The School of Meditation is an individual and collective path aimed at re-connecting with the Divine for the awakening of all Humanity. It is an original pathway, which unifies the essence of all traditions. It is based upon change, elaboration and continuous experimentation. The School of Meditation is a Mystery School; an inner discipline applied 24 hours per day, a path of knowledge and self-empowerment. On Damanhur's spiritual path there is no dogma, only ‘working hypotheses’ that undergo continuous verification. The Damanhurian School of Meditation requires its members to exercise free will through continuous choice.
Founded in the early 1970's, the Federation of Damanhur in Italy is now an internationally renowned center for spiritual, artistic and social research. Damanhur is an eco-society, a federation of communities and eco-villages with a continuously evolving social and political structure.
The aims of Damanhur are: the freedom and re-awakening of the Human Being as a divine, spiritual and material principle; the creation of a self-sustaining model of life based on ethical principles of good communal living and love; harmonic integration and co-operation with all the Forces linked to the evolution of Humankind.
The Findhorn Foundation is a spiritual community, ecovillage and an international centre for holistic education, helping to unfold a new human consciousness and create a positive and sustainable future. By living and working together, putting spiritual values into practice, we are creating a positive and sustainable future for humanity and the planet. The Findhorn garden was famous for 40-pound cabbages. The basis of the garden was, and still is, working in harmony and co-creation with nature.
I just saw this juxtaposition while browsing Digg this morning:
The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is visiting New York City so he can attend the United Nations General Assembly. This guy has been the target of a demonization campaign by the United States and others for some time now. One of the items of detail they are using in their demonization is the fact he does not wear a tie, and goes for a laid back look. For that matter this same detail has been used in an attempt to associate Senators Barak Obama and John Kerry with, uh, nefariousness because they both often go without a tie and follow much the same look as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
On Digg at the moment of when I took this screen shot, juxtaposed next to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an instructional video showing people how to tie ties. Hurm.
As someone who studiously does not wear a tie, does not own a business suit, yet works in a well paid technical job ... I have to ask what's the big deal about ties? Why is it so important that men wear ties? I did it for a couple years and got tired of feeling like I was wearing a noose, so I made a life vow to never do that again, and I donated all my suits to charity.
The inside-the-beltway types who use this as part of the demonization campaign are in effect promoting a given idea. That is that males must wear a suit and tie or else. You can see this in womens styles as they go into the workplace, often they'll wear feminized versions of the suit and tie.
From my perspective of having not worn this attire for well over a decade, I've had a growing question to which I don't know the answer. Where did the western 'tie' come from? Who decided it was stylistically a good thing? And where oh where can I find a tie that's printed as a noose?
Millions of men around the world are being forced to wear this garb due to society expectations. Given what men wear when given freedom to choose for themselves, I really doubt the suit and tie are what any man would prefer. But I say that knowing there are men who go out of their way to find good quality suits and ties, and I honestly don't understand why.
A company spun out of work at The Institute for Genomic Research, now the J. Craig Venter Institute, on what was termed the “minimal genome project.” The research centered on the very small genome of Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacterium with only 517 genes that primarily causes urinary tract infections in humans. The research team led by Dr. Hutchison surmised that perhaps they could ascertain which genes were essential to sustain the life of the organism. After using a technique pioneered by Dr. Hutchison called global transposon mutagenesis, the team was able to knock out non-essential genes and get to a core set of 265 to 350 genes that were needed to sustain life.
