Ghost encounter

Let's see, if a ghost or another form of a deceased person approached you, how would you know unless the spirit told you? How would you react to such information? You may just assume you're dreaming and you'll soon awaken. This draws your attention to different illusory levels of thinking and resulting experiences. After all, how do you perceive and ground your reality? What are the sources of these beliefs?

Many people compare what they think they know with what people have told them. Separating internal from external perception can seem quite tricky, if you don't buy into the idea that you project what you choose to perceive. Some people never learn to distinguish dreams from reality. Others believe these are one in the same.

Spirits appear when its helpful to them and to us for them to do so. We don't always have to know, though you may sense as much even if you're told nothing of the sort. You are always in the right place at the right time, although you may believe that's a matter of interpretation. Ghost encounters happen all the time, even near you.

Consider how you take what you already believe and consciously or unconsciously impose it on others. When a stranger appears in your life and challenges you to rise to his level, why would you keep attempting to bring him down to your own?

Not knowing the essence or true identity of a spirit may also mean not giving yourself the chance to be jaded by fear. As such, you would likely perceive ghosts as you would anyone, through the filter of your illusory belief and self-understanding.

Can we reverse prospective cultural extinction?

I encourage you to watch this video from TED. It features photographer Phil Borges shares his stunning portraits, documenting the world's disappearing cultures, from persecuted monks in Tibet to embattled tribes in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Note in the lifetime of an elder, the languages spoken in the world will half. (already reduced from 6000 down to 3000 over last 100yrs).

During his speel, Borges notes that a recent $2 million National Geographic survey reveals Americans aged 18-26 rated second last out of nine developed countries in terms of knowledge of what's going on in the rest of the world. 70% of Americans questioned didn't know the wherabouts of Iraq or Afghanistan on a map, let-a-lone India or the position of the Pacific Ocean?

How does this cause you to see yourself and how you think about the future? Can we reverse prospective cultural extinction? Are the on-line connections around the world in the program described a wave of the future? Or, do you foresee another international fate?

Howstuffworks "Phil Borges Talks at TED About His Photography"

Apparitions, hallucinations or prophecy?

According to some people, near-death experience (NDE) only provides superficial insight into what its like to die. These people argue NDE doesn't prove life after death exists because the survivor hasn't actually died with a sense of finality. The supposed survivors are back with us in physical form, as if nothing happened, even if they claim it did. The concepts of life reviews and conversations with the technically- dead don't appear overly convincing. Skeptics point to the possibility of daydreams, hallucinations and unresolved conflicts or emotions with the deceased.

Believers in life beyond the grave point out that where they live life to the fullest, they don't fear death and don't always consciously invite supranatural visitors. Many NDE survivors aren't necessarily believers before their experience. Ask Dannion Brinkley. He claims to have died and returned from NDEs twice in his book, Saved by the Light.This is but one of many accounts which reveal another take.

Are believers simply sucked into a world they envision? or something they might hope to (re)experience themselves?

Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.
-E. Forrester Church

Disoriented world mafia

Controversy exists about the origins of global genetic diversity.  A recent investigation initiated by National Geographic supposedly leads us all back to a collective history together in Africa.  Apparently, we evolved from the apes, to Neanderthals, then to have dark brown skin and hair before diversifying.

When European explorers set sail over 700 years ago, the lands they "discovered" were already full of people.  In this sense, they weren't the first humans to live in the places they colonized.  The encounters with natives were often wary or violent, but they were actually reunions of a close-knit family of individuals with apparent irreconcilible differences.  Why do power struggles evolve?

Consider that National Geo traced DNA back to Africa and followed the DNA trail to meet families all across Central Asia.  It is conceivable that their ancient generations walked  through the Asian continent and across to what is now Alaska when a land bridge existed.  This humans passed through vast territory and faced daunting climate to eventually migrated to North America.  They diversified again into Native Indian tribes.  Some of their ancestors moved still further south, as are recognized in lineages of Mayans in Mexico and Indian cultures dispersed throughout South America. 

All this said, why would blood family worldwide evolve to fight, compete for power and kill each other? If we're interconnected biologically, culturally and ethnically, and spiritually, why perpetuate indifference and conflict among modern ancestors? Do you sometimes feel like cultures are perceived as disoriented world mafia with amnesia about their past? Come what may, life will evolve again.  Some people would argue another widespread evolution in human mindset is long overdue.

Oil crisis

Do you dream of your life remaining as it is? A large part of planet Earth has come to depend on fossil fuels, for everything from synthetic clothing and shoes, paints and plastics to gas for heat and motor transportation.  An increasing controversy is linked to the actual quantity of remaining oil reserves.  How long we can continue living as we do before they're depleated? What would happen to life as we know it as we run out of oil?

Conventional experts suggest we have 30 years.  A large group of experts think we only have three.  Are we about to hit the oil crisis? Some experts believe by 2010, people will be shocked by oil prices.  Are they simply doomsday naysayers? Many practising petroleum industry professionals in big oil companies are in this camp. They fear the growing Asian petroleum product markets and the voracious demand that could become greater than modern levels western consumption.

Exxon Mobil (ESSO) is the largest oil company in the world. They employ over 20,000 scientists to investigate and follow the level of oil resources.  Exxon experts believe we have we have lots of time to develop alternatives (up to 60 years).  All oil fields make their way toward peak oil, but Exxon claims improving technology would supposedly enable the extraction of additional billions of barrels of oil.

How have we allowed our lives to become so dependent on cheap oil?  It takes 6 barrels of oil to bring one cow to market.  Can you begin to speculate on the amount of oil that is used daily to bring products to diverse international markets? The amount is astonishing.  Consider shipping, air freight, trucking, trains and other means of transport. Who stops to think that oil is a finite resource?

For a more personal approach, do you take what you eat and do in your life for granted? People in leading financial institutions and growing numberrs of retirees all assume they can continue to invest into oil in stock markets into the 21st century.  How many people are already thinking outside that box? Would you be one of them? Shouldn't we plan ahead differently to avoid real crisis?

I received a 12 minute Internet video about the imminent depleating of oil.  According to this international research piece, the world uses ~84 million barrels per day. The biggest find in the recent past was back in the 1970s in the north sea.  Most finds these days don't produce more than 50 million barrels (total). The big question is when will we reach half depleation in the world (half oil)?

The US reached peak oil in 1971, the UK (with its North Sea oil) in 1999 and Australia peaked in 2000.  Other places are less easy to pinpoint.  The Middle East provides 1/4 of the world's oil and refuse to permit other people in to verify how much oil they have.  In the 1980s, some places in the Middle East quoted figures that doubled, and other places published the same figures as if oil reserves hadn't depleated.  investigate the current state of reserves is unknown.

This is when  People don't understand the underlying causes of increasing oil prices.  You can slow the decline, but you can't stop it.  Can you imagine of people lining up for days to fill your tank? What about the people who suddenly wouldn't be able to heat their houses? Nobody can think of alternative fuel for airplanes. Its all about how we can get in an alternative infrastructure in place after the crisis hits.  Countries have plans for terrorist attacks and environmental crises, but where is the plan to assist societies to compensate adequately in their lives for peak oil? Consider what you can do to change your lifestyle to plan ahead.