Meditations
Meditations
Killer Whales and Killer Apes
Martin LeFevre: "Orcas ("Killer Whales") are probably the smartest animals on earth other than humans ("Killer Apes"). A caged and exploited member of their species, "Tilly," allegedly aggravated by a trainer's ponytail, snuffed out her life at SeaWorld in Florida last week.
Mar 9, 2010, 3:11pm
Meditations
Atheists and Mystical Experience
Martin LeFevre: "But can we demystify 'mystical experience,' and allow the human brain to come into contact with an infinite intelligence that permeates and transcends the material universe? Doing so, we will have a better foundation for spiritual development, and a better language with which to talk about it...
Mar 4, 2010, 10:28am
Meditations
Shaking Up the Global Society
Martin LeFevre: "The huge earthquake in Chile - 8.8 on the Richter scale, one of the largest ever recorded - drives home the point that it isn't nature that's at war with humankind, but humankind that's at war with itself.
Mar 1, 2010, 12:58pm
Meditations
The Troll Under the Bridge
Martin LeFevre: "Why does Dick Cheney keep setting up this straw man of "we are at war, not dealing with criminal acts," when the Obama Administration's handling of captured alleged terrorists is essentially the same as the Bush Administration's?
Feb 22, 2010, 11:35am
Meditations
Knowledge, Tradition, and Insight
Martin LeFevre: "In ancient times, and not so long ago in many parts of the world, each tradition was completely distinct and whole. Tradition wasn't something that a people had; it was the total way of life in which people were completely immersed.
Feb 16, 2010, 5:34pm
Meditations
The Vanishing Man in America
Martin LeFevre: "There is no better indicator of the zeitgeist in America than Super Bowl commercials. The trend in this year's ads was summarized by such headlines as: "Appealing to the Downtrodden Man;" and "Super Bowl Commercials About Women Emasculating Men."
Feb 11, 2010, 11:45am
Meditations
Arusha: A Light in the Genocidal Darkness?
Martin LeFevre: "Arusha Tanzania is uniquely positioned to take the lead in forging an end to genocide. In 1994, neighboring Rwanda experienced the second worst genocide since the Holocaust, after Cambodia. For the last decade, Arusha has been host to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
Feb 9, 2010, 12:02pm
Meditations
Wellsprings of Insight
Martin LeFevre: "Indigenous people felt that the rocks and rivers, clouds and creeks were alive with spirit. In the few native cultures that are still relatively intact, people still do. Science has conditioned modern people to believe this way of seeing is superstition, and to look down on it.
Feb 6, 2010, 5:53pm
Meditations
What Comes After Obama, and America?
Martin LeFevre: The day before his annual State of the Union speech, President Obama telegraphed his disillusionment with the job: "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." False choice Mr. President. You will either be a really good two-term president...or you will be the last gasp of reason...
Feb 3, 2010, 11:49am
Meditations
Our Place In the Universe
Martin LeFevre: "For at least 100,000 years, since 'modern man' first emerged from East Africa, we have been as we are - tribal, self-centered, and dominated by the adaptive strategy of 'higher thought.' Now, as the fragmentation of the earth and humanity by the unwise use of symbolic thought reaches the breaking point, pressure increases greatly for a transmutation of consciousness.
Jan 26, 2010, 1:10pm
Meditations
Meditation Isn't Navel Staring
Martin LeFevre: A reader asks, "Can the people who have a natural talent to quiet their thoughts and clean their mind, not by effort and struggling, but only through insight, point the way for others?" I feel they can, or I wouldn't be writing this column, though each person has to awaken meditation, or whatever name one gives it, for oneself.
Jan 21, 2010, 1:27pm
Meditations
Haiti and the 'Global War on Terror'
Martin LeFevre: "Over two weeks after a boyish looking Nigerian, trained in Yemen, attempted to blow up an airliner with his underwear, the failed terrorist attempt was only driven from the top of the news in the United States by the flattening of Haiti. Reality has a way of intruding.
Jan 14, 2010, 12:17pm
Meditations
When the Truth Is Called Defeatism
Martin LeFevre: "When activists in America consider the unbelievable apathy of the American people, there are generally two reactions. The first is to invoke the hackneyed ideology of 'the people as victims of an oppressive government;' the second is to psychologize the palpable indifference...
Jan 6, 2010, 3:21pm
Meditations
Bach-The Language of the Heart
Martin LeFevre: "There is no greater composer of the language of the emotions than J.S. Bach. To listen with all of one's being to his works is to feel at once salved, saved, and stretched...
Dec 30, 2009, 3:29pm
Meditations
The Decade of Darkness
Martin LeFevre: "As the Decade of Darkness draws to a close, thinking and feeling people find themselves asking: Is a breakthrough in human consciousness imminent? Or is the first decade of the 21st century the beginning of the first global Dark Age?
Dec 28, 2009, 12:19pm
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