Conscious Savings

A habit is a choice made normal.

New legislation is currently being passed around the hill with the intent of preventing online piracy of copyrighted material.

Like many pieces of legislation it has surely been crafted with the greatest of ideals and goals. Currently there are 2 versions.

1. Expand the jurisdiction for domain seizure – meaning a web-site could be taken down for hosting or linking to copyrighted material.
2. Implement Deep Bit Monitoring – meaning EVERYTHING you access on the web will be monitored and scanned for potential copyright material.

“Cutting off funding or access to only the illegal part of the site while leaving the rest of the site intact promotes legitimate expression.”

It’s your fault.
If you want to change something.
No matter what happened, no matter how, why anything, accept that it is your fault.

Until you are responsible how can you change it?

Nagging and screaming may work for children some of the time, but who wants to be at the mercy of someone else to be responsible your own life?

Once you have accepted reponsibility, then you can begin to figure out how things ended up the way they did and change circumstances accordingly. Whether it is a change in attitude, tonality, word choice, physical action, diet, or one of thousands of other factors, you have the ability to change your own circumstances.

But not until you accept.

It’s your fault!

Yesterday I started to feel myself coming down with a cold so I decided to kick it out quick with a fast. At the end of the day I decided why not keep it going for a few days and turn this into a deep cleanse.

My juice fast recipe for the day:

• Carrot
• Apple
• Celery

I tend to use this juice fast recipe as a base since when combined properly it forms a complete protein and allows for extending fasting. The proper mix is 2 parts carrot : 2 parts celery : 1 part apple. If you are not an experience juicer then I don’t recommend jumping right into that mix as the saltiness of the celery is a bit much to handle. That said if you add some celery to your fresh pressed carrot and apple juice then you will be gaining some complete proteins and allow your body to maintain it self while your cleanse.

My method is fairly simple, I ran 3 pounds of carrots, 2 pounds of apples and 2 pounds of celery through a Champion Juicer to make roughly 3 quarts of juice. I will drink this throughout the day along with water and store bought not-from-concentrate Orange Juice anytime that I feel hungry.

Having my juice pre-pressed this way makes it much easier to avoid the temptation to indulge and break my fasting since all I have to do is pour a glass rather than go through the process of making juice each time I feel hungry. Aiding
The orange juice being is also there to aid in my will power in case I seek something sweeter, being pasteurized it contains significantly less nutrients than my what I pressed this morning though it does make for a nice change.

Find a quiet space, and imagine a room where there are 2 chairs and invite yourself 5 years from now to join you and have a conversation, ask any questions that you are unsure of and observe the differences between yourself now and the projection
then dismiss your future self, switch chairs and chat with yourself 5 years ago

inspired a great number of internal shifts without any other effort, been encouraging to realize that I have all the knowhow to accomplish most anything I want, just a matter of applying myself – largely through (re)building habits

How about you? What habits would make a difference between where you are now and where you see yourself in 5 years?
While logically working on the biggest change the great fulcrum that will change everything is tempting it can easily become a distraction to prevent you from getting started on making changes. If you don’t have a clear answer then pick 1 thing and get started, after a few days (5 seems to be the critical number) momentum will start to carry you forward.

– Thank you Steve Pavlina for the inspiration of the technique

PS. Yes this is grammatically terrible, this is a 1st draft which is a habit I will continue for several posts at least as I develop the habit of writing to this blog more often.

Diabetes: not fun, used to have hypoglycemic crashes somewhat regularly before learning to manage

watch your fat vs carb intake, higher blood fat levels cause sugar/carbs to stay in your blood stream creating the conditions for a crash – biggest thing I’ve learned is scheduling, when eating a fatty meal try to stay light for a few hours sticking with water and low glycemic index foods (apples are a particular favorite)

can share more if interested, learned how to cure diabetes when I went raw and haven’t had an issue since

So what do you think? Have I gone over the deep end thinking that cancer is a curable dis-ease?

Sustainability in a nutshell means that what is done now can be done by future generations. Example, driving around in petroleum powered vehicles is not very sustainable since there is a limit on how much petroleum can be extracted from the ground. Building wind turbines to power a city is fairly sustainable since the wind is less likely to be consumed than the oil? Make sense?

The last message I wrote was in response to a new friend who gave a speech about a number of related topics, most having to do with exploitation for profit. While I am for profit that is gained ethically there are a number of organizations that have very gray definitions of ethics if any, and some that would state simply that ethics interfere with maximum profit and thus must be banished from the marketplace. The majority of organizations and business owners seem to fall into a middle area, where long term effects of current actions are ignored. Not due to mal-intent so much as ignorance. Thus my comments to the speech offered by Reverend Higgens to be shared with the congregation were, be aware. Be aware that every dollar you spend is a vote. A vote that encourages the practices used to produce whatever you buy. While this may seem like common sense upon reading, I would ask you to stop and think about the last time you went shopping. Do you know where half of the things you purchased where manufactured?

I hope that I haven’t jumped around to much, and if I’m getting to abstract please let me know, I have been studying business and sustainability directly and indirectly for many years and have only recently begun writing in any depth and find that taking the time to distill my words helps to clarify my thinking.

So what do you think?

This past Sunday I enjoyed a talk from a Reverend Hutchinson regarding Fair Trade, the WTO and related topics, as you may know this is an issue where I’ve completed a fair amount of research and performed a tiny bit of action. He did an excellent job of uncovering the surface in a short time which is difficult to do in this topic area. I’m interested in who would like to further the discussion via the internet, email for now though I could setup a mailing list / web-site if the group grows large enough.

If you are interested please reply with a brief introduction regarding your background, what your first exposure to the need for social justice & environmental reform, what you would like to contribute and what you would like to receive from the group? If you would like more information without sharing your email address with others please let me know and I’ll be sure to Blind Carbon Copy you on future emails.

As for me, my mother is a science teacher and I grew up with a significant amount of information just on the edge of my awareness. Though my true wakeup call came around September 11, 2001 when I saw a great number of things that just didn’t quite add up, long story short I read a book called the Emperor Wear’s No Clothes which discusses the history of Hemp and it’s potential for sustainable development, then joined an activist group seeking Drug Law reform and began to see the interconnectedness of a great variety of groups and ideas. I like many others began feeling angry and betrayed, only to recognize that in my ignorance I was helping to fuel the growth of a movement that supported and was largely based upon exploitation at every available level. My favorite title for this movement thus far is “Fundamentalist Free Market Capitalism”.

I must say that I also believe that Free Market Capitalism has the potential for tremendous good, and over the years have come to recognize myself as a capitalist. The distinction in my mind is the externalization of costs, big phrase that in a nutshell means forcing cost onto the shoulders of others. Another way to think of this is to look at the difference between the “price” of something and the “cost” of something. For example, a $0.50 bar of chocolate from the grocery store checkout line has a much lower price than a $2.00 Organic Fair Trade bar of chocolate. Yet the $2.00 bar of chocolate may cost less, it is organic and thus does not use pesticides in it’s production, so it is less likely to cause you future dis-ease, less likely to contribute to local fresh water supplies becoming poisoned. It is fair trade so it is less likely to have been planted and harvested by children under the age of 12 and probably was grown by a farmer who is able to support their family and have enough income left over to invest in improving their farm and their community. That is just one example, though it does set the stage for the idea that price does not reflect cost.

This is obviously not a simple cut and dry issue else it would not be an issue, many who are most aware of these issues are those in relatively low income brackets. I was the stereotype of a broke activist living on a couch when many of my seeds were being planted and fed with great soil. The side effect of this is that when you do not think you can afford to pay the extra price for organic and/or fair trade then you are more likely to put up some blinders and perhaps decide that you are powerless to do anything and simply move toward the herd of low prices at any cost.

So I’ve rambled on enough for this morning, suffice to say that I hope this group grows large enough to splinter off other groups exponentially. I look forward to hearing any additional thoughts, comments, feedback, complaints, criticisms, etc… So long as you are thinking and preferably cultivating your own consciousness.