puck

So i've done the SE thing, but P. alba seems to be talked about as an aside most of the time. Yes, i am very much a newbie, and yes, i am growing alba only because SAB is not selling viridis plants atm. But i am glad of it, as i would like some experience with alba before i try growing viridis. I am in or near Melbourne (in, currently) and my little alba is sitting in a pot in premium (but not particularly special) potting mx on a verandah shaded by laserlite roofing. I've only had her for three or so weeks, and i am trying to work out if she needs extra humidity. I'm ready to pop a bottle over her, as i no longer have a greenhouse, but i'm not sure if she needs it. It's getting pretty hot down here already, and mostly dry heat too. She has three or four (out of 15) leaves developing some browning, but it has been quite gradual. How long does it take for these guys to harden to the low humidity? Is it worthwhile giving her the bottle, or am i fretting too much? Maybe even the laserlite gives her too much sun at this stage? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

so i'm a fundamentalist christian AND a new-age crackhead. bugger.

the prodigal son returns... i have something terribly embarrassing to admit, my friends. imagine my consternation and devastation when i come to realise that I am myself a Christian fundamentalist! Seriously guys, I'm not actually joking. I've joined the dark side. But I gotta say, I am not in bad company. I'm not in any company, so far as I can tell. Now, before you go taking any of the bullshit on that straw-man-ridiculous-fallaciously-absurd list serious-like, consider this: I once saw on the website of westboro baptist church a photo of a woman with a "god hates fags" sign - one of many such photos, but this woman was wearing pants. For any of you who might think that the westboro baptist church are fundies: "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination." (Lev 18:22) Yeah ok, but: "A woman shall not wear a man's apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God." (Deut 22:5) And: "For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get." (Matt 7:2) They're not fundamentalists, they're hate-filled, fearful people who are trying to justify their hatred using a set of archaic laws given to the Israelites and NOT (unless I missed a meeting somewhere) to you and me. A fundamentalist Christian is anyone who takes two verses of the Bible seriously: John 14:15 "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" and Matthew 5:19 "Whoever breaks one of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Jesus gives one hell of an emotional blackmail with the first one, and a bitch of a demand in the second, but if you accept those two, you're forced to accept the whole bloody lot. Which is how I find myself in my current predicament. Good thing is, most of the people who call themselves fundies, or are accused of being fundies, are not even Christians. They are bigoted and judgmental fuckwits who Jesus talks about in Matt 21-23: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evil-doers." Ok, maybe I'm a little judgmental myself. Far be it from me to be sinless. Maybe I should go flagellate myself for having the temerity and unwholesomeness for being the person that the perfect and holy God created me to be... How fucking dare I be a perfect and holy child of God just like everyone else? Oh, hang on - I'm meant to feel pity for everyone who has different beliefs than I, because they're going to hell, right? Yeah, bullshit. John 14:2 "There are many rooms in my Father's house. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you." Dammit, I'm putting the 'fun' back in fundamentalist Christian dogma, and I will talk scripture with anyone who thinks that a Christian fundamentalist can be an arsehole. They can't. If they're an arsehole, they're not fundies. And if you're gonna get real technical, I'd say about .01% of those who identify as Christian actually are. That doesn't mean the rest of them are going to hell, but it does mean that they can't be held to the same high standards as a genuine Christian. So lay off them, ok? They're just clueless dickheads, like the rest of us. Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian 1. You love Jesus and prove it by doing EVERYTHING he tells you - and that includes picking up hitchhikers! 2. Jesus loves you and proves it by granting you peace throughout persecution and day-to-day shit 3. You get persecuted 4. You love everyone and everything, no matter how fucked up they are 5. You are homeless or wouldn't give a shit if you were, and don't care about clothes or money 6. You love Satan, and can't find a single scripture to prove that he's really a bad guy. 7. You have the keys to the kingdom of heaven, meaning that what you bind on earth is bound in heaven and what you loose on earth is loose in heaven (your personal earth and your personal heaven), and you're mighty pissed of that St Peter stole your keys and put them on the fucking Vatican flag. This is distinct from San Pedro, so named because of the keys... 8. You turn the other cheek when people come up violently against your subtle bodies, but if they cast a stone into your subtle bodies you cast it out - and pray for forgiveness if it hits them, and for a thicker subtle skin. 9. You understand that you get everything you pray for, just like everyone else, because your life is a manifestation of soul-needs based on free choices and how they interact with the soul-needs you incarnated with and picked up along the way. You come to understand your soul-desires by studying your life, and only then do you start to manifest answers to all your prayers, because you align them with your deeper soul-needs and desires. 10. You do greater things than Jesus ever did when he was walking around on earth. (John 14:12)

Ah, the Mental Health Services - would calling them the 'Thought Police' be overly perjorative? Probably. They are usually well-intentioned, but almost never the best people to intervene. I would have much rathered a lama or shaman give me a whip on the arse and a damn good talking to than a medic give me a needle up the arse and 24/7 monitoring... How's your mate going now, Sina? It's unfortunate, but time is the best strategy for getting out of these situations. Psychs are inherently cautious and loath to change their minds, so one must be diligently 'normal' with zero display of frustration for some time before release is on the cards. Was this a first admission? If so, a CTO is not so likely upon release, which is always a plus. But I would echo Micro's sentiments; the healing may not begin in hospital, but a recognition of the need for healing can. All the best.

early Nov? any more specific dates? very interested in doing anything i can to help here - after EGA last year i was very gung-ho about doing something like this myself, until i took the drug-enhanced spirituality thing a bit too far and (more to the point) ungrounded. but still very much supportive. Am given to understand that High Court is only Court that can hear Constitutional arguments, thus you should be able to get there without going one-by-one up the ladder, but am no lawyer.

I tend to think that the nature of the afterlife depends heavily on the pre-death state. Like TI was saying about generating karmic conditions for the next incarnation, the karmic conditions for the inter-incarnatory period would be set by one's mental/emotional/spiritual state. Thus going to 'Hell' - being a hell of your own making. Similarly, Heaven. Basically an extension of the 'like attracts like' principle, applied to subtle energy realms. There have been times when that idea is all that's kept me from suicide (excuse morbidity). Wilfully ending life in a state of severe depression would not land one in the most pleasant of surrounds, if it holds any water. Foray into obvious territory: shouldn't we pay some attention to near death experiences to inform us about last moments of life, and possibly first moments of post-life? Even if NDEs are phenomena of a stressed and suffocating brain, surely they have some relevance?

Einstein an atheist??

Hey i too am settling down back in Melbz for a few months. Wud love to catch up with peeps.

Hey this is real late to post, but i only just decided to go. Wondering if there'll be any SAB peeps up in Newcastle this weekend. It'd be great to have chats.

man, it's nice to come back to this topic. y'see, i've just yesterday got out of a psychiatric institution where i was imprisoned without trial and forcibly drugged. for my own good of course. and, despite the best efforts of the doctors, it was actually a healing experience. i have had a wonderful first-hand look into a time-poor expression of the western psychiatric paradigm, which exacerbates all that is worst in it. i admitted myself voluntarily, after a - shall we say - interesting (and vociferous) experience on the steps of Flinders St station in Melbourne one Saturday night. basically had a drug-induced manic episode. i had naively thought that an inpatient clinic might offer some sort of therapeutic activities. but the only thing on offer was drugs. i politely declined - drugs as artificial psychic-homeostatic mechanisms are repugnant to me - and all was hunky-dory for five days. then on the fifth day, without about thirty seconds' warning, i am dragged off to isolation and shot up the arse with an intramuscular antipsychotic. where did these people learn their manners? well, i'm out of there now and in two minds about it. the whole thing was remedial and utterly beneficial, but the best intentions of the psychiatrists aren't worth jack. i healed myself by making peace with an horrific situation, and it strengthened me a bunch. but if i'd taken on the shrinks' belief system, i'd be completely disempowered, on Lithium still and for the foreseeable future, and in constant fear of my own psyche. i've been given a diagnonsense of Bipolar Affective Disorder with Psychotic Features, and it humours me endlessly. the precipatory factors of a ten-day restrictive fast, a return to my home town after an extended absence, and a consistent marijuana inebriation for three days running - not to mention a prayer for 'things to get insanely, uncannily weird and intense' - were completely sidelined. sure i'll keep an eye out for danger signs, but i'm not gonna be paranoid about it. tell you what, though - coming cold turkey off the psychiatric medications is full-on. but at least i can get an erection again. (talk about disempowering...) and now i am completely drug-free, apart from tea which is my sole hypocrisy and consolation. would love a joint, or at least a fucking cigarette, but i'm giving myself six months. it's gonna be interesting. i just hope i can still join in here. thanks for letting me rant. I'M BACK!!!

EGA = Entheogenesis Australis. Conference of weirdos, council of shamans, get-together of assorted freaks. Wonderful vibes, great learning. Not gonna be on til 2009, if I ain't mistaken, which may mean I miss the next one due to small matters like the Pacific bloody Ocean being in the way... Bummer. Highly recommended.

Had a chance to meet that Russian guy, Dmitri. Wasn't too intense an experience the first time, as he only popped in to say hello - but as he left, there were entities of some kind poking me in the eye repeatedly. (Third eye, mind.) Anyway, what he left me with was an understanding that doubt is an attachment. Just like I've been ranting about in another thread, and indeed my feeling is that this is why I've been meditating on these issues: to bring about a pre-understanding. Doubt is an attachment to an outmoded paradigm. There are many metaphysical truths that I hold to be truths, but still I doubt. I read the words of Jesus, that if you have perfect faith without doubt and you say to the mountain "piss off", it will piss off. Yet still I doubt. I truly believe that I can see auras, astral project, even levitate objects. The only thing holding me back is doubt. So how to rid oneself of doubt? Well, when I had the opportunity to go deeper, I found that doubt can be purged through vomiting, but this is hardly a sound daily practice. However, since that night, I have had something of a paradigm shift where doubt appears as an idiosyncratic curiosity, rather than a millstone tied around my neck. Who the fuck am I to doubt anyway? What the fuck do I know about the Universe and its workings? I have no stable ground to work from, no starting point of departure, that might constitute a place where doubt could feasibly originate. My doubt is a limit I set upon myself, through my attachment to my current worldview. By releasing this attachment, just as any other emotional tie, I can allow the influx of new possibility. Mark 9:23-4 "All things are possible to him who believes." "Lord, I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief." Thoughts?

Echo and the Bunnymen?. Hilarious. But it may not be about the music, Dude... And hey, SC, don't blame us a'ight? Just ask the Universe, and she'll tone it down for ya. I can guarantee it. She's a top chick, and will do whatever you ask her to. Burroughs is da man.

You fucker. Alright, I hereby release all desire to know wtf you were on about... (Still not impressed, but. )

'Rules of physics'?? Hmmm... aren't these just subjective understandings of the 'objective' world, otherwise called 'models' and thus prone to constant revision? It was conclusively proven, some time ago, that a steam train traveling at more than 60kmh or so would asphyxiate all occupants, as all the air would be sucked out.Not sure about these UFOs - but can we please agree that they are Objects, which appear to be Flying, and are obviously - despite all the hypotheses - Unidentified? If a UFO is identified as an alien spacecraft, it is no longer a UFO. But, technicalities... This is a topic that interests me greatly. I see no strangeness in the idea of an alien presence on this planet. In fact, i find it almost inconceivable, and laughable, to imagine that there isn't one. And this is before taking Mushrooms, mind. Let's just pursue a hypothetical. With a few sparse references to flying chariots etc, in the Vedas, the Bible, and mediaeval paintings and so forth, there is not much to go on. But we find that suddenly, in the planet's largest conflict, WWII, there are many reports of balls of light appearing off the wingtips of both Allied and Axis warplanes. Both think it's the other guys. Then, we explode the first nuclear devices, in the USA and Japan. Within two years, in June 1947, there is a HUGE rush of reports of 'flying discs' in different parts of the world, Australia being one of them. Check out newspaper reports of the time. There is honest curiosity as to w.t.f. these things could be. Next month, July 1947, a newspaper report comes out that one such flying disc has been recovered. Next day - whoops, mistaken. Now come on: are you gonna tell me that the first witnesses, from the US Army Air Force no less, experienced professionals, are gonna mistake a balloon - spy or weather - for a fucken alien spacecraft? Well, stranger things have happened, but in my books, it takes prejudice to answer that question either way. (Roswell, btw, I've heard tell, was the only place in the world at the time that had nuclear weapons stored. Haven't verified that one yet.) And in the 60 years since, there have been MILLIONS of witnesses of UFOs. Millions. I tell you what: if I was a member of a galactic civilisation, and some monkeys with a nasty habit of blowing the shit out of each other happened upon the ability to split the atom AND leave the planet's orbit, I'd wanna keep a close eye on 'em. A very close eye indeed. It's all a bit of a mystery. All's I can say is - if there is someone watching, contact is inevitable. It will occur, just a matter of when. And I hope it is sooner rather than later. I reckon it'd be pretty cool. And if you've got some time, check out this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk "U.F.O DISCLOSURE PROJECT U.FO MEETING" Or www.disclosureproject.org. Interesting stuff.