm people.

Not true. Consumer capitalism if used with some degree of control and regulation, can help solve all of the above.

5. A religion isn’t possible in consumer capitalist societies.

Again, not true. In fact people become more religiously identified in such societies.

6.  Consumer capitalism can solve the problems of third world countries such as water, education or energy.

Unless consumer capitalism is coupled with skills training, it truly cannot solve the above important issues.

7. Consumer capitalism means selling water, air and land

No. absolutely not. Capitalist society that is based on knowledge and communication does not have to monetize any natural resources. In fact consumer capitalism’s next evolution would be to make natural resources common goods that are shared by all.

8. Without an authoritarian or ideologically inspired government, consumer capitalism will make people into commodities.

Fact is that authoritarian and ideologically inspired governance, work very well with consumer capitalism. A sense of authority coupled with emotion can make people work very hard for no real reason except that an authority figure said so. Dad is always right.

9. Without consumer capitalism, the world will be a better place.

It is a little late for this kind of argument, don’t you think? especially since your whole life is a product of it.

10. There is no end to consumerism.

There could be some truth to that, but pragmatically speaking, lots of falsity. Studies show that when people have too many options they get very stressed out and instead of motivating them, it demotivates them. Demotivation= total disaster for capitalism. Reduce, recycle, and re-use, and actually reduce options can enhance overall wealth. Enhanced quality, increased engagement and new authority figures can give new life to an old and stuck economy. Some of this is already happening!

Increasingly, there is a new concept of the good life that is taking North America by storm. The concept is minimalism.

When minimalism first took hold of the imagination 15-20 years ago, it came from the passionate philosopher, dreamer or thinker who wanted to do just that. That individual marked ‘offbeat’ . Creativity connects minimalist advocates. The cluttered and congested life of urban sprawl, 2 hour commutes, overly large cars, endless coffee, endless bills, excess food, events, and parties does not appeal to anybody who likes to move, explore and experience.

Poverty is more abundant than the ‘settled’ life. Settling means accepting that this is it.

After a few years of credit cards, shopping and those infernal suits, one can find oneself so depressed, that the thought of yet another device, another self-help book, another promotion that means doing even more work for no more time makes one impossibly miserable.

The trap of the hamster moving in the wheel of constant production of redundant goods, redundant networks and general threat of becoming redundant very fast is a nightmare.

To stay whole within the madness of capitalist consumerism takes madness, courage or extreme self awareness. To constantly look within and ask oneself, am I alive or slowly dying? to do it everyday, regardless of the compulsion to do one more task.

15 years ago I called it the American Nightmare. Nothing much changed in 15 years, except that maturity brought the acceptance that the only escape from being a cog in the wheel is to REINVENT THE WHEEL.

Great beings have crashed against the walls of limitations that is the human mind and perished either in obscure philosophy or arcane religions.

Those who survive the leap of faith into the ocean of life and actually make it to shore are gifted indeed.

“lives of quiet desperation’, Henry Thoreau called this feeling of not being whole. ‘Manufactured consent’ said Noam Chomsky.  A grave misunderstanding about the purpose of humanity, said another wise guy. But, few if ever, who swim in these oceans of pure sludge and toxic waste make it. Those who do, at least die knowing that they tried to reach for shore.

There is no greater prison, than a life not lived to its potential. Minimalism, voluntary poverty, tidying up, is a step in that direction. It is a last ditch attempt to reach for shore in an increasingly insane world of consumer traps.

There’s no point to all this stuff, if we are barely living.

The gift economy isn’t new. In fact it is so old that it is funny that we think about it as a new age phenomena.

Life has always been a gift. Ever heard of nature asking us to pay? Nature gives to whoever dares to take a chance, step forward, plan, create and do.

In fact nature is so flexible, so abundant and so colossally smart that it is able to take care of all of us. Provided we recognize the basic principles of life, we can apply the same principles to the problem of how to live on the planet. Let’s get clear on our purpose on this planet.

The basic purpose of our life in a holistic global sense is NOT to make money or conquer a problem, but to just live. Money must be defined in such a way that it recognizes the basic reason why it is needed. It is needed primarily as a medium of exchange. Therefore all other roles of money such as store of value are secondary to money being a medium of exchange.

Life is a gift. Therefore money should be seen as a gift. Money should be gifted to people to do cool things. When people are allowed to gift using their free will, they are often far more generous. They are also fair to themselves. At heart we all know that you and I and all of us are one. When we take away barriers to experiencing our humanity in our daily life, we give and receive equitably. This is also a basic yoga principle and as such, a principle of life. It works.

I do most of my work by donation. Instead of telling people how much it will cost, I ask them, how much would you like it to cost? how much is it worth to you? and also how much  can you part with, without feeling like you wont have enough for your physical needs? I suggest a certain amount that helps me live, the rest is upto you.

Ideologically–or metaphorically even, how much is 1 hour of peace and calm worth in time of great suffering? how much is it worth to have a drink of cool water in the middle of the desert? how much is unconditional love worth, when you feel broken from the loss of love?

How much would you like to pay to spend a few minutes with your mother? or father? who have passed on? How much would you pay to talk to your most beloved teacher?

Human beings are priceless and worthy. Yet, I’ve heard this a lot: “I wish my own needs for food and water and shelter were taken care of, so I could spend my whole life doing the work I love.”..If you have ever thought that, know that you are not alone in that feeling of limitation–this feeling is shared by millions and this ennui or discontent of labour is one reason why the definition of money as well as the structures within which work becomes ‘paid work’ or ‘sellable good’ within which money is earned and spent are inadequate to solve the Happiness problem.

I know that one day we will have a deeper understanding of nature and how things work, that will change what we call work. Right now we are limited by our tools and ignorance about what is possible. There are however, cool alternative ideas cropping up. For example BITCOIN.

Bitcoin is a new kind of money, that challenges the structure of how money flows globally and how we exchange money, and ultimately Bitcoin changes which human activities can realistically earn money. Instead of imperialistic structures that were centralized for example like in India or Pakistan, forming colonial governments whose job is to MODIFY indigenous cultures so that they conform with the central authority’s cultural preferences, the new structure of money means that anybody can earn money anywhere, doing whatever they like to do, provided enough people want to buy it. 

So, the change in the definition of money means a total and radical change in our values and what can earn livelihood and therefore the definition of education. Instead of  conformity or adherence to a standard text, the new values will have to be self-empowerment and radical exploration of individual self. It is a bit scary. We will need different kinds of teachers. Our teachers will have to train differently, connecting with their heart, as well as their mind.

The role of government will have to change accordingly. The smartest governments can be proactive and change, so that they swing in harmony with the global shift.

https://bitcoin.org/en/

“By its high decentralization, Bitcoin created a different form of payment network with an increased level of resilience and redundancy. Bitcoin can handle millions of dollars in trades without requiring military protection.”