moving us

My truth is not yours

and yet it is part of us all

My life is not lived

Yet it has already been past and in the future.

My choices are my own

yet they are also inseparably yours. 

I figure out who I am

By learning what we're not

Do I not say what I mean?

All of us talk vibrationally.

It's energy that speaks.

The key is to actually pay attention.

Can you feel it?

Moving you?

the shortest day

The shortest day is like the shortest breath

It's cold. People look frozen.

Time moves fast as it does slow

On the shortest day.

We have a wine.

We light a smile.

We see only a few.

On the shortest day

Years ago we had it figured out

Now things have changed again

And we could be anywhere at all

On the shortest day

Many dreams gallop overhead

and the sun sets all too soon

So all we have is each other

On the shortest day

Tomorrow the light will increase again

Perhaps make sense to us some more

Hey where are we going?

On the shortest day.

perception

Yesterday I watched the movie "the girl with the dragon tattoo". It was quite a graphic movie in the sense that very unpleasant thing were happening to the main characters. The movie was excellent as the storyline was good and it showed how people can choose to behave in different circumstances. The more you understand the background stories the more things make sense. There are no black and white absolutes which is what I liked about it. I think "truth" and our versions of it are multi dimensional. Having an opinion about anything therefor can be a difficult thing to shape.

We usually do not know what stories people carry around and it's usually not necessary for us to know either. I am a strong believer in that you are able to influence what you attract in your life, no exception. Being responsible for your own life and dealing with any situation that comes along is a daily activity. So what about when people appear not being able to defend themselves?

It's a good question and not an easy one. Are there bastards in the world? Most people would say yes of course: this that and the other! Are there innocents in the world? Yes. Are there tons of grey areas? Millions. Why do some people "have it easy" and why do "some people always experience shit"? I don't know either. But I do know that creating hypes and a lot of noise about bad things will hardly make it any better. It makes more sense to do the best you can do and if you do find yourself in a situation that you can make a lot of a difference, do so.

Nico and I once ran into a troubled girl on a campsite. She had serious thoughts about killing herself and had tried something with a gasoven that didn't work out. She had had a difficult childhood and eventhough she didn't mention all the particulars we did get a fair idea of the horrendousness of it. She spoke about it in such a off hand manner that would turn the average person stone cold. We did what we could for her and suggested things that could help her practically and mentally. She was most grateful as she said that we were strangers there at the right time to listen. And to care. I think it made a difference in her life that she needed at the time to make a decision to move forward.

Ultimately it seems that this is the only thing we can do: to be conscious of what we choose at any given time. And whether we give a damn about others. Even when we don't know them.

Who have you met recently that you could have helped but didn't? Who did you help but only realized later that you did? And would you be willing to step up and do the hard yards or just say you would? Things are never easy and straight forward and yet sometimes. They are.

trust

So why do we have the tendency to take an expert's words over our own? How come we relate to something thruthful being expressed when it is not said by an expert? In short: why on earth would we have the tendency to take another's word over our own?

This morning I read both a statement saying: 'trust your own inner guidance system' and saw a youtube video of a 8 year old girl with a delightful opinion on how things are being done in Egypt. Many people related to both posts.

It appears we may find ourselves increasingly so in a time where we learn to trust our own wisdom more and more. Only those who are unsure venture out to get confirmation on that which they really already know to be true. (That or if you would find yourself in a position of being lost or clue less.) So how do we get clued in? How do we find that answer we are looking for? Google it?

Self empowerment start at the front door. It starts with the dawning realisation that all has changed, gone to custard or need re-alignment. People only change when they see the need to. Once through the door of realisation we come to the newfound understanding that indeed we are in the ''in between'' stage. We scramble, we muck around, we play, whatever fashion feels right to guide our akward feeling journey towards a new discovery. And then all of a sudden; there it is! An apple lands on our head or something equivalent happens. We know instantly what it is we need to do. No one can deviate us from this because it's one of those big ahas.

And when this happens to us, oh boy, miraculous things happen! We get new work out of the blue, we meet the right people to take us further, we simply focus more on something that inspires us and drives us on, we simply as they say "just go for it".

So who is the best expert about what you should do on any given time? There you are!

openness

The arrest of Wikileaks founder mr Assange has sparked much debate about freedom of speech and the way governments run their business. Now the fact that mr Assange has been arrested (and is likely to be extradited to Sweden on an alleged rape charge) we can see that rumors do not just spark, opinions are very much divided and many people have stong feelings about this case. Is the rape charge not just simply a cover up to stop Wikileaks and make readers believe they are baddies? Is Wikileaks not just another form of terrorism? What is it really that needs protecting? 

Only the ignorant believe that military and political groups are there to protect our safety. Think about this carefully. Does anything really need protecting at all? If there's nothing to hide then there should be no problems in the information coming to the surface, so why have this existing system anyway. Who does it really benefit?  

(Note: I'm not advocating going on a rampage of deliberately releasing information without thinking through what the impact will be. The debate here is not so much politics or individuals/idealistic groups but very much Ethics.)

It looks that the way Politics have been run is changing: with online media available to practically everyone on the planet, news spreads like wild fire. Trying to control this would be a mistake and only leads to one action: either severe conflict to try and gain control again (a very old school approach) or perhaps it would be novelty to start afresh by being transparent. This openness could mean that we all could accept that we are indeed all earthlings instead of sticking to our little individual agendas. Short term thinking and ego driven actions are simply on the way out. The new flavor of the day is a strong desire for genuine behavior build on mutual respect and trust.

The danger today is that all of us are still looked upon as potential terrorists. At airports we are screened, soon iris photos will be taken to identify everyone and unless we say no you can bet on it they will come up with a way to convince us all that having a chip injected under your skin would be so beneficial to your health and protection. (Flu injections anyone?) More and more people wake up and clue in on the fact what is really happening around us. We have started to realize how things work: what we are told daily (what we are fed) and we get an idea on the vast enormity on what we are not. 

We are choosing a new way to look at things, a new way to run our own lives and do this respectfully and transparently. Wikileaks may have done this in a very controversial manner. The fact it touches so many nerves should tell us something. Perhaps one day in the future we can say that the reason this happened because it sparked the debate that was needed to move forward and clean up our act. Governments will find they will have to change tack, as their people simply do not wish to participate in the old ways anymore. The world has become too small for that.

From today's 'the New York Times':

"Mr. Assange depicted WikiLeaks as a proponent of what he termed scientific journalism, which “allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on.”

“That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?” he wrote. “Democratic societies need a strong media, and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest.” (...)

As of Monday night, the group had released fewer than 1,000 of the quarter-million State Department cables it had obtained, reportedly from a low-ranking Army intelligence analyst.

So far, the group has moved cautiously. The whole archive was made available to five news organizations, including The New York Times. (...)

Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange since July, when WikiLeaks made public documents on the war in Afghanistan. But while it is clearly illegal for a government official with a security clearance to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public. (...)

In recent months, WikiLeaks gave the entire collection of cables to four European publications — Der Spiegel in Germany, El País in Spain, Le Monde in France and The Guardian. The Guardian shared the cable collection with The New York Times. (...) The five publications have announced no plans to make public all the documents. WikiLeaks’ intentions remain unclear."

From excellent shirky.com:

"Over the long haul, we will need new checks and balances for newly increased transparency — Wikileaks shouldn’t be able to operate as a law unto itself anymore than the US should be able to. In the short haul, though, Wikileaks is our Amsterdam. Whatever restrictions we eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today, while we work through the process democracies always go through to react to change. If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow."

Exactly. 

Further news on this story: 10th Dec:

Great read on Wired.com:

• About EasyDNS, a company accused and backlashed for supporting Wikileaks and then pulling the plug; alas they were confused with a similarly named company. Now they do support Wikileaks. The story: click here
• Dutch teen of 16 arrested for aiding Wikileaks. About how Wikileaks is organized and who works for them: groupforming. Read more here.

Further news: Reuters: 15th December:

Reuters: 

• Assange back in jail as Sweden appeals bail> read here
• U.S. Air Force blocks NY Times and Guardian over WikiLeaks > read here